June 1 – The Cardinals call up our good friend, Aaron Miles. Hard to imagine how the Cardinals ended up missing the playoffs.
June 1 – The Los Angeles Times reports that the Los Angeles Angels of Los Angeles, California Angels of Anaheim are interested in trading for Xavier Nady as a replacement for Kendry Morales, who graduated from the Ryan Dempster School of Injuring Himself in a Post-Game Celebration. Nady is appealing because his arm comes pre-injured, so they know what part of his body is already useless.
June 2 – The Chicago Tribune reports the Angels are interested in trading for Derrek Lee to replace Kendry Morales when they found out Derrek was also pre-injured with a bad thumb and tightness in his hamstring.
June 2 – Lou Piniella tells the Daily Herald:
“I still cling to the fact that our guys are going to hit, but at the same time, it’s already June,” Piniella said. “We’re not here in April. We’re not in May. We’re about, what, a third into the season.”
Hang in there, baby!
June 3 – Carrie Muskat calls bullshit on both the Nady and Lee to the Angels rumors, and spoiling some perfectly good wild speculation to distract us from the Cubs screwing everything up.
June 4 - Carlos Zambrano returns to the starting rotation, struggles with his command and gives up three runs, proving to be far too many as the Cubs score only one run in eight innings off of previously winless (0-7) Felipe Paulino. Paulino would use this victory to vault himself to zero more wins in 2010 to finish 1-9.
June 5 – THE CUBS BEAT ROY OSWALT! THE CUBS BEAT ROY OSWALT! THE CUBS BEAT ROY OSWALT! HOLY SHIT! THE CUBS BEAT ROY OSWALT!
June 7 – Ryne Sandberg says he would be interested in managing the Orioles if they wanted him. Or the Cubs. Or anybody. Would