Harden fast

Well, that was quick. How quick did the Cubs pull the trigger on Rich Harden? Quick enough that the last two blog entries posted by Buster Olney are titled "Don't expect Cubs to answer CC trade" and, immediately thereafter, "Harden deal happened quickly."

Harden remains a big injury risk, as I noted yesterday. Given Billy Beane's usual shrewdness and how quickly he moved to deal Harden even though the A's are hardly out of the AL West race, I'm frankly a little worried - and then there's this, from Olney's post:

Harden returned from the disabled list on May 11, and in his first nine starts, he pitched as he usually does, dominating hitters, striking out 42 batters in 32 1/3 innings in June, compiling a 1.67 ERA for the month. Some scouts who saw his July 1 start reported that his velocity was down, and he lasted five innings. On July 6, Harden had five erratic innings, walking four and requiring a 95 pitches to get through five innings.

Who's excited???? I really hope Hendry checked out the injury reports before pulling the trigger.

Harden and Chad Gaudin, a reliever, came over for Matt Murton, Eric Patterson, Sean Gallagher and Josh Donaldson. The good news here is that there's not a ton of loss in that trade. Murton is a good little hitter, but it's unlikely that he's ever going to turn into an All-Star, and he can only play left, a position the Cubs have covered until 2014. Patterson has his assets but never really caught on with Piniella, it seemed; Donaldson is one of the top two or three prospects in the Cubs' system, but he plays catcher, a position that, God willing, the Cubs have set for the next decade or so. The big loss is Gallagher; at 22, his best years are surely ahead of him, and he was certainly showing flashes of serious talent in his time with the big club this year. At the same time, he wasn't going to be in the rotation for the rest of the year anyway, and the Cubs weren't in a position to let him pitch his way into improvement as a starter. From the Cubs standpoint, they really gave up very little they couldn't afford to part with. The loss of Gallagher potentially makes the Cubs a worse team in 2010 (Harden is a free agent after the '09 season), but the addition of Harden potentially makes them World Series champions in 2008, and that can't be overlooked.

Still, his health situation scares the shit out of me. How/if (bite your tongue!) he pitches the rest of the year will probably determine whether or not fate really wants the Cubs to win this season.

Reaction time?

On Sunday, as the trade of C.C. Sabathia to Milwaukee was becoming official, Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus included this quote from someone in baseball in his article:

“The Cubs will react quickly to any deals in their division.”

Now, I don't know how true that is. But it seems reasonable to assume, doesn't it? Milwaukee made the Sabathia trade because they figure this is their year to try and contend - Sheets is likely gone next season and Fielder may not be around much longer either - but the thing is, the Cubs had already earmarked 2008 as "the year" to go for it, and their relatively hot first half, even with the recent stumble, has only encouraged things further. The Brewers, however, seem to be rebounding after a slow start, and while their bullpen is still extremely questionable, Sabathia certainly plugs one of their holes and potentially gives them one of the best 1-2 punches in baseball, one that could be particularly dangerous in any playoff series.

So Milwaukee has punched first. The question is, does Jim Hendry have a counterpunch in him? As good as the Cubs have been, they've been unable to shake St. Louis and Milwaukee so far, which isn't exactly an encouraging trend - while I hesitate to be too negative, one does have to wonder if the Cubs are actually going to win 96-97 games as they're ticketed to do based on current win percentages. And while the Cubs do have sizable statistical advantages over Milwaukee right now, their edge in pitching is actually fairly slim and could be largely erased by Sabathia and their edge in hitting has a lot to do with Milwaukee's slow start - and despite the fact that Milwaukee started slow, they now sit just 3.5 games back (possibly 3 after they host the Rockies tonight). The chance to take a 2005-White-Sox-like lead (10 games as early as June 22, 15 games on August 1), insurmountable even with late-season doldrums, has probably come and gone, and while the advantage the Central currently has over the rest of the NL likely means that the wild card will come from within, you'd hate to have to rely on that, especially since it would remove home-field in the playoffs.

