Cubby-Blue

Starlin Castro - how much promise can a guy have?

Yesterday against the Pirates, he went 3 for 5 with 2 doubles and scored 3 runs.
I believe that either yesterday or maybe today is the first day he shows up on the "qualified" NL leaderboard in with a .313 average.

He sometimes dazzles, sometimes fails, but name a guy with more promise to come out of the Cubs organization in, you know, modern times?
And he's a shortstop!
A Cub? 
That's just weird, man.
And speaking of weird, the Cubs nuked the Pirates yesterday 14 to 2.

Usually this year, I turn on the tv or radio in the middle of the game to some kind of disaster, but last night it was... a 7 run 4th inning with about 50 hits in a row.

Meaningless of course, but it was so cool. Ron Santo goes, "I think everybody's saying hey, how did we lose?" (I'd answer, but this is a rare happy post).

Poor Sean Gallagher. Remember him? Kinda good, went to Oakland in the Rich Harden deal? Now he's a Pirate. Gave up a 2-run single to Aramis Ramirez, then a run-scoring double to Xavier Nady, then uh, he struck out Alfonso Soriano.
And I also heard Pat call the Carlos Zambrano smack of a line drive homer that scored 2, and I realized that in the world of Jim Hendry, Big Z is probably the least of his worries...

But good for Mike Quade and his Cubs.

Tonight Ryan Dempster goes for his 100th win.

Go Ryan!

ps: Yes I know Geovany Soto was ROY in... well that seems like a looong time ago. I wish I still felt like he was maybe gonna live up to what I thought.

The Cubs could salvage 2010 with a sweep of the Pirates!

I'm kidding of course.

Nothing can salvage 2010, a heinous boil on the giant ass of the body of work from one of the oldest teams in baseball.

The Cubs are 3-9 against the Pirates, the team with the all-of-baseball worst 43-87 record.

And I feel for Mike Quade.

What would you say if you were that guy?

"If you strike out against one of their hack pitchers, you'll have to drop and gimme 50 right in the batter's box. That includes you, Ramirez."

Nah, the Union would get him. Besides, Aramis can't do 50 pushups.

"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the..."

Nah, too clichéd.

"If we win tonight, Shawon Dunston's gonna take us all to McDonald's!"

Maybe that's it.

Whatever he says, for pity's sake can you Cubs just please beat the Pirates?

Next.

Manny to the Sox.

I bet he'd play lights out for the remainder of the season. His injuries would miraculously vanish. He makes me vomit.

Next.

The Bears are the new Cubs.

That's all I got.

Go Cubs.

The suckiness of the Bears is directly proportional to the suckiness of winter.

Winter and the Bears haven't really happened yet. I'm just thinking ahead and... thinking about the past.

Have you ever noticed how much crappier Winter is when the Bears suck?

How snow and cold give you waaay more pain after the Bears just got pasted?

That's why I'm usually angry all the time in winter.

On the other hand, I've seen victory at Soldier Field in weather that would kill a flock of penguins and been perfectly happy. One halftime we were in a looong, non-moving line for a beer when an employee came down the line explaining that there was no beer available because the tubes leading from the kegs to the cups had frozen solid.

That's pretty cold, but it was sort of nice out.

I didn't watch last night, but rather listened to the radio, and it doesn't sound like it's going to be a good winter at all. Cutler wasn't protected and threw 2 interceptions (did I just hear somebody say "Cutler Sucks!"), neither the offense or defense looked good... that's probably good for old man winter to start tossing grenades in couple weeks.

On to the Cubs!

It's funny how I forget that it's only Randy Wells' second year. It kinda feels like he's been around a long time, maybe because this season has taken about 4 years already. But it's not out of character for a young pitcher to be inconsistent in his second year. And he did good yesterday so maybe he'll finish up strong and we'll all have one (of about 10,000) less things to worry about.

In a couple hours we'll see Casey Coleman fresh off his first win.

And I cant' help but look ahead.  I see it's the fearsome Pittsburgh Pirates coming to Wrigley next week!

(Say this like Clint Eastwood): Paybacks are fierce, my freebootin' buccaneer friend.

 

Predicting the Chicago Cubs' Future

I predicted the future the other day.

Had a vision.

And I swear to you this is true: I had a dream and this guy I used to work with, Mike Sheehan, was behind some kind of table with stuff on it and he said, "I always keep a little cash on the side because you never know when something's going to go wrong with your car."

I woke up and immediately said, "My car's gonna break down."

I told the story to my family and to a bunch of people at work.

My clutch cable busted about 2 blocks from my house on the way home that night.

Freeeeaaaaaaaaaky.

So lately I've been trying to remember my dreams, hoping Sheehan shows up again and says something like, "I always look for the impossible to happen, especially when it comes to Northwestern graduates."
Which would mean the Cubs would somehow sign Joe Girardi.

Or maybe he'd say, "If my first name was Jerry and my last name rhymed with "fan hello", I'd look out for that bus." You can guess what that would mean.

Or even, "I always have another job waiting for me in Baltimore." (Of course, that one would only be good if, in the dream, Sheehan morphed into Jim Hendry.)

Last night, after the Reds scored 4 in the 5th, and it was 6-1 Reds? I actually said loud enough for my wife to hear, "There's no way the Cubs can win this one."

True - you can ask her.

Anyway, what do you guys think?

What's gonna happen with our favorite team?

If I have any more dreams I'll let you know.

Here's something I do predict: Dusty Baker will re-live 2003 in Cincinnati, only his guys will be more like Florida from that year. If I was Atlanta or San Diego, I would hate to face them in the playoffs. Not discounting the Cards yet, but getting pretty close.

 

Jay Cutler's unfair suck-cycle.

You already know this, of course.

In about a month and a half, we'll be hearing about Jay Cutler sucking.

I thought a handy chart like the above might make it as clear as possible (to someone like ... Jerry Angelo maybe...) just why people will really be saying that: no line.

Last week starting left tackle Chris Williams let some schmo named Kamerion Wimbley sack Jay Cutler 3 1/2 times. In all, the line allowed Cutler to be sacked 5 times.

Just pre-season, I know, but that also means the 5 sacks happened in one half of a football game.

Every time I watched Cutler last year he was doing the above suck-cycle and man, that's a shame. What would you do if you were Cutler? The guy had to run around and try to force passes and pray. Got him a bad reputation.

Sure some of it was his fault, but...
You can't win without an offensive line, it's as simple as that.

Tomorrow night it's the Arizona Cardinals, a team that finally, publicly has to admit that when Matt Leinart is behind the center they usually go backwards. Remember when they put him in the game for awhile last year against the Bears? The guy just cannot lead. But anyway, the Cards had 43 sacks last year, or 6 more than the Raiders. So it ought to be a little more of a test for this Bears line.

Please stop the Unfair Cutler Suck Cycle, O-line.

And...Go Bears.