Wood you believe... a 57% save percentage?

I'm not going to discuss the nuts and bolts of yesterday's game because it was, as you might guess, completely infuriating. The only thing I'll say is that the Cubs cost themselves the game by running into two outs in the sixth (including Theriot making the first out at third base, a cardinal sin in baseball) when they were set up for a big inning against a clearly tiring Gallardo. Instead, they only got two runs, and you know the rest.

So, let's talk Kerry Wood briefly. Unsurprisingly, Jay Mariotti - who was bearish on Wood from day one - wrote one of his typically smug, I-told-you-so columns today, and touted Carlos Marmol for the role (also unsurprising, since you can't make a decent closer case for anyone else in the Cubs bullpen right now, even if you wanted to).

Rick Telander paints the Cubs' clubhouse after the loss as a time bomb ready to go off, which perhaps it was. It was certainly a brutal loss, and with two series losses at home to the Brewers in the first month of the season, the Cubs have to feel like they're struggling in the wrong areas. It didn't help that Soriano's return to the lineup was, to put it mildly, a disaster, as he went 0-for-4 and misplayed Gabe Kapler's fly ball in the ninth (it turned into a double and Kapler later scored on Braun's double). It was such a disaster, in fact, that Piniella blew up when questioned about whether he had considered moving Reed Johnson to Soriano's spot in left late in the game rather than replacing Johnson with Pie straight up.

After the casual, World-Series-discussing atmosphere of the first month, this was not what anyone wanted to see. I think the media are a bit quick to jump on Soriano after one game - Telander describes him as looking "stiff, old and clueless" - but given his already poor start to the season from a hitting standpoint, and the fact that at no point while in a Cubs uniform has he belonged in the leadoff spot, but you can't hit him anywhere else because he's going to pout about it, it can't be considered totally surprising that they'd do so. Soriano himself seemed a bit quick to downplay his struggles after the game, saying (as quoted in Telander's article) that he "feel[s] very comfortable" and is "fine." He also defended his practice of swinging at everything - suddenly extremely out of place on the newly patient Cubs - with a blithe "That's my game." In four at-bats yesterday, Soriano saw 11 pitches; he swung at five. That actually doesn't seem as bad as people would have you believe; Ryan Theriot saw 12 pitches in four at-bats and swung at five, but of course he went 3-for-4. I'm not worried about Soriano just yet, but he needs to start getting some hits or keeping him in the leadoff spot is going to be untenable. What does it matter if he hates hitting fifth or sixth when he isn't producing no matter where he is? Might as well give him some time to get used to a new spot. Personally, I get the feeling that Piniella is going to start considering this a lot more strongly; Soriano has certainly paid lip service to playing wherever is best for the team, and before now Lou just hasn't been willing to wait more than a handful of games before deeming any move a failure. Maybe now he'll give it a little more of a chance if Soriano is a sinkhole no matter where he's hitting.

But I'm drifting. Kerry Wood. I don't want to sound like I'm unreasonably defending him here, but while three blown saves in seven chances is kind of miserable (and makes 2008 Eric Gagne look like 2003 Eric Gagne), you sort of have to consider the way he's been used this season. First of all, there's the fact that in 28 games, he's had seven chances. Extrapolate that out for the year and he'd only have 40 save chances for the entire season. That's not a lot. (Dempster only had 31 chances last year, but he missed an entire month.) It doesn't really help that the Cubs have been winning a lot of games by wide margins (of their 17 wins, more than half have been by more than three runs), which means that Wood often either doesn't get into the game or comes into a situation with virtually no pressure. I subscribe to most statistical interpretations of the game, but I always balk when sabermetricians discount mental factors, as I've seen done. I don't get all lyrical and tell you how closers need to be forged in the crucible of Hephaestus to learn the ninth-inning pressure craft, but I do think that there's something to be said for getting used to a situation like that. I know for a fact that if it were me, and I were coming into a game with a one-run lead in the ninth, I would collapse into a withering heap in a way that I would not do in the first inning. As much as we say that the ninth is no more or less important than any other inning, and as statistically true as that is, you still need ice water in your veins to be a closer. You see guys all the time who just. Can't. Do it. Remember when we tried to make Kyle Farnsworth a closer?