I'm certainly not conceding the division to Milwaukee (though many Milwaukee fans certainly seem happy to assume a division title); that would be ridiculous before Sabathia even throws a pitch - and maybe after, since he only affects a game once every five days - and I think the Cubs are still more talented top to bottom. But the Brewers just got a lot scarier in the rear-view mirror, especially given that we finish the season with six games against Milwaukee in the final two weeks, including a season-ending series at Miller Park (where, of course, the Brewers are 28-13, the second-best mark in the NL behind the Cubs).

Anyway. The general assumption is that the Cubs are looking to add another starting pitcher, and presumably a #3 starter or better. Here's a list of the names being kicked around:

Rich Harden
Pros: 5-1 record, 92 Ks in 77 IP, 2.34 ERA (some of that due to a home park that strongly favors pitchers, but his road ERA of 3.38 is still quite respectable), frequently said to have ace stuff. Reports have Hendry working this angle quite hard at the moment.
Cons: When he's said to have ace stuff, it's usually followed by "...if he could stay healthy." Threw just 72.1 innings combined in 2006 and 2007; has a pretty substantial injury history. In spite of this, Billy Beane is said to want a comparable package to what he got from Arizona for Dan Haren last winter - which was fully six prospects, including two guys who are currently starters for Oakland and a blue-chipper they think of as their CF of the future. The Cubs probably don't have the pieces to put together that kind of haul, but then if Beane wants six players for a guy who still needs to prove he can pitch a full season, I'd run as fast as possible in the opposite direction.

Randy Wolf
Pros: Once upon a time, Randy Wolf was a pretty decent third starter. In 2002, he threw more than 210 innings, had an ERA+ of 121, and as many strikeouts as hits allowed. He's still capable of putting up pretty good ERA numbers, provided you play in Petco Park.
Cons: If you don't play in Petco Park, Wolf is a fourth starter at best, and the Cubs need someone elite, not someone who isn't even league average. Wolf's road ERA this year is 6.66, which should be a dead giveaway. He'd probably be cheap, but why give away anything for him when you could get the exact same results, or significantly better, by continuing to start Sean Marshall or even Sean Gallagher? This would be another Steve Trachsel deal, if you ask me.

A.J. Burnett
Pros: Apparently, Burnett would welcome a trade to the Cubs, and when he's on he can be very good, putting up an ERA+ of 115 or better in four of his six full seasons in the pros. He also strikes out nearly a batter an inning, a valuable asset on a Cubs staff that increasingly finds itself pitching to contact.
Cons: This year, his ERA+ is 82. He may not be fully healthy (like Harden, there's some injury history there). There's also some risk that he would be a rental player if good, but a liability if bad (he can opt out of his contract at the end of the year, but presumably wouldn't do so if he sucked, leaving the Cubs on the hook for two more years at $12 million per), but then again if you're the Cubs and trying desperately to win in '08, it might be worth the risk.

Erik Bedard
Pros: Has ace-like stuff. Last year in Baltimore, went 13-5 with a 3.16 ERA (146 ERA+) and 221 Ks in 182 innings.
Cons: Attitude seems questionable. Might be injured at the moment. Hardly setting the world on fire this year, though who knows how much of that is mental, due to Seattle's struggles. Mariners might not be willing to give him up for anything but a big package, given how much their previous regime spent to bring him in.

I'm not sure which of that list I want the Cubs to go for, though I can tell you for sure that they'd better stay the hell away from Wolf. As for the other three, I do have to wonder if the Cubs have the players to make a decent package - Josh Vitters, last year's #1 pick, is still extremely raw in the low minors, but of course he's not even 19 yet; Pie's value has dipped significantly; Hill is probably untradeable at this point; and while the Iowa Cubs have played awfully well this year, a lot of their value is tied up in older guys who may or may not be valuable trading chips. (Is Jason Dubois, at 29, suddenly a valuable commodity because he hits a lot of home runs at Iowa? Doubtful.)

So we'll see. I wouldn't mind seeing Hendry stand pat for the moment - let's not forget that this team doesn't have Alfonso Soriano and their history shows they play a lot better relative to .500 with him than without him. Obviously you can't wait too long to make a move, but let's make sure we know what we've got first, and not do anything out of panic.

How do you solve a problem like Marmol?

