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According to the Sun-Times’ Gordon Wittenmyer, Lou Piniella said he expects Andres Blanco and Sam Fuld to make the opening day roster. They would fill the 12th and 13th position player spots.
That would mean no Micah Hoffpauir or Kevin Millar or Chad Tracy. (Which is fine.)
Randy Wells has not gotten enough credit for how good his 2009 season was. He did not start the year in the rotation, but due to injuries and the desire to keep Sean Marshall in the bullpen, the Cubs called on him on May 8. He never let go of the spot. Despite the late start, Wells finished 4th among Cubs starters in innings pitched and led all Cubs starters in ERA and ERA+. His 147 ERA+ was 9th in the majors.
Wells was not only good compared to other Cubs 2009 starters, though, he was good -- very good -- when viewed historically among Cubs rookie pitchers.
As Mike Emeigh at Baseball Think Factory writes, "You have to take some not-so-good with the good, I suppose."
Jim Hendry was able to rid the Cubs of another of his multi-million dollar, light-hitting, veteran middle infielder mistakes (see Neifi Perez) by trading him to his favorite trading partner, the Oakland A's, apparently part of the price for the A's receipt of Jake Fox. The Cubs will contribute $1M toward Miles' $2.7M salary in 2010.
Chip Caray's decision to leave his position as Chicago Cubs play-by-play broadcaster following the bitter 2004 season, which also saw Steve Stone leave, has taken a turn for the worse: he and TBS have parted ways. The decision follows significant criticism of Caray's performance during TBS's 2009 playoff broadcasts, which certainly isn't the first time Caray has been criticized for his broadcasting (see here, e.g.).
This call, in particular, may have led TBS to seek to part ways:
The Hardball Times is running excerpts from Chris Jaffe's new book Evaluating Baseball Managers. Today's installment discusses Dusty Baker. It's an excellent recap of Baker's managerial career and offers some explanations for Baker's success in San Francisco and relative failure in Chicago.
Among other things, Jaffe discusses the difficulty Baker had in playing younger players in Chicago, something I reviewed in May 2006 here.
In a follow up post on the Milton Bradley suspension, Bruce Miles states that the Cubs plan to call up outfielder Tyler Colvin for the Milwaukee series beginning Monday, which also means adding him to the 40-man roster.
Colvin was a surprise 1st round draft pick (13th overall) by the Cubs in 2006. A year later, Jim Hendry called him “untouchable” at the 2007 winter meetings.
Three months ago, it became apparent that if Milton Bradley did something to trigger the wrath of management, the players would not be there to stand behind him.
Yesterday came the something, which had obviously built up, in the form of comments from Bradley published by the Daily Herald (see also the follow up post by Bruce Miles).
“It's just not a positive environment. … It's just negativity.”
"And you understand why they haven't won in 100 years here, because it's negative."
MLB.com’s Carrie Muskat has many quotes from new Cubs hitting coach Von Joshua on the Cubs’ continuing struggles at the plate (2 runs in the past 2 games; 13th in the NL in runs per game).
Joshua blames the Cubs’ troubles on the hitters not “relaxing,” trying to “pull everything,” not making “adjustments” to the pitchers’ pitches, and “think[ing] they have to hit a home run every pitch.”
I think that about covers all the clichés, right?
(To be fair, there are some details in the article.)
Joshua also says, "I can't go hit for them." Which is a good thing, given that he’s a 61-year-old man who wasn’t all that good when he did play thirty years ago.
14.4% of the way through $30 million, the Cubs are turning against Milton Bradley (.237/.355/.379 through 70 team games). In the sixth inning of today’s win, Lou Piniella told him to take his uniform off and go home after Bradley started throwing water around in the dugout after Bradley made his third out of the game. Piniella says he will start Bradley tomorrow, but Alfonso Soriano—at least—says that if Bradley does not care about the team, he can stay home:
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