By Jim Coffman
Are you enjoying this baseball season?
Me, not so much. The team I compel myself to follow has been in contention but is just about impossible to love.
The Cubs have guys who can club the ball when they get hot and they have pitchers who pitch well more often than not. But they only have one, true all-around ballplayer, don’t have any baserunners who can consistently cause opposing discomfort (although the one all-around guy, Derrek Lee, is capable of a surprise first-to-third or some other clever bit of legwork every other week or so) and don’t have any of the sort of special defensive players who make good games great. And even Lee simply doesn’t send the pulse racing with enough regularity. His averages (on-base and batting) aren’t high enough to earn star billing, he doesn’t have enough power and his defense, while very good, doesn’t make a difference very often.
|
Another irritating thing about this Cubs team is that the promising young guys aren’t on the field enough. Heck, they just sent Micah Hoffpauir back down to the minors. Some posited that he had slumped lately but the primary problem was he wasn’t getting nearly enough at-bats. And while Hoffpauir is clearly a first baseman first, he also is clearly as good in the corner outfield spots as either Alfonso Soriano or Milt Bradley. Anyone would have slumped during a last month-plus of the season during which time he was lucky to get two starts in a given week. As for Jake Fox, anything less than every day is less than he should be playing. And it sure would be nice if the Cubs would let Sam Fuld play, I don’t know, three games in a row in center?
Of course there is still all sorts of baseball to be played and a 2009 pennant to chase. And if the Cubs somehow pull it together and make the playoffs (and maybe even win a playoff game this time around?) some of this stuff goes out the window.
But more and more the future beckons and the first thing that springs to mind is that general manager Jim Hendry will want to keep a napkin handy during the coming off-season. He’ll need it for when he starts eating contracts (even if he manages to trade guys away he’ll probably have to pick up at least a portion of their bloated deals going forward).
And the way it looks now, Aaron Miles should be the appetizer and Bradley the main course, even if Bradley has been piling up the singles and the walks lately. Heck, Jimmy, go ahead and dream of a feast. Dream of moving Kosuke Fukudome and even . . . Soriano.
I’ll tell you right now what the Cubs could do with Soriano. They could trade him to the Giants for lefty pitcher Barry Zito’s giant contract and maybe get a decent bullpen arm thrown in or perhaps a prospect (maybe Northbrook native Pat Misch, a lefty hurler who has had a couple cups of coffee in the bigs the past few years)?
Fukudome will only have two more years left on his deal after this season and Jimmy can find a taker for him can’t he? Especially, of course, if he chows down on a big chunk of that contract.
But the two guys who have to go the day after the season ends are Miles and Bradley.
Miles, who is in the first year of a two-year, $4 or $5 million deal, has flitted along atop the Mendoza line (.200 batting average) all season. He has no power and draws few walks. Oh, and he can’t play short and struggles at third.
Andres Blanco is a much, much better infield utility guy, is much, much cheaper and has hit better than Miles this year. And yet he went on the disabled list this past week with a minor injury because Hendry wanted his money guy (Miles) to get another shot on the Cubs bench. Grim.
As for Bradley, what can we say that hasn’t been said? It turns out he has even less power than advertised, especially from the left side, which is the only way the Cubs really needed him to hit. He has assorted other, well-documented shortcomings and he’ll have two more years left on a $10 million/year deal after this season.
If I’m Tom Ricketts, when I take over I say to Hendry either make a deal to gain something of value for Bradley or cut him.
Hopefully the future owner is already assembling a list of possible GM successors.
Miles and Bradley have got to go. Maybe there’s hope for Fukudome yet although you still have to figure his team would love to get rid of him barring a spectacular season-ending rush.
And of course Soriano almost certainly isn’t going anywhere. Go Cubs go.
–
Jim Coffman rounds up the sports weekend in this space every Monday. He welcomes your comments.
Posted on August 10, 2009