It seems like so long ago that Carlos Marmol was baseball's most unhittable pitcher, doesn't it? Now, it appears that three months of overuse have left him gassed and put the Cubs in a tight spot regarding the relief corps. On May 14, Marmol's ERA was 1.04; it was as low as 2.09 as recently as June 15. In his next appearance, four days later at Tampa, Marmol entered the game with a 3-1 lead, then walked two men and hit two more. He was yanked for Scott Eyre, who proceeded to allow a grand slam; despite not allowing a hit, Marmol was dinged for four earned runs, shooting his ERA to 2.93. In his next appearance, two days later against the White Sox, he entered with an 11-5 lead. After walking the leadoff hitter, he got two quick outs - then walked the bases loaded and allowed a run on a wild pitch. Once again he allowed a run despite not even giving up a hit.

The next two games were fairly uneventful - he threw an inning in the first and second games of the Baltimore series, allowing one total hit and walking no one. Then came Saturday. Marmol was brought in to start the seventh with the game tied at five; on an 0-2 pitch, he threw a high fastball to Carlos Quentin, who was able to put just enough on the ball to let it carry into the seats. Following that debacle, Marmol again got three days of rest prior to his appearance against the Giants last night. He came into the game with a 5-2 lead in the seventh and struck out the first two batters... then walked Travis Denker on five pitches, allowed a single to Fred Lewis, and then threw a first-pitch fastball to Ray "I Have Two Home Runs All Year" Durham. The fastball rose right into the zone, and Durham hit it out to right field to tie the game.

Marmol still has a devastating breaking ball, as he showed with the two strikeouts. But he's got a problem now. His command has gotten shakier - and let's not forget that even at his most dominant, his command could be an issue; remember all those at-bats where he'd leap to a 3-0 count, then manage to come back for the strikeout? He can't do that now, because he doesn't have the same fastball. Where it was touching high 90s earlier in the year, it now seems to top out around 93, and he just can't blow guys away with it. The same batters who would have been swinging futilely at a high 98-mph fastball are now jumping on 92-mph fastballs up in the zone and parking them in the seats.

Is Marmol masking some minor injury, or is he just tired? Yesterday on Baseball Prospectus, John Perrotto quoted a scout who said of Marmol, "He looks really tired to me, his arm is dragging, and his stuff isn’t as crisp. He’s a helluva young pitcher but [manager] Lou Piniella has been forced to ride him really hard this season and the wear and tear is showing." Marmol has already thrown 48 innings in 43 appearances after going just 69.1 (in 59 games) all of last year, and for a while he was on pace to throw well over 100 innings as the early-season struggles of guys like Howry made it more difficult for Lou to keep Marmol out of games. (Just ask Joe Torre what it's like to be a veteran manager who only trusts a few of his relievers.) He's also already given up 19 ER, eight more than all of last season - but 12 of those have been since June 1. So what do we do?

1. Give him a break.
Even three days off between games doesn't seem to be helping right now, so maybe Marmol just needs to be shut down for a while so he can rest. The question is, is there any way that a couple weeks of rest is enough? You can't possibly justify putting him on the shelf for longer than that unless he's actually injured, which I don't think is the case, and even while the fastball isn't there, his breaking ball is still good enough to get guys out if he can get a fastball over early in the count. But you can't always rely on that, as we saw last night.

2. Less use of the fastball.
There's always some risk that he'll just start firing fastballs all over the place, whereas the breaking ball is reliable and pretty much unhittable. Of course, if he turns into a one-pitch guy, that breaking ball will probably start to get more hittable as guys see a lot more of it. Still, I've seen at-bats where he's just buckled a guy's knees with three straight breakers right at the bottom of the strike zone, so it wouldn't be impossible.

3. Just use him less.
Lou doesn't seem to have a lot of trust in the bullpen beyond Marmol, but most of them have at least been decent this year. Ascanio looked pretty good in limited action before giving up a homer to Jim Thome on Sunday (but let's not forget that WWE officials were working that game); Cotts has been decent; Howry seems to be getting into form; Wuertz has a low ERA in spite of some command issues; Lieber has been solid pretty much every time he's come in but has appeared somewhat sporadically because of his assigned role as the long man. If all else fails, you could call up Hart (though it looks like he'll probably stick as a starter in the minors for right now and be brought up in that role maybe in 2009) or Pignatiello (who's been good in recent outings at Iowa, though his stats for the year are kind of ugly). And if all else fails, you could trade for a reliever in the next few weeks, although teams always end up overpaying for relievers and I'm not sure if there's a difference-maker out there.

