Over at Goat Riders of the Apocalypse, ajwalsh wrote a couple of days ago about how the Cubs’ window is closing. Even if the Cubs don’t win a thing this year, I don’t think the concept of a “window” really applies to this team.

The Cubs payroll presently stands at $138 million, according to Cot’s MLB Contracts’ spreadsheet. Most of this year’s team is going to be back next year; Kevin Gregg, Reed Johnson and Rich Harden are the only main contributors on this team that aren’t under club control for next season. A few players become arbitration-eligible and their price tags will go up, but right now the Cubs are obligated to pay out $120 million next season. They could conceivably sign a couple of pieces in free agency if they need to without increasing their payroll from this year, or even decreasing it slightly.

Pretty much everything that could go wrong has gone wrong for this year’s team. Harden has been lousy. Dempster has a broken toe and is out a month. Zambrano went on the disabled list. Aramis Ramirez was on the disabled list for a long time. Bradley, Soriano, and Fontenot have all been very bad. Lee looked washed up for a month before he started hitting. Soto fell off a cliff and then when he started to come around, got hurt. And in spite of all of those things, the team is a little bit over .500 and competing for a bad division.

I suppose the question one needs to ask is, is what happened to all these players representative of their talent levels as they age, or is it a fluke? For Bradley, Soriano, Lee, and Ramirez, the answer is probably a little of both. They’re all getting older and are going to miss time and their skills will decline. But the declines we’ve seen from Bradley and Soriano strike me as fluky. Both of them will finish with disappointing numbers on the season, and everyone will revise their expectations next season down somewhat as a result. But Bradley will be 32 next season and Soriano will be 34. Neither’s career is over just yet. They won’t necessarily be as good as they have been in their careers, but they probably won’t be as bad as they have been, either.

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Since May 1, Derrek Lee 2009 has looked freakishly like Derrek Lee 2005. Sure, a couple months of baseball shouldn’t be compared to a full season, especially when those months are cherry picked. Still, Lee’s recent seven-RBI game took me back. His good play continued into the All-Star Break, lending a tinge of optimism to a frustrating first half.

Bob’s already talked about Milton Bradley’s possible return to form, and we all know Aramis Ramirez is back in the lineup. Even Alfonso Soriano has shown some small signs of improvement. All this could add up to a better second half. For now, let’s just reflect on DLee’s recent hitting.

Dude, I Remember You

In 2005, Lee put up a slash line of .335/.418/.662. Since May 1, Lee has gone .313/.390/.591. From June 2 to the break, his line was .312/.384/.610. As good as Derrek has been lately, it’s just two and a half months, and still not as gaudy as 2005. But there are other nice things going on, too.

Lee has hit some long home runs in 2009, and has stacked up some distance that we haven’t seen as much of in recent years. Slugging an amazing .738 but cooler otherwise for July, Lee has certainly been smacking homers recently.

Here’s the “standard distance” for Lee’s 2009 home runs, according to Hit Tracker. It’s the distance the ball would have traveled if things like the wind and the bleachers didn’t get in the way.

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In spite of a 4-1 win last night against the Pirates and a 2-1 series win, the Cubs offense continues to struggle - they scored seven runs in three games against Pittsburgh and managed to get shut out by Russ Ohlendorf. It’s time to examine some of the culprits.

One of the better ways to do this is through Weighted On Base Average. If you don’t know wOBA, you can check out that link for an explanation. But in short, it attempts to assign a value in runs to everything a player does at the plate, and then gives you an average of that number per plate appearance. The whole thing is then multiplied by a coefficient so that the stat works on about the same scale as on-base percentage.

So here’s a table of the wOBAs of all Cubs hitters with 100 PA or more. I’ve included, in red, the 2008 national league average, and a rough estimate of what “replacement level” is. The idea behind replacement level is that any given team probably has a player who can perform at about this level just hanging out at AAA - basically that’s about level of production you would expect in the long term from a career minor-leaguer. A team full of replacement-level players would be historically bad.

Not a lot of surprises at the top or the bottom. Derrek Lee has been the best regular for the team this season, having completely made up for his slow start and then some. Aaron Miles has been positively awful. Fukudome has fallen off as the year has gone on, but his cumulative numbers are still solid. Reed Johnson has been very good, although he’s on the disabled list right now. Theriot has been about average - which isn’t actually bad at all for a shortstop, who are often below average.

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After today’s 6-0 shutout at the hands of the White Sox, cubs.com is running the headline, “Cubs raise White flag in Crosstown Showdown.“  The headline is, of course, evocative of the famous “White Flag Trade” the Sox made with the Giants in 1997. On July 31, 1997, the Sox, 3.5 games out of first place, traded three major-league players for six prospects (including now-former Cub Bob Howry). The Sox went on to lose their division by six games, and the Giants won theirs. Now, today, the Cubs are 3.5 games out of first place a month earlier. At some point you have to ask if they should just pull the plug and build for the future. I’m not saying they should - if your roster underperforms like the Cubs have and one of your best players is about to come off the disabled list, and you’re only 3.5 out, you’ve at least got a shot. But what would it look like if the Cubs wanted to unload veterans for prospects?

