Cubs @ Astros, Game 45

Cubs 7, Astros 2 (W) WP: Lilly (5), LP: Sampson
Record: 28-17 (1st place)

Soto: “I was like, ‘No way.’ I was using my last breath to get to third, and he wants me to go home.”

It looked like it should’ve been an actual out-of-the-park home run but Geovany had to earn it by running full steam around the bases, making it to home plate standing up. The Cubs (with the help of Carlos Marmol and bullpen, once again) put up a huge win against the Astros tonight. Lance Berkman went 0 for 4 with 3 K’s coming into today with a 17-game hitting streak.

The Cubs are still making a case for themselves as the best team in baseball. With 262 runs scored and 186 runs scored, their 76 run differential is the largest in baseball. The team with the second most runs scored is Boston with 246. When the Cubs offense is clicking on all cylinders, they are unstoppable. Even when it isn’t, anyone on the team can step up.

I’m not surprised at all by Soto’s emergence as one of the top catchers in the league. As a tribute to the best Cubs rookie since Jerome Walton, let’s take a look at all of his extra-base hits. He seems to like them a lot.

This game was a lot closer than the final score would indicate. Ted Lilly was in trouble in the ninth with Carlos Lee on second when Hunter Pence hit a long fly ball into straightaway center. I saw it traveling and Jim Edmonds running backwards trying to track and I thought “he isn’t even close”. Then he makes the backwards over-the-shoulder basket catch. If you’re going to do stuff like that, you can play for this team.

Michael Wuertz came in in relief in the 8th of Jon Lieber, who did a fantastic job in the 6th and 7th after Lilly was done. He gave up two straight hits to Michael Bourn and Kaz Matsui and Piniella wasn’t having it. Men on 1st and 3rd with no outs? The answer is Marmol. He gets Tejada to pop out to short, strikes out Berkman, and Carlos Lee grounds to third to end the inning. Was it ever in doubt? Geez.

Cub first: Strange things are happening to the Cubs this season. Its the countdown to the 100th anniversary of their last World Series win. Its also the season that they snap that streak. So as we countdown to the 2008 World Champion Chicago Cubs victory party, let’s track historic Cub firsts…

(1) Soto is the first Cubs catcher to record an inside-the-park homer since Cal Neeman raced around the bases on June 17, 1959, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.*

*from cubs.com

Pirates @ Cubs, Game 44

Cubs 4, Pirates 3 (W) WP: Marquis (2), LP: Dumatrait, SV: Wood (10)
Record: 27-17 (1st place)

Piniella: “When you get good pitching, you don’t need to hit nearly as much. That was a wonderful homestand for us.”

The Cubs finished a 10 game homestand today with an 8-2 record over that stretch. This game boiled down to being patient at the plate and getting the timely hits (and sac flies). Phil Dumatrait walked 7 Cubs in 4.2 innings. Jason Marquis walked 2 in 6 innings and gave up only 2 earned runs on 4 hits. He was not exactly dominant but did the job that a 5th starter needs to do by keeping the Cubs in the game and eating up innings.

The Cubs bullpen (with the exception of a shaky, but effective Howry) was filthy. However, so was the Pirates’ pen. It was not an easy win but the Cubs are a good team and they got it done. Today the offense cooled off a little bit and it was not exactly the Soriano show as it has been throughout this homestand.

Soriano won the NL player of the week going 21 for 40 with 7 home runs in the last ten games. He raised his batting average about 70 points so now he is just under the .300 mark, where he is expected to be. If you read the news articles, you’ll see lots of people talking about how Soriano is a “streaky” player. Obviously, we’ve just witnessed one hell of a hot streak. He put up 6 multi-hit games this past week!