Still, something has to be done, right? I don't think we can just keep doing what we've been doing when Marmol has been a time bomb recently. Thank God for Mike Fontenot.

U.S. Stealular

To: White Sox
From: MLB
Contents: One gift-wrapped three-game sweep

My dad frequently resorts to the old "it was fixed" angle whenever he's watching any game with shady officiating. My standard response in these situations is that the officiating was merely incompetent, and that no conspiracy is afoot. But you watch a series like the Cubs/White Sox series at US Cellular this weekend and it's really hard to come to a different conclusion. Incompetent officiating is nothing new, but it's rare to see officiating so blatantly one-sided. I watched most of the Saturday game and the first two innings of Sunday night's game, until the point where it was apparent the umpires had no intention of calling the game fairly. And while I obviously have my rooting interest, at no point did I feel like the Cubs were getting a fair shake.

If an umpire has a bad strike zone, that's one thing - if he enforces it the same way for everyone. That certainly didn't happen in Sunday night's game - Buehrle had to throw a pitch either above the shoulders or in the dirt for it to be a ball. Everything else was a strike. Pitches six inches outside and two inches below the knee were routinely strikes, as they had been the previous day for the White Sox relievers. How a team is expected to produce any offense when those kinds of pitches are strikes is beyond me. It wasn't a problem for the White Sox, of course, because the Cubs' strike zone was half the size. Marshall threw a curveball that should have struck Thome out; ESPN even showed the K-Zone replay showing that it was an obvious strike. It was called a ball; on the next pitch, Thome singled. On Saturday, the plate umpire was making his own judgment on check swings, something which is virtually never seen; most of the times he did it, a Cub was at the plate. On Sunday, Crede checked his swing well through the hitting zone; it was called no swing. When Piniella came out to argue, he was tossed by the plate umpire even as his back was turned to said umpire.

The crew was part minor league umpires, so maybe they were just staggeringly incompetent. But they really were just incredibly, bafflingly incompetent. And it's amazing to think that they could be so incompetent just against the Cubs. Maybe it was just home-field bias and not actually a sinister plot to have the White Sox win, but even if that's the case, it exposes a real problem in the way baseball is officiated. And it makes me laugh when I hear people talk about how horrible replay would be, because the "human element" needs to be preserved. You know what? When the "human element" is this fucking terrible, who needs it?

Double your agony

We're through 80 games. It's not quite half the season, but here's one way to think about it. I realized this season that it was dangerous to get too obsessed with the results of a single game, which has helped to keep me sane while following the Cubs on a daily basis. Think about a football season - there are only 16 games, so a single game might make or break you, but in baseball, where there are ten times as many games, you could consider each ten-game stretch to be "make or break." Individual games, probably not so much.

At least that's what I tell myself on days like today. I looked it up - the last time the Cubs gave up 10 runs or more in back to back games was August 27-28, 2006, a 10-6 loss at St. Louis followed by an 11-6 loss at Pittsburgh. Of course, those Cubs were well on their way to 96 losses, were starting Freddie Bynum at second, and started Les Walrond in the Cardinals game. This Cubs team, meanwhile, should be on its way to 96 wins. Hasn't looked like it the last couple days, though.

I don't know about Marquis, but I've always been a bit worried about Dempster. On Monday night, the guys on ESPN 1000 were talking about Dempster and asking if Cubs fans were sold on him (this was the night after he'd beaten the Sox 7-1 to complete the sweep at Wrigley). I considered calling in and saying that I wasn't because of BABIP, but I figured that wouldn't get me too far on talk radio.

But you look at Dempster's stats and it's clear he's been walking a bit of a tightrope. Going into today's game, his BABIP was .238; league average tends to be around .300. In fact, his BABIP used to be much lower, but in his last two starts before today it was .375 (and I doubt it got any lower today). He was still getting away with it - last Sunday, he allowed ten hits, but just one run, thanks in part to three double plays behind him.

