Big Mike: A Strength Becomes A Problem

My hopes that the Cubs may actually do something in 2010 begin with the team’s strength — the starting pitching. For the past three years, the Cubs have had one of the top starting staffs in the game.

The team’s recent phase of division title contention may have begun, symbolically, when then-owner Sam Zell ordered Hungry Jim Hendry to pad the payroll in order to make the property look more exciting to potential buyers (resulting in the ridiculous Alfonso Soriano deal) but the wins on the field have come about as a direct result of the development of Carlos Zambrano and Ryan Dempster and the signing of Ted Lilly. So, the Cubs’ run began, actually, in 2002 with the insertion of the 21-year-old Zambrano into the rotation.

Big Z ain’t the ace everybody wants him to be (and the Cubs are paying him to be), but he’s a fine major league pitcher whom any team would love to have. I say this despite the fact that his mercurial emotional displays drive me batty and sometimes are detrimental to the team’s success. He shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as Tim Lincecum or Johan Santana but he’s a solid hurler. If you have three guys with the talent and capabilities of Carlos Zambrano in your rotation (minus the infantile displays), you’re gonna win a pennant or three.

The Cubs’ outlier division championship in 2003 hinged on a rotation of Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Zambrano, Matt Clement and Shawn Estes. That’s what won them 88 games that year. We all expected Wood and Prior to be flinging for the Cubs and making all-star teams well into the ‘teens. They would be next Johnson & Schilling, Maddux & Glavine, Koufax & Drysdale or even Washington & Jefferson. Sadly, we discovered that they were so spectacular because each was throwing in a way guaranteed to make spaghetti out of the tendons, ligaments and other soft tissues of his elbow and shoulder.

Not long ago I watched a replay of Wood’s brilliant 20-strikeout one-hitter against the Astros in May of 1998 (MLB has forced You Tube to remove the video due to copyright restrictions — it can be watched for a price). If you ever get a chance, try to see it. Your jaw will drop, as mine did, at Wood’s repertoire of 96-mph fastball, physics-defying curve and downright unfair slider. The movement he put on those pitches made him unhittable on that day (Houston’s only hit was a weak grounder that flicked off third baseman Kevin Orie’s glove).

Was Wood the most talented pitcher in the history of the game? The answer is quite possibly yes. Unfortunately for him — and me and the rest of Cubworld — the reason why no one before or since him has been able to make the ball do the things he did is because the human body will not allow it over a period of years. He must have endured unspeakable pain before his right arm joints broke down.

As for Prior, his motion, which included the now notorious “Inverted W” position, guaranteed his inevitable arm woes.

Sigh.

Anyway, Hungry Jim found a way to rebuild his staff around Big Z and by 2007, Cubs pitchers ranked second in the league in runs allowed despite doing their work in a bandbox. They ranked second again in ’08 and fourth last season.

I flog Hendry regularly for his inability to build a team in a true sense (he’s more a fantasy league-type GM, buying names as opposed to constructing a machine of interacting parts) but I’ve got to hand it to him for inking Ted Lilly as he (Hendry) was hooked up to an EKG monitor in a hospital ICU in December 2006. Lilly’s the kind of pitcher I’d look for in free agency even more than a Sabathia-type ace. At one-third or one-fourth the price of a superstar, Lilly eats innings, almost always turns in a quality start, and frees up money for other needs.

Last season. Lilly was the true ace of the Cubs staff, even making the all-star team. As Cubworld was creaming over his performance, he and the team kept secret the shoulder pain he began to feel in June. Then out of the blue, it was announced that Lilly had undergone arthroscopic surgery on that shoulder in early November. Eek. The Cubs and Lilly are all giddy over the results of the procedure but he won’t be able to start a game until late April at the earliest.

With the loss of Rich Harden to free agency (which is hardly a loss at all, really, because his short outings nuked the bullpen for weeks at a time) the Cubs opening day rotation will be Zambrano and Dempster along with the surprising Randy Wells (can he continue to surprise?) the iffy Sean Marshall, the mediocre Tom Gorzelanny and the overhyped Jeff Samardzija.

Suddenly, that team strength is now a big question mark. My philosophy has always been you can win a World Series with three good starters and a shut-down closer. Now the Cubs have two good starters and closer who’ll either be lights-out or a walk machine.

I’d hate to think my hopes for 2010 will be dashed before the calendar even turns.

Big Mike: That Phallus In A Sweater-Vest

No matter which site I’ve posted on about the Cubs, one thing is always perfectly clear — I wish Jim Hendry would be kidnapped by aliens. I blame him for just about anything I can think of, up to and including Global Warming.

But, really, Hungry Jim is not my ultimate Cub bete noir, only the latest. No, the honor for the biggest dope to run the Cubs in the Tribune Company era can be fought tooth and nail over by Jim Frey, Larry Himes or the loathsome Andy MacPhail, a man whom many Cubs watchers nicknamed MacFail and whom I’ve always referred to as that phallus in a sweater vest.