The problem here is that you can’t have a fire sale without product to move. The Cubs only have a few players who might be attractive trade targets for another team, and even those have problems. Here are a couple of likely suspects, though:

• Derrek Lee - Lee is hitting well and has a contract that only goes through next season, making him a reasonably acquisition for a team looking for a bat. At the beginning of the year it looked like he was pretty much done, but he’s been the best hitter on the Cubs since the start of May, and he’s got a reputation as a very good defender. This might also work for the Cubs because they could platoon Jake Fox and Micah Hoffpauir at first without totally crippling themselves. The problem here is that Lee has a no-trade clause, which, supposedly, he told the Cubs he would not waive when asked about it this winter.
• Kevin Gregg - Gregg is only signed through the end of the season, after which he’s a free agent. So his contract is right. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been all that great. Still, he’s striking out a lot of hitters (more than one per inning) and his walk rates are where they’ve always been. A team in a pitcher’s park might decide he’s worth the risk.
• Reed Johnson - Reed isn’t expensive, so he’s not usual fire sale material. But, assuming he’s fine when he comes off the disabled list and can put together a couple of decent weeks, he might net something. He’s a free agent at the end of the season, so his contract doesn’t require any commitment. He can play all three outfield positions, he’s hitting decently (although not great), and he’s better if you can use him mostly against lefties.

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With the Cubs and Sox set to square off tonight, I thought it might be nice to take a look at how the Cubs and the Sox stack up. Fans of both teams will talk about this all year anyway, but truthfully, the six games the teams play every year are the only time it matters.

Offensively, the two clubs are similar - that is, they’re bad. They’re both without star hitters they’re hoping to get back around the All-Star Game. Aramis Ramirez has been out since early May with a dislocated shoulder, and Carlos Quentin is out with plantar fascitiis. Both teams are experiencing offensive resurgences from their first basemen - Paul Konerko’s average is up nearly 50 points over last year, and after a dreadful year of games, Derrek Lee has found his bat again. Both teams are struggling to score runs, overall, though. The Cubs are 25th in the majors in runs scored; the Sox are 30th. Here’s how their stats break down as teams:

They’re very similar, but there’s an important difference that graph doesn’t show. Because they play in the AL, the Sox don’t have pitchers batting regularly. In other words, even given that the Cubs have a pitcher batting several times a game, the Sox still get on base less. Then again, the talent level in the AL is generally higher. Still, this is at least a wash, if not an edge for the Cubs.

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The general consensus seems to be the Cubs have been disappointing so far. It’s no wonder; a team that won nearly a hundred games last year is hovering right around the .500 mark, and a lot of players have had disappointing seasons. Derrek Lee in particular has taken a lot of criticism for his play early in this season. Yesterday on WGN’s radio postgame, the host took it upon himself to complain that a player making the kind of money Lee does can’t fail to produce with the bases loaded. Never mind that most guys fail to produce in most at bats, in that one Lee had to come through or he wasn’t worth his salary. Sorry there, Derrek.

But in spite of his slow start, Lee is coming around. Here’s his season OPS by game as the season has gone on - after a dip, it’s steadily climbing again:

He won’t hit 40 home runs this season, but in spite of injuries and the flu bug that’s been going around the team, his numbers are creeping up. In a dreadful April, Lee hit .189/.253/.284 in 19 games. But in his seventeen games before today in May, Lee has put up quite a good line of .311/.391/.557. He’s raised his overall numbers to .244/.316/.407.

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Thanks to Lou Piniella’s advice or to Milton Bradley’s borrowed bat, Ryan Theriot has managed to show a little power this season. Unquestionably, that’s changed him. My only concern is that it hasn’t changed him enough.

Alfonso Soriano led off the fifth inning of yesterday’s game with a double. The Cubs were unable to get him home, though — Theriot sacrificed him over to third, and then Milton Bradley flied out, but not deep enough to score, and Derrek Lee grounded out to end the scoring chance. The Cubs would have been in a better position to win the game if Theriot had just swung away.

It’s a little cliche to say that the out is the most precious resource in baseball, but it’s still true. You only get 27 outs in a game, and you only get three before you have to let the other team bat again. There are very few times when you should give one away, and a man on second with no outs is definitely not one.

Consider what could have happened in that inning after the Soriano double. He’s reasonably fast, and he’s on second base. There’s no threat of a double play. A single probably scores him and at least gets him to second. A deep fly or a groundout to the right side might move him to third. If Theriot strikes out or fails to advance him, the Cubs are in that same position when Bradley comes up. But if Theriot gets on base, the Cubs are in even better position.

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The Cubs finished up the home stand with a loss yesterday - Rich Harden didn’t have a particularly good outing, and neither did Jose Ascanio. After today’s off day, they’ll play six on the road — three in St. Louis and three in San Diego. Even though they just swept the Padres last week, I’d be happy with a 3-3 road trip.