It's kind of been the story of the Cubs' staff as a whole this year, with the possible exception of Lilly, who's still very much a flyball pitcher:

Dempster: 15 starts (before today); games in which the majority of balls put in play against him were not ground balls: 1.
Zambrano: 15 starts; games in which the majority of balls put in play against him were not ground balls: 5.
Marquis: 15 starts; games in which the majority of balls put in play against him were not ground balls: 3.
(For comparison's sake, Lilly: 17 starts; games in which the majority of balls put in play against him were not ground balls: 13.)

This is why Lilly can give up a bunch of home runs - he allows a lot of fly balls. Similarly, if you give up a lot of ground balls and line drives, you can have a bad day and give up a lot of hits. It doesn't help that, because of various injuries, the Cubs' defensive alignment is a little bit of a mess right now. Your starters in the field today: Lee (1B), Fontenot (2B), Cedeno (SS), Ramirez (3B), Patterson (LF), Edmonds (CF), Ward (RF). Not exactly optimal - Ward has so little foot speed that he's usually pulled for a pinch-runner immediately after getting on base when he pinch hits, and Patterson is a second baseman by nature; he botched a ball in left so terribly (it enabled Pierzynski to go to third on a single) that after the game Piniella said that Patterson wouldn't be put in left field any more. (I can't help but wonder if this means he's going back to Iowa; we've already got several players on the roster capable of playing second, including the left-handed Fontenot, meaning speed is the only thing that's going to keep Patterson with the big club.)

The Cubs are third in the NL in defensive efficiency, and the defense has been a huge part of the equation as the pitchers have started pitching more to contact. (Lilly's 8.67 K/9 leads the starters; Dempster's at 7.45, Gallagher 7.36, Zambrano 5.76, and Marquis is at 4.64. Two years ago, Zambrano was at 8.83.) This has reduced walks - Zambrano's on pace for just 72, the lowest since he became a full-time starter - but it can also increase hits if balls are finding their ways through holes. Zambrano has already allowed 105 hits; as a result, even with his walks way down, he's on pace for the second-worst WHIP of his career (since becoming a full-time starter). His BABIP against is .296; you can see where Dempster's .238 might worry me.

In other words, he was probably due to have a day like today, especially when the defense wasn't really backing him up. Listening to the broadcast until things started getting ugly, it sounded like Dempster was getting pretty unlucky - soft singles finding gaps, doubles down the line, a ball right over Fontenot's head that DeRosa, a taller man, might have caught. Then, of course, after Dempster had given up four straight hits (three of which drove in runs) in the third, he started shying away from pitching to contact, and that's when he walked the bases loaded. And then he had to throw shit over the plate, and we ended up with Swisher's grand slam. And that's the ballgame, basically.

So, there are reasons to be concerned - to some degree you might consider today as statistical inevitability catching up to him a bit - but also reasons to feel a little better than we otherwise might; when the optimal defensive alignment is on the field, Dempster's likely to be a more effective pitcher. His normalized runs allowed number is 3.14; independent of defense, it's 3.53. If the defense can stay above average, things should be okay. As long as his arm can hold up, of course.

What I am a little worried about now is the rest of this series, given that the Seans are going. Gallagher needs to give us at least six tomorrow; with Lieber having thrown 3.1 today, he's probably not going to be available until Sunday at the earliest, which leaves the pen with no long man should Gallagher have any struggles like Dempster or Marquis. (And we all know how much better an offensive team at home the Sox are - comparably so to the Cubs, in fact. Gallagher has been pretty good at not allowing runs recently - high of 3 in his last five starts, and he allowed just an unearned run in Tampa on the 19th only to be screwed out of a win by Marmol's blowup. Maybe this won't be so bad. But the Cubs have got to score runs for him. In only two innings today was no one on base, but Lee hit into a double play in the first and another in the third with the bases loaded. Coming when it did - the Cubs were still down just 1-0 - you could argue that the latter swung the momentum of the entire game, although if the Sox still scored 7 runs the next half-inning then it wouldn't have mattered much, probably. But what could have been a couple runs was a rally-killing, inning-ender, and then in the bottom of the inning the Sox put the game out of reach.)

