Lucky 13s

The Cubs just scored 13 runs in back to back games. Yeah, they were both against the Pirates, but you have to like the way the offense looked - the team seems more patient at the plate, and right now everyone is hitting. Ramirez went 4-for-5 today to raise his average to .275, and every single other player who has been even close to a regular, with the obvious exception of the injured Soriano, is hitting over .300, and most are OBPing .400. Right now I believe the Cubs have six of the top 21 players in the NL in OBP who have at least 25 at-bats. (Sure, that's not many, but it allows us to account for Reed Johnson's hot start.)

The season is 1/9th over, which sounds like a lot more than it actually is with 144 games to go. The Cubs' start has been pretty strong, but I don't want to get too excited, even if they are alone in first at this moment, and even if the first day of 2007 on which that could have been said was August 17. There are a few reasons not to go crazy just yet:

1. Who have we played?
Answer: kinda nobody, or more accurately, we've racked up the wins against nobody. Of the Cubs' twelve wins, fully half have come against the Pirates, who at the moment have given up more runs than any team in baseball (although clearly we've assisted them in this endeavor). Of the other six, four have come against Cincinnati and Houston, the other two teams expected to be in the "second division" of the NL Central. In six games against the only two likely contenders we've faced, we're 2-4 against Milwaukee and Philadelphia. That's a small sample size, but so is 18 games. Derrek Lee will probably not hit 63 home runs and Ryan Dempster is not going to go 27-0.

2. The bullpen has looked kinda lousy so far.
One of the more problematic "x9" extrapolations is that Carlos Marmol is on pace to throw 111 innings. A quick search reveals that no full-time reliever threw as many as 100 innings last year. Generally speaking, it's just not done. Hart has thrown even more innings than Marmol so far (though by just a single out); they both came up as prospective starters, but the routine is so different, as we all know, that you can't just ask a reliever to throw 120 innings just because he has some starting experience. I imagine that Piniella is aware of this, and it's still early, but given Marmol's value you don't want to see him gassed. Of course it doesn't help that he may be the only lights-out guy we have right now; Howry is having yet another miserable start, Wuertz seems to have completely lost it over the last ten days, Hart can be up and down. Wood has looked good for the most part, but he does have two shaky outings out of nine. Lieber has also been stellar thus far but I hesitate to categorize him as "lights-out" since he's certainly not the kind of guy you bring in to blow away the opposition.

On the other hand, the bullpen ERA as a whole is only 3.48, while the team ERA is 4.00. Which brings us to problem #3:

3. What the fuck is Ted Lilly's problem?
Any pitcher can look bad in a four-start stretch. But 0-3, 9.16 is pretty terrible, and even more so (a) in comparison to the rest of the staff and (b) given Lilly's success last year. As it stands, right now he's responsible for half the Cubs' losses, and with 19 earned runs allowed, he's responsible for 24% of all their earned runs, and 22% of the total, which might be a reasonable percentage if teams didn't have relievers. He's only pitched 11.5% of the innings, of course, which means he's doubling his share of the runs allowed.

To be fair to Ted, the Cubs have scored a total of five runs in his three losses, meaning that you could slash his ERA in half and he'd probably still be 0-3. But then you remember this game, in which he was handed a 7-0 lead after three and still couldn't get out of the fourth, and you think that he could just as easily be 0-4.

The particularly frustrating thing about Lilly so far is that he has a tendency to look more or less lights out the first time through an order, only to get hammered when it comes back around. Here's a quick look at his four starts so far:

April 2 vs. MIL: Lilly gives up a first-pitch home run to Rickie Weeks but otherwise cruises through the first three innings, striking out four and allowing just one other man to reach base (and that on an error). But in the fourth he allows two more runs on three straight hits, and he exits in the fifth after hitting Prince Fielder; he throws 77 pitches in 4.2 IP.

April 7 at PIT: I already referenced this one. Though Lilly allowed three hits in the first three innings, no Pirate got past first. Then came the fourth inning, which went like so: flyout, single, walk, walk (bases loaded), popout, run-scoring single plus throwing error that scores a second run, run-scoring single plus throwing error that scores a second run, run-scoring triple, Lilly yanked. To be fair, again, he was killed by his defense here, what with the back-to-back throwing errors from Cedeno and Ramirez, and he left with a chance to win the game which the bullpen subsequently coughed up. But he also threw 80 pitches in less than four innings.

April 12 at PHI: As in his first start, Lilly gave up an early home run (this one scoring two runs, to Pedro Feliz) and was a little shaky in the second, but had few problems in the first, third and fourth. In the fifth, however, he went single, foulout, double, run-scoring wild pitch, two-run homer. Through 4.1 innings, he threw 86 pitches.

April 17 vs. CIN: Lilly looked good by comparison in this game, going a full six innings (and lowering his ERA by more than three-quarters of a run in the process to its current robust 9.16). But he was plagued by the same issues. After an uneventful first three innings, Lilly struck out Ken Griffey Jr. to start the fourth only to load the bases on a single and two walks and then serve up a bases-clearing double to Joey Votto. After making it through the fifth with little issue, he proceeded to give up a two-run homer to Votto in the sixth. This all came after he struck out Votto his first time up, of course.

You could argue that Lilly has caught some bad breaks, and he has, and you could argue that the sample size is small, and it is. But of course baseball isn't all about stats, and it's pretty obvious from watching the games that he just doesn't have his best stuff right now, which is probably why he can get away with things on his first trip through the order but gets knocked around as soon as the hitters see what he's doing and know which adjustments to make. This could be a really long summer if he doesn't figure things out pretty soon. With his next scheduled start against the Mets on Tuesday, I'm not exactly eager to see what's going to happen if he doesn't.

I hate to be a Gloomy Gus on the day the Cubs took over first place in the Central, but let's be real here - the next two games against the Mets are going to tell us a lot. Is it just a coincidence that the current hot streak (52 runs in six games) has come against the Reds and Pirates, or is this something that can actually be sustained against upcoming opponents of better quality? Of the Cubs' next 19 games - one more than they've played so far - thirteen are against the Mets, Cardinals, Brewers, Rockies and current ML-best Diamondbacks (the remaining six, against the Reds and Nationals, had better be 4-2 at worst). If the Cubs can finish that next 19 games - ending three weeks from now on May 11 - at no worse than 11-8, I will get a lot more excited, especially if the offense keeps looking strong and especially if the pitching improves a bit. Ten wins or worse - especially if at least half those wins are against Cincinnati and Washington - and I will raise my eyebrows a little. (Yes, 10-9 would be over .500 and hardly shameful, but I really want to see this team make a statement when faced with so many contenders, especially after going 2-4 in their only two tests thus far.)