So, since Soriano has been a Cub, how many multi-hit games has he shown up for and do they show any evidence of streakiness? In 165 games as a Cub, 60 of them have been multi-hit games!! Thats incredible! More than I expected… Lets look at it:

Apr 2007: 3 games (DL)
May 2007: 10 games
Jun 2007: 12 games
Jul 2007: 10 games
Aug 2007: 2 games (DL)
Sep 2007: 13 games
Apr 2008: 2 games (DL)
May 2008: 8 games (as of May 18th)

It looks like he is pretty consistently having good games to me. As long as he stays healthy of course. Maybe a lot of the shit he takes stems from the fact that his legs aren’t quite what they were before he came to Chicago. However, the evidence is clear that the man can still hit a baseball pretty well. A multi-hit game 36% of the time is pretty acceptable to me. Let’s keep him in the lead-off spot.

Pirates @ Cubs, Game 43

Pirates 7, Cubs 6 (L) LP: Zambrano, Marmol
Record: 26-17 (1st place)

Marmol: “I’m not perfect.”

My uncle asked me the other day, while I was watching the Cubs and Marmol walked a batter “Why aren’t you yelling at Marmol like you were at Howry?” I said, “Because the league isn’t hitting .360 against Marmol.”

It’s rare to see a bad outing from Marmol but thats what happened in the second game of this series against the Pirates. Unfortunately, it also lead to a Cubs loss. But Zambrano did not put up a quality start today either. He snapped a bat over his knee after striking out at a point in the game when the Cubs were up 4-2. Then he went out in the next inning (the 5th) and the Pirates scored 3 runs off of him.

It was a back-and-forth game due to Soriano’s ridiculous 5-for-5 day with two solo home runs. Soriano is the hottest hitter in baseball this week (Sorry Lance Berkman). We’ll look at his hitting more in-depth later.

For now, we’ll focus on Marmol. He has been just plain filthy since he came up to the bigs to stay last year with the Cubs. He was signed as a free agent in the 1999 amateur draft by the Cubs. He started as a catcher but was converted to a pitcher by 2003. After a few years in the minors as a starter (and 2006 with the dismal Cubs), he posted a 3.95 ERA and 1.02 WHIP at Iowa in 8 games in 2007 and was up to the big league club by May. Since then he has been lights out and is arguably the best relief pitcher in the major leagues today. But we all knew that, right?

So how many blemishes does he actually have on his track record with 335 batters faced in the 7th inning or later? (145 with runners on, 85 with RISP)*. Unfortunately these stats do not include post-season appearances and so the home run to Mark Reynolds in Game 2 of the 2007 NLDS should probably make this list as well. However, Marmol’s short career has been nothing short of outstanding and that is why he is allowed to walk the occasional batter and Bob Howry is not. If Marmol puts him on, chances are he will not be scoring.

*Stats are as of May 18, 2007

Pirates @ Cubs, Game 42

Cubs 7, Pirates 4 (W) WP: Gallagher, LP: Gorzelanny
Record: 26-16 (1st place)

Soriano: “I have my confidence back.”

Ok… The Cubs are, like, really good. First in the major leagues in runs scored with 245. First in the National League in runs allowed with 174. Thats a run differential of 71 runs… in 42 games. That is, like, really dominant. Pretty exciting. I’ve never cheered for a baseball team this good. It’s pretty nice for a change.

I hate missing blogging games, but add Jake Peavy and Greg Maddux to the list of pitchers the Cubs have rocked so far. “Rocked” being defined as having put up 4 or more earned runs on him in one game. And add a third consecutive time for Tom Gorzelanny. Yikes. 5 days ago there were 18 pitchers on the list. Now there are 23.

Soriano is ridiculous right now. 3 lead-off home runs in 4 games. Shawn Estes? Gone. Jake Peavy? Gone. Gorzelanny? Yep. I wonder if Zach Duke is going to throw him a first-pitch fastball tomorrow… I wonder if he is going to throw him a fastball at all.

Soto and DeRosa also homered today, plus Andy Sonnanstine shut down the Cardinals. I like it.