Anyway, this is long enough. But I will say that I'm not concerned yet about these last couple games. However, if you look at the season in groups of ten games, and we're through the first eight, there's probably some reason to be concerned.

First 10: 6-4
Second 10: 8-2
Third 10: 4-6
Fourth 10: 6-4
Fifth 10: 5-5
Sixth 10: 9-1
Seventh 10: 7-3
Eighth 10: 4-6

Worst block since the third ten, back in late April/early May. That trend needs to get reversed, starting tomorrow.

Even better than the road thing

As pretty much everyone knows because the media won't shut up about it, the Cubs haven't been a great road team this year. In fact, they're 32-8 (!!!) at home, and just 16-20 on the road. I was in a Baseball Prospectus chat today when the issue came up via a Rays fan, after John Perrotto had commented that the Cubs were the team to beat in the NL Central:

jlarsen (DRays Bay): Cubs too strong in the long haul? They're horrible on the road(under .500 possibly) and the Rays completely destroyed Marmol after Lou forgot he had Carlos in the 'pen for a few consecutive days. If Rays fans know anything, it's that Lou is known to make some very questionable moves that point that he was as much the blame for the Rays only topping out at 70 wins when he was manager as the front office was.

John Perrotto: I still think they are the best team in the NL Central, though your points about their weaknesses are well taken.

So, a few things about that:

(1) As pointed out by a Cubs fan later in the chat, it's not quite accurate to say the Rays "completely destroyed" Marmol in last Thursday's game; if anything, they destroyed Eyre, off whom Crawford hit the GS. Marmol destroyed himself via two walks and two hit batsmen.
(2) It's a bit ironic to hear a Rays fan questioning the Cubs' credentials due to their road record. Your Tampa Bay Rays home/road record splits:

Home: 30-13; Road: 14-18

The Rays, in fact, have played more home games than any team in baseball to this point, and are exactly as "horrible" on the road as are the Cubs. Throw in the fact that the Rays have an extremely young starting pitching staff (the oldest of their five primaries is 26, and only two of the five have seasons of more than 170 innings to their credit in their careers) and I'd be a little bit more worried about my team than the Cubs if I'm a Tampa fan.

But whatever. This isn't about the Rays. The point is to look at the Cubs' road "struggles" and ask the question: are they doomed because of this?

Well, let's consider a couple things right off.

1. If the Cubs finish with the best record in the NL, it might not matter.
Even if you assume the Cubs can only win at home - to the tune of the .800 winning percentage they've posted there so far - they would still put up 101 wins if they continue their current home and road winning percentages through the rest of the year. As I mentioned a few posts ago, it's probably not likely that either of these trends will continue, but it's likely that they'll both approach each other. And if the Cubs use that to win 100 games, they'll almost certainly have the best record in the NL, and if they keep winning at home in the postseason, hello World Series. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

2. The Cubs score more runs than they allow on the road.
The Cubs' enormous +112 run differential - by far the best in baseball - has been built on the back of their home record, where they have scored 260 runs in 40 games (6.5 rpg!) while allowing just 151. But their road differential is also positive, with 158 runs scored (4.4 rpg) and 155 allowed. In other words, the Cubs' Pythagorean road record is 18-18, meaning that so far they have been a bit unlucky. And, in fact, if we look at the Cubs' 20 road losses, we find that fully fifteen of them have been by one or two runs. Even the series in Tampa, where the Cubs supposedly looked awful and had the floor mopped with themselves, saw the Cubs lose the first two games by a combined two runs. In fact, as pointed out by Mike D. on Hire Jim Essian:

If you look at their last thirteen losses, they have lost by one run in eight of those games, by two runs twice, and by three runs once. The only two losses in that span by more than three runs are the Tampa disaster and the game two weeks ago when Zambrano blew his top in Chavez Ravine–and even in both of those games, the Cubs had been winning going into their opponent’s half of the 7th inning.

In fact, the Cubs' team ERA is 3.44 at home and 3.92 on the road - half a run worse, of course, but still pretty good.