Frey was just plain dumb. Himes was a jerk. Their sins could fill a book. Their respective signature missteps were Frey’s 1991-92 off-season splurge on George Bell, Danny Jackson and Dave Smith, and Himes’s role in the departure of one Gregory Alan Maddux. But Andy MacPhail’s transgressions are the most infuriating.

I can understand the bone-headed actions of bone-headed men. Frey’s and Himes’s idiocies were there for the world to see. MacPhail’s incompetence was subtler. In fact, many credited him with doing a fine job during his term as president of the Cubs. He packed the ballpark and brought the team to the brink of respectability a time or two. Yuck.

I’ve never given a shit how well the Cubs are doing financially any more than I have a rooting interest in the bottom line of Wal-Mart or the Disney company. I don’t care to watch accountants balance their books but I love to see outfielders run down long flies and hitters lash line drives into the alleys. All I know is that Cubs’ cumulative record during the MacPhail presidency was 916-1011. The twelve teams he ran finished under .500 seven times. They lost 90-plus games in a season four times and finished in last place four times. Sure, there were the 1998 Wild Card team (or, more accurately, Sammy Sosa and a bunch of guys wearing the same uniform) and the 2003 division champs (the phrase “five outs away” is acid-etched into my brain.) Big deal. The Yankees or the Red Sox would consider those off years.

Even though the Cubs in the MacPhail era were godawful with the exception of those two startling playoff appearances, I’d always felt that MacPhail went to bed each night saying to himself, Man, I’m good. The ballpark is full and I’m making money for the company. I trust he didn’t linger over the team’s record — if he had, he’d have never fallen asleep.

Now, though, I read in George Castle’s fine blog, Bench Jockey, that MacPhail’s bosses in the Tribune Tower could hardly believe how penurious their own bean counter was after they looked at MacPhail’s books one year.

Castle gives an historical rundown of what a bunch of cheapskates the Cubs were even before the Trib bought the team in 1981. The Wrigleys, Phil and son Bill, made the notoriously miserly George Halas look like a drunken conventioneer. The Trib continued the tradition of penny-pinching until Sam Zell took over the company and ordered Hendry to turn the Cubs into a decent ball team so he could sell it. MacPhail, thankfully, was long gone by that time.

Here’s what Castle revealed about MacPhail’s heartfelt concern for the Mother Corp.’s piggybank. The Cubs front office under MacPhail, Castle writes, “…was discovered to be grossly understaffed, ranking 29th of 30 teams[.] They did not have enough scouts and player development people for a big-market team. [MacPhail] …in July 2005 told me he preferred to be understaffed; he’d rather be ‘one man too short than one man too heavy’ so that all his employees could be suitably ‘engaged.’ MacPhail’s Tribune Co. overseers were shocked to find he was not spending the money on player payroll and baseball operations they expected.”

That rumbling you hear emanating some 1000 miles WSW of Boston is me, about to erupt. That bastard Andy MacPhail — that phallus in a sweater vest — dicked around with my emotions merely to add few few extra bucks to his yearly bottom line, a few extra bucks that his own bosses didn’t even care about.

Benny Jay and I went to a Cubs game one sunny afternoon in late September, 1992. The Pirates were in town. Greg Maddux was on the hill. Batting third for Pittsburgh was Barry Bonds. It was years before Bonds bulked up. Still, he was already acknowledged as the finest ballplayer in the game. Maddux had the Bucs in the palm of his hand that day, shutting them out on seven hits. It was Maddux’s 20th win of the year. He’d win the National League Cy Young Award after the season. Bonds would win his third Most Valuable Player plaque.

Both Maddux and Bonds were free agents that off-season. Benny Jay and I discussed the Cubs future as we sat along the right field foul line. We figured they’d re-sign Maddux — after all, only a pack of idiots would let him walk. Then we drooled over the prospect of Bonds in a Cubs uniform. He’d solve so many problems for the team that his value was virtually incalculable. Wisely, though, we put the brakes on such dreamy talk. The Cubs would never sign a free agent of Bonds’s caliber — when pressed about this or that big-time free agent, Cubs honchos normally would imply that such a signing would be, well, wrong — almost evil.

Of course, the Tribune and Larry Himes let Maddux walk and neglected even to make a courtesy call to Bonds’ agent. A year and half later, MacPhail came aboard. The Cubs wasted no opportunity to remind Chicagoans that his Twins had won two — count ‘em, two! — World Series in five years under his watch. I knew — just knew — things were changing for the better. (Naturally, I chose to ignore the fact that the core of those Twins champs was in place well before he took over in Minnesota.)

Over the next 12 years that MacPhail controlled the Cubs’ purse strings, the following free agents became available: Albert Belle, Randy Johnson, Alex Rodriguez, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Jason Giambi, Jim Thome and Miguel Tejada. I’m sure there were more, equally eye-popping names available for the taking. These are only the ones I remember. Not a one came within a lightyear of signing with the Chicago National League Ball Club.

Perhaps Andy MacPhail thought none of them would be “suitably engaged” in Wrigley Field.