Tangent: I don’t why people complain about Interleague Play being boring. Its fucking cool. I’ll happily tune in to watch the Rays play the Cardinals. Its fresh. Why do I want to see the Cubs play the NL Central teams 15 teams each per year? The games definitely mean something. Its not exhibition, it counts on a team’s record. How does a game between the Cardinals and the Giants, for example, mean any more than one against the Rays? Because of the wild card? Not really. I don’t like that the AL and NL feel so different. Its all Major League Baseball. The teams should all play each other and play by the same rules. Yeah, I’m talking about you DH. Get lost. I’ll always be a National League fan, but I fully support Interleague Play. Also, watch out for the NL this year. I think the NL might just be about to take its first all-star game in ten years or whatever it is too.

So far: NL 5 games, AL 7 games. And the Padres have one of those wins if you can believe it. How did the NL West get so bad?

Padres @ Cubs, Game 39

Padres 4, Cubs 3 (L) WP: Shawn Estes

Marquis: “The mistakes seem more magnified right now.”

The Padres put up 4 runs against Marquis in the fourth inning today while the Cubs couldn’t put up any offense past the second inning. It looked like the rain was coming down pretty hard at Wrigley tonight so I don’t what effect that had but apparently it wasn’t a good one. Marquis is the Cubs’ 5th starter and giving up 4 runs in 6 innings isn’t completely unreasonable. When Lee, Ramirez, and Fukudome don’t get on base at all throughout an entire game, its going to be a lot harder to win.

You can see here that they’ve all three been “no-hit” only twice so far this year in the same game before tonight. Once on Apr 10, a win, against the Pirates (Lee still managed to drive in 2 runs) and once on Apr 24, a loss, against the Rockies. Those were both away games. Tonight was the first time it happened at Wrigley.

I can’t stress too much about this game, although it would’ve been nice to beat Estes when we’ve got Peavy and Maddux coming up next. The Lee-Aram-Kosuke heart of the order isn’t going to have many games like this. So far its 1 in 13 games. We’ll watch how that trend develops…

Padres @ Cubs, Game 38

Cubs 12, Padres 3 (W) SP: Zambrano

Piniella: We’ve been swinging the bats very well at home. When you do that, it makes it much easier on your pitching.

Add Randy Wolf and Sean Henn to the list of pitchers the Cubs have beaten up on this year. Wolf gave up 7 ER on 8 hits with 5 walks in 4.0 innings. Henn, brought in in relief, was hardly any better serving up 5 ER on 3 hits with 3 walks in 1.2 innings. Yikes. The Cubs continue to be the masters of the big inning in 2008 adding two more 5+ run innings tonight putting their total at a major league leading 13. (The team with the second most is the Rays with 8.)

And here is the query of the day: in hopes that a certain ex-Cardinal is not coming to play CF at Wrigley after being cut by the team with the worst record in baseball because they thought he couldn’t play and/or is an asshole.

Are the Cubs making anyone look bad?

The Cubs have put up plenty of big innings this year (11 total with 5 or more runs scored). I was wondering how much of this damage they’ve done against quality pitchers and how much has been against scrubs like Derrick Turnbow. The latter type of pitcher probably doesn’t make too many appearances in the playoffs… And since I’m not actually on the team, I’m allowed to start thinking about the postseason at the beginning of May.

As of today, here is a list of opposing pitchers that the Cubs have put up 4 or more runs against this season.

Qualls was pitching well so far this year, Oswalt and Harang are their team’s respective “aces”. Lohse and Gorzelanny each threw a couple dominant games against the Cubs last year. So its great to see them beat up on these guys. Lets hope this trend of scoring lots of runs (most runs scored in MLB right now!) continues.

Cubs @ Nationals, Game 25

Nationals 2, Cubs 0 (L)
Cubs could not get anything going against up-and-coming Nats pitcher John Lannan. Actually they had opportunities in the 5th and 6th innings with men in scoring position and less than two outs and failed to convert both times.

Ted Lilly pitched well, only walking two batters and striking out 7. But two runs on three singles (and the lack of Soriano’s arm in LF) cost him the game.

So whats everyone talking about?
Piniella: “I think we’re going to have a few more [scoring opportunities] before the year is over, too. We just didn’t capitalize. If you capitalize, you don’t lose. If you don’t capitalize, you lose.”