The obvious point is that the Cubs hit a lot better at home than they do on the road. The somewhat damning slashes:

Home: .311/.388/.506
Road: .254/.330/.383

Ick, right? As it happens, the latter number is mostly dragged down by the particularly poor road play of Kosuke Fukudome and Mark DeRosa - both hitting .214 with sub-.325 OBPs on the road right now - just as the home numbers are somewhat inflated by the exact opposite performances that Fukudome (.372/.479/.547) and DeRosa (.352/.432/.512) have turned in at Wrigley. Given that both are major-league caliber players, I doubt these splits will continue to be quite so heinous all year. DeRosa's career splits show a guy who's a better player at home, but he's pretty much always had a hitter's park as home base, so that's not too surprising. More encouraging are the home/road splits of guys like Lee and Soto, which line up fairly well (Soto's stat lines are almost shockingly similar home vs. away). Ultimately we're not even halfway through the season yet, and it's entirely likely that the numbers will stabilize.

3. Why pick on the Cubs with this data?
Here are all the teams within 6.5 of their division leads with similar home/road issues as the Cubs to this point:

Boston (29-9 home, 18-22 road)
Tampa Bay (30-13 home, 14-18 road)
White Sox (24-11 home, 17-23 road)
Minnesota (25-16 home, 15-20 road)
Detroit (20-16 home, 16-23 road)
Cleveland (20-18 home, 15-23 road)
Florida (22-15 home, 18-20 road)
Mets (20-14 home, 17-23 road)
Atlanta (27-12 home, 11-27 road)
Milwaukee (25-13 home, 16-21 road)
Arizona (24-15 home, 15-22 road)
Dodgers (19-17 home, 16-23 road)

Well, look at that - it's nearly every goddamn team in baseball. In fact, only five teams in baseball have road records above .500, and only three have road records more than a game over - the Phillies (20-17), the Cardinals (21-16), and the Angels (a jaw-dropping 24-12). So far from being "horrible" on the road, to use the parlance of our goofy Rays fan friend, the Cubs are doing pretty much what everyone else is doing - having a slight losing record on the road - with the caveat that they are also destroying the competition at home right now. There's no real reason to think the Cubs will be below .500 on the road all year, but even if they are, there's a decent chance they'd still win in the mid-90s, and it's hard to see that not being good enough for a playoff spot.

Of course, yes, I think the Cubs need to improve on the road, especially with a lot of road games coming up and especially with those games coming against teams the Cubs need to beat (St. Louis and Milwaukee in particular). The ten-game road trip starting Friday - three on the South Side, four in San Francisco, three in St. Louis - will be a good barometer; 5-5 is the worst I hope to see out of that trip. But come on - this team is more talented than any of those three. If they can just scrape out a few more runs here and there, that road record will turn around in a hurry.

Put a Sox in it

In July 2004 - midway through a season that would culminate in the Red Sox's first world championship in 86 years but was hardly looking promising at the time - Bill Simmons wrote a column where he talked about the positives of living a coast away from the Boston media (later included, with substantial revision, in Now I Can Die in Peace). In particular, he mentions how sports radio and newspaper columnists - whose principal jobs are to boost ratings and circulation by being controversial - tend to contribute to and intensify any negative feelings he might be having about the team.

I mention this because I was reminded of it when thinking about the constant harping on the Cubs/White Sox "rivalry" by the media here. I guess it's a big series in its way, but any series with the Cardinals is more intense, and more important, than two late June series with the Sox, and any real Cubs fan will tell you as much.

Like all lifetime Cubs fans I know, I never hated the Sox. Growing up - away from the Chicago media and before interleague play existed - I would root for the Sox, as a Chicago team. (I even went to a Sox game my freshman year of college, and, more damningly, bought a jersey. It has since been donated to a clothing drive.) Of course my primary interest was in seeing the Cubs win, but something like 2005 would have been an okay consolation prize. There are still fans who feel this way - my dad and Michael Wilbon come to mind, people who grew up in the 50s, 60s, 70s - periods in which the Cubs and Sox were nothing approaching rivals, when fans of both teams tended to root for each other. (Wilbon is from the South Side, for crying out loud.) Of course, they're also people who haven't lived full-time in Chicago for decades.

