Tearing Up the Cubs
Chris De Luca writes in today’s Sun Times about what went wrong this season. He traces this season’s problems back to the Cubs’ postseason loss to the Dodgers. Specifically, he says, Lou’s desire to get a more left-handed team was the problem. He says that the roster moves made to get more left-handed - getting rid of Henry Blanco and Mark DeRosa - hurt the team’s chemistry and hurt their offense. He also suggests they should have kept Jim Edmonds around. He then concludes by saying the loss to the Dodgers “was no reason to overreact and tear up a 97-victory team that could’ve been just as dangerous in 2009.”
Now, I’m not going to accuse De Luca of being a hypocrite. After all, it’s totally fair of him to accuse the Cubs of overreacting by seeking to get more left-handed even though he wrote on October 31, 2008, “The Cubs and White Sox reached the playoffs, but October only exposed their most glaring needs. For the Cubs, that is a speedy leadoff hitter, preferably one who’s a switch hitter or bats left-handed — anything that would allow them to move Alfonso Soriano out of the top spot.” The Sun Times’ Web site doesn’t allow you to view that far back in the archives, but believe me, I didn’t make that up.
But really, what did the Cubs tear up, anyway? Three Cubs hitters got more than 150 plate appearances and did not return this year: DeRosa, Edmonds and Ronny Cedeno. Nobody is seriously suggesting the Cubs would be better with Cedeno this season. So that leaves Edmonds and DeRosa. Edmonds is out of baseball, and the fact that nobody was interested in him as a 39-year-old center fielder tells me something. He was good last year, but keeping him would have been a Gary Gaetti-esque situation where you pull a fading veteran off the shelf and he gives you a few good months so you make the mistake of trying to get even more out of him.
So that leaves, in spite of De Luca’s protestations that he’s not beating this drum yet again, DeRosa. DeRosa would have been primarily playing right field for the Cubs if he’d stayed, so he couldn’t have offset Mike Fontenot’s disappointing production and he couldn’t have played third every day when Ramirez was injured, at least without making Reed Johnson an every-day player, and given how Johnson’s played this year, you wouldn’t want that. DeRosa is hitting .256/.323/.456 this year. Part of that is due to an injury he’s playing through. His replacement, Milton Bradley, is hitting .261/.395/.399. Bradley is hitting for less power than DeRosa, but you might notice that his numbers are actually better than the guy he replaced.
Of course, that doesn’t address DeLuca’s chemistry argument. He writes:
Tinkering so much with the lineup — including allowing veteran catcher Henry Blanco, a mentor for Geovany Soto, to walk away — ruined the chemistry of this club. You see it as they go through the motions while dropping a series against a Padres team that had written off this season at the winter meetings. The energy has vanished. The desire was left at the doorstep on their last trip to Dodger Stadium.
I’m pretty sure Henry Blanco didn’t teach Soto a lot about hitting, because even this season Soto is hitting better than Blanco normally does. But I also don’t understand this comment about “going through the motions.” The Cubs went 18-9 in July. Was their chemistry OK then? They moved into first in the division. They seemed to have that desire then.
The problem isn’t a lack of motivation or desire. It’s not that a good team was torn up. The Cubs would be right about where they are now with Henry Blanco and Mark DeRosa, too. The problem is that the best players from last year’s team have had their problems. Alfonso Soriano is hitting 40 points lower last year and not slugging as well. Ramirez has been great when he’s played, but he’s going to play in probably less than half as many games as last season. Carlos Marmol has fallen apart. Mark DeRosa and Henry Blanco didn’t make Soriano and Ramirez better hitters, and they certainly didn’t make Marmol a better pitcher.
There’ll be time enough for analyzing exactly what went wrong, but for today, let’s leave it at this: the problems have more to do with the players on the roster than the ones who left.
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There is a difference between getting ONE speedy and preferably left-handed bat and dismantling a team, so I don't think DeLuca's argument for one bat contradicts himself. Your point about what the Cubs really tore up is pretty good, though some would argue that losing DeRo and Wood, who were leaders, had a disproportionate chemistry effect (same argument could be made for Edmonds, who also played with passion).
Mostly, you don't address the chemistry argument very much - I think nearly every team in MLB has an 18-9 run at some point in the season, so it is meaningless to isolate that statistic as having any special powers to defeat the "poor chemistry" argument. instead, it is important to look at the overall records vs expectations, which has been less than anyone hoped for or expected.
Finally, you chickened out when offering your own definition of the problem, saying "the problem is that the best players from last year's team have had their problems". You aren't really saying anything at all here because you never specificied, in your whole article, what the problem actually is.
After seemingly eviscerating you, I still want to thank you for a well-written piece. I really appreciate the style and the depth of thought, even if I'm not sold on the arguments themselves.
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Your first point on DeLuca's contradiction is just semantics.
Your speculation on chemistry and leadership is just that--speculation. The bottom line is that none of us know who the leaders are on the team, and none of us know what it's like inside the clubhouse. How do you know that the guys who left were the leaders? You don't. In fact, camera hogs like DeRosa are often disliked by their teammates (see Carter, Gary). But the truth is that we just don't know, and it's ridiculous for you to pretend that you do.
And, again, if you can't see the argument that the author is making--that it's the performance of this year's roster, not the departure of guys who left (none of whom are having great seasons), well... I got nothin'.
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Actually, there is substance ot my DeLuca contraduction ponit - the quote very clearly describes the need as "a speedy leadoff hitter, preferably one who's a switch hitter or left-handed". This is more than a semantic difference from a suggestion for tearing up an entire team, and does not contraduct DeLuca's point.
I am not presuming to know about the chemistry of the team, but I am saying that the author did not refute the chemistry argument very well. For example, instead of saying they had an 18-9 stretch in July and Soto's a better hitter than Blanco, he might have challenged DeLuca to provide specific examples of "going through the motions" instead of the sweeping and unsubstatiated claims he made.
I do see the argument the author is making... beleive me, I'm not one of those DeRosa heads who thinks the world ended when he left. Actually, I think we have many of the same problems now we did during the LA Dodgers series last year. The only part I really disagree with BR on is I think Chemistry has played a bigger role than could be explained by Aram's injuries alone, and is not totally independent from the struggles of Soriano, Soto, and Fontenot.
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