I'm not saying that Wood, of all people, can't handle the pressure. What I am saying is that he probably needs a little time to get used to the pressure. When Dempster was handed the job in May 2005, he blew the very first save chance he got. He recovered to save 14 in a row before blowing the next one, and ended the year with 33 saves and just two blown saves. But he was also used regularly. In 2006, in more sporadic duty because the Cubs were awful, Dempster was just 24 of 33. Last year, once again pitching for a Cubs team that was at least decent, he blew just three of 31 chances. Even pitchers who have never been closers before seem to become creatures of habit, and as much as I hate relying on this kind of ephemeral, unquantifiable evidence, it seems like closers need to have that pressure on a consistent basis to be able to deal with it every time out. If they're only getting into tough situations once a week, that might not be good enough.

And so it is that we look at Wood's game logs for this year. His first appearance, obviously, was a dud; coming into a tie game in the top of the ninth on Opening Day, he gave up three runs before being bailed out by Fukudome's homer in the bottom of the inning. But after that he ripped off three saves in three outings over a four-day span from April 3-6, before blowing his first save after two off days on April 9. Since then (and before yesterday) he'd worked just seven times in 21 days, not the most regular work for a closer, and more importantly he'd only worked in two save situations in that entire time, going 1-for-2. Since the Opening Day fiasco, though, he'd given up just two runs (although both came in save situations with one-run leads, leading to his two blown saves); he wasn't giving up runs, or even hits - just five allowed in April, to 11 Ks - but unfortunately he happened to give up his runs in the worst possible spots. This could just be coincidence, or it could be a guy still getting used to the ninth-inning fire and who has rarely gotten a chance to pitch there. Instead, he's coming in with 7-1 leads against the Mets, 9-5 leads against the Reds, trailing 2-0 to the Nationals. In three cases he's been called upon to hold ties or preserve close deficits; he's 2-for-3, with the failure coming (of course) Opening Day.

But closers are judged by what they do in save situations, and so far Wood has not been slamming the door the way you'd want a closer to do. I'd like to see him get more consistent work, and I think that is likely to change; I know it's tempting to treat Wood with kid gloves because of his injury history, but I just don't think you can do that when you want him to be your closer. You need to be able to throw a closer on three straight days; if Wood can't do that, maybe he just shouldn't be closing. Aside from Marmol, he's got the best stuff of anyone in the bullpen; he may be susceptible to the occasional bad inning, something that's easier to hide when you're a starter, but aren't most guys? It's sticking out because he's had two horrible innings so far (and blown two other saves with mediocre innings), but he's still thrown 11 lights-out innings out of 15. Not a good percentage, and it's not like you can create more tight games for him to throw in, but it's likely that there will just be more tight games over the course of the summer, and I really don't see him sucking 25% of the time. Maybe I'm just an optimist.

More importantly, throwing Marmol into the closer's role is a bad idea. I'm sure Wood can handle the job mentally if you just give him more chances at it; Marmol is worth more in his current role, where you can throw him two innings, or 1.2 innings like yesterday. While the ninth obviously sticks out more because it's the last inning, having a guy who can be a shutdown guy in the seventh and eighth is better than trying to pigeonhole that guy into just the ninth. What good is reducing Marmol's workload to one inning if you don't have confidence in guys like Wood to hold leads - how are you going to get to Marmol in the ninth? As ridiculous as it sounds, if you trust Wood less than Marmol, then what you want to be doing is having him throw just one inning, rather than throwing the seventh and eighth wide open by throwing guys out there who can't get outs fast enough. Then you just end up never seeing Marmol, and you don't want to be never seeing a guy who's got 27 Ks to 5 walks in 19 innings this year and hasn't blown a hold or save chance yet in ten combined tries.

Look. I know there's this tendency to freak out. But it's May 2nd and we're 17-11 and a half-game back of a Cardinals team that almost certainly isn't going to be there come September. I don't think it's time to push the panic button because Kerry Wood had one bad inning. Do you? Last year we got our 17th win on May 13 (we already had 18 losses) and then lost 13 of the next 18 games. I really don't see that happening this year. I said on April 20 that I would get a lot more excited if the Cubs went at least 11-8 between April 21 and May 11. So far they've gone 5-5 in the first ten of that stretch, which means they need to win each of the next three series, perhaps a tall order. But they're more talented than St. Louis or Cincinnati, so it's not impossible. May is going to be a big month for this team, with series against every Central team but Milwaukee and every West team but the Giants, and 29 games in 31 days. If they can win 16 of those 29 games (bearing in mind they're starting 0-1 at this point), I'll be happy; anything more than 16 and I'll be thrilled. Let's just see if we can avoid wanting to blow the whole team up because of one inning. Deal?