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.