D Lee: “He [Lannan] pitched well. I didn’t think we did a very good job at the plate. We had one of those days when we didn’t swing the bats well. We had opportunities and didn’t make it happen today.”

Reed Johnson: “He was throwing basically all cutters, back-door cutters. It felt like when you got in a good count to hit, he’d throw one away. Sometimes you have to tip your hat… I had some good 1-0, 2-0 counts to hit in and he’d cut the ball on the outside corner, and it’s not something you want to swing at. Everything he was throwing was moving pretty good. I think you have to give him credit… We’re putting ourselves in good situations to hit. For the most part this year, we’ve been able to finish the job and finish teams off, but in this series, it seems like we couldn’t do that.”

Ted Lilly: “I feel like my job as a starting pitcher is to keep up with the other guy, and he pitched well. You have to give him credit, especially against our lineup. Hopefully, we’ll get another chance. I don’t think it’s a fluke that he has good stuff… It [My velocity] wasn’t what I feel I’m capable of, and I feel I’m going to get there. More important than that, what was [Lannan] throwing? I don’t think he was throwing 93, and he threw seven shutout innings. As a pitcher, you can learn from something like that… I would certainly like more velocity, but if you want to win games, it’s not about how hard you throw, but about making pitches. Maybe velocity is a little more of an advantage coming out of the ‘pen, but a starting pitcher can’t rely on that. John Lannan was a good example of that today.”

Ryan Theriot grounded into a bases loaded double play to end the Cub’s threat in the fifth inning.

Theriot: “You can’t get a ton of hits every game. The guy had a good game and threw the ball well. We had a couple chances and didn’t get runs in.”

Cubs Key Stats
Game MVP(s): Ted Lilly (QS, 2 ER, 6 IP, 2 BB, 7 K)
Anti-Clutch Double Plays: Ryan Theriot
Still Useless: Matt Murton (0 for 1, .091 AVG), Daryle Ward (0 for 1, K, .067 AVG)

Cubs @ Nationals, Game 24

Cubs @ Rockies, Game 21

Piniella: “I tell you what, as hard as it was to win this one, it could have been 15 [thousand].”

Game 21: Cubs 7, Rockies 6 (10) (W)
15-6, 1st Place

The Cubs beat the Rockies by 1 run in 10 innings for their 6th straight win. It was the 10,000 win in Cub history, and Lou’s 100th win with the Cubs. The numbers are aligning like planets.

Piniella: “It’s a lot of history here with the Cubs. I think it’s the second franchise to win 10,000. Congratulations to this organization.”

The game was completely different back in 18 hundred and whatever when the Cubs got their first win. They batted in the bottom of the ninth even though they were up 4-0. Wtf?

Theriot: “It was a lot of fun. Try to win every one that you play. It’s a cool benchmark. Something cool to be a part of. It’s cool to win all of them.”

Rich Hill: “It’s cool to be a part of it. I don’t know how many organizations have 10,000 victories. That was fun.”

10,000 victories = cool and fun.

Theriot: “When they came back, you just had that feeling that somehow we were going to come back and do it again.”

Piniella: “These kids are confident, I can tell you that.”

Theriot: “Last year it was almost a deflated feeling, but this year it’s more of an excitement, a ‘Let’s-see-if-we-can-do-it-again-type-deal.’ And that’s a mark of a team that enjoys playing together and trusts each other.”

Theriot: ”It’s too early to start reading into it too much. We’re just trying to play hard, win ballgames and have fun. Hopefully, we can just continue to put good games together and win these late-inning games like this. It’s a lot of fun. It builds momentum.”

Soto was 4 for 5 with an RBI and 1 run scored. He also, like most people who are not 150 years old or national media journalists, is not that excited about 10,000 wins.

Soto: “Wow! I didn’t even know. The bottom line is it’s a long season. It’s still early. We’ll take all the wins we can right now. We’re hot right now, and it’s good to see everybody’s doing good. Just keep rolling, keep doing it.”