But living and working in the city in the interleague age, it's impossible to be a fan of both teams. Sox fans seem to uniformly despise the Cubs, and take a perverse amount of glee in seeing the Cubs fail, nearly as much as seeing their own team win. (As reported by Bad Kermit on Hire Jim Essian, Sox fans started a "Cubs lost!" chant at US Cellular - in an extra-inning tie game, with their first-place team at bat. How much more pathetically obsessed can you get?)

Some of this is because the media desperately wants a rivalry. And a lot of it is because White Sox fans desperately want a rivalry. And still more of it is because the team's management (sometimes prodded by the media) won't shut up about it.

For example, before today's Cubs win, Ozzie Guillen (yet again) talked trash about Wrigley Field:

Guillen was on a roll before the game and got in another shot at one of his favorite targets, Wrigley Field. Especially the batting cage under the right field bleachers.

"You go to take batting practice and the rats are bigger than pigs out there. You want to take a look? I think the rats are lifting weights," he said.

"That's the way it is. This is a museum. People like to come to Wrigley Field. I don't say people don't like to come here. I said, 'Ozzie doesn't like to come here.' "

This was in the AP game recap. Why, other than as an attempt to fan the flames? What does it matter to anyone whether a notorious loudmouth prefers his soulless abomination of a home ballpark?

Better still, Kenny Williams had this to say:

"You might as well build a border, a Great Wall of China on Madison, because we are so different. We might as well be in two different cities. The unfortunate thing for me when I look at a lot of this is it's a shame that a certain segment of Chicago refused to enjoy a baseball championship being brought to their city [in 2005]. The only thing I can say is, happy anniversary."

A few points of response:

(1) Fuck you.
(2) Name me one Sox fan who would enjoy a Cubs World Series win (particularly if it was just another reminder that their own team had not won in forever).
(3) Way to yell at Cubs fans for not rooting for the White Sox, then work in a dig at Cubs fans two seconds later, giving us all more reasons not to root for the White Sox.
(4) Seriously, fuck you, you condescending prick.

It's not quite as bad as when Scoop Jackson called us all racists for not rooting for the Sox in 2005, but come on. It's this ridiculous mindset that drives me more crazy than anything else. Sox fans spend all year making fun of Cubs fans, rooting against the Cubs, antagonizing Cubs fans - and then they want us to root for them??? Get out of my face with that bullshit. I know you've all got a massive inferiority complex, and I know you're mad that you can't consistently sell out your stadium even when the team is winning (not including today, the Cubs have drawn more than half a million more fans than the White Sox this year already, in just two more home games), and I know you're upset that the national media makes a bigger deal out of the Cubs (hint: it's because we have fans who don't live in Chicago, and also more fans in Chicago, and also, fans). But maybe if you would just shut up, this whole thing wouldn't be an issue. I have no particular interest in hating the Sox; at this point, I have no interest in really caring about them, period. But it's difficult to ignore when you're constantly making obnoxious spectacles out of yourselves.

So, I think it may be time to go to plan B, just like Kermit did in the post linked above. Plan B: ignore the White Sox. Don't mention them; it's not worth it. White Sox fans would love nothing more to think that Cubs fans are seriously invested in this rivalry, but real Cubs fans aren't. Real Cubs fans want the Cubs to win or, failing that, the Cardinals to lose. The White Sox? Yeah, great, who gives a shit. It's a rivalry stoked by Sox fans and by "Cubs fans" who are really college kids from out of town who adopted the team so they have an excuse to hang out at a ballpark and drink (and then the twenty- and thirtysomethings those kids turn into). These are the same idiots who buy all those stupid unlicensed shirts outside Wrigley. Legitimate Cubs fans hate these people; they make the rest of us look bad.

So I'm done trading fire. Let the White Sox fans make themselves look pathetic and obsessed on their own time. I'm just going to watch the Cubs, and hopefully watch them win a World Series, at which time White Sox fans won't have crap to say, anyway.

(And, oh yeah, nice win today. No place like home, apparently.)