In spite of the loss, though, there were a few positive signs over the course of the homestand. The first, of course, is that the Cubs went 4-1. But I want to highlight a few individual performances in the last week or so:

• Kosuke Fukudome continued his hot start. He went 8-for-20 with three walks and a steal. After going 0-13 against the Marlins and Giants, he’s hit over .400 over the last nine games. He’s going to cool off at some point, but as time goes on, it’s looking less and less like his second half last year really reflected his talent. Couple that with his move from a premium offensive position to center field, and most Cubs fans ought to be pretty happy with his production.
• Derrek Lee returned from his neck injury and struggled at first, but had a great day at the plate yesterday, going 4-5 with a double and a home run. It was actually his second day in a row with a hit. I don’t want to take a lot away from one game at all, but it was nice to see Derrek hit the ball hard. I don’t think there’s any question that he’s still talented, but it was starting to look like he just wasn’t capable of crushing the ball, and he left me cautiously optimistic there’s something left in the tank.
• Geovany Soto is another player who it’s good to see hit the ball hard. After his bad start and his shoulder injury, I was worried he too may not be able to do that anymore. But he got his first home run of the season in the rain-shortened game against the Padres, picked up a double in the first game against the Astros, and has actually reached base in his last seven games. Again, I was starting to believe couldn’t hit the ball hard anymore, and he’s actually starting to put together some nice performances at the plate again.

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After Milton Bradley’s monster homer on Tuesday, which went all the way into the center field concourse at Wrigley and gave the Cubs a 3-2 lead, I thought I’d take a look at their five longest blasts of the season. These aren’t necessarily the most important home runs of the season. Maybe I’ll do a list of those sometime a little later on, but it seems a little early to decide which are the most important. These are simply the hardest-hit balls the Cubs have managed so far. I don’t know if Soriano’s home run last night fits this list - I’m getting my distances from hittrackeronline.com, and they haven’t updated for last night’s homers as of this writing.

1) Milton Bradley, May 12 vs. Padres: Bradley’s bat is starting to come alive, finally, and he absolutely destroyed this pitch. Hit Tracker says it had a “true distance,” meaning how far it would have flown if it hadn’t hit something first (in this case, the concourse) of 465 feet. That ties it for the fourth-longest homer in MLB this season. The two-run shot was also a big home run for the Cubs of course, coming off a great pitcher the Cubs had been struggling to break out against and giving them a lead which they’d hold for the rest of the game.

2) Alfonso Soriano, April 27 at Diamondbacks: One of Soriano’s leadoff homers, this had a true distance of 444 feet down the left field line at Chase Field. Unfortunately, this one turned out to be not as big for the Cubs. It was a promising beginning, but the Cubs would only score one more run that night off starter Dan Haren (a Mike Fontenot solo homer in the eighth inning) and they ended up losing the game 7-2.

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Quite a week for the Cubs.  Trades, injuries, hearings and unexpected performances.

• Aaron Heilman unveiled a new pitch.  Discarding his change-up for a splitter could yield dividends, as it gives hitters another look that’s not so close to his bread-and-butter pitch, the sinker.
• Aramis Ramirez separated his left shoulder, which puts him on the DL until July, if I were to guess (MRI and X-Rays are pending).
• Joey Gathright was shipped to Baltimore, land of the former Cubs, in exchange for a much needed utility man, Ryan Freel.
• Bobby Scales became a 31-year old rookie, making his debut after 11 years in the minors.  When the Cubs picked up Freel, it looked like Scales was on his way back down.  Then Aramis got hurt.
• Derrek Lee’s neck problem flared up, again.  Lee expects to be playing Saturday against the Brewers, as the flight from Houston didn’t seem to bother him.
• Carlos Zambrano went on the DL after straining his hamstring.  He was beating out a bunt when it happened, and the circumstances have raised the hackles of many Cubs fans and pundits.  To the point of absurdity in some cases (Jim Memolo).
• Zambrano’s replacement on the roster was Bobby Scales, but the Cubs demoted Gathright prior to the deal with the Orioles.  Gathright cleared waivers and evidently did not excercise his right, based on years of service, to refuse the assignment and become a free agent.  Wise move.
• Taking Zambrano’s spot in the rotation is Randy Wells.  Wells has four relief appearances under his belt (one with the Blue Jays, before they returned the Rule 5 pick to the Cubs) and has had some success starting for the Iowa Cubs.   He went five shut-out innings in Miller Park, and left in line to win the game.  Mr. “I’ve got a new pitch” served up his old, reliable sinker for a gopher ball to blow it, though.
• Turns out Ryan Theriot is a power hitter, thanks to some training device called the Fuzz or something like that.  Whatever works, but let’s not forget to hit the ball the other way, too.
• Milton Bradley’s appeal was heard, no word yet on the decision.  Bradley has never appealed any of his prior suspensions, and he testified the umpire stepped towards him, initiating the brim-to-brim contact.
• Ted Lilly pitched well on the road, pigs went ice sailing in hell.
• Jeff Samardzija’s lack of legitimate secondary pitch got him back where he belongs.  Iowa.
• Chad Fox was added to the 40-man roster and took Samardzija’s spot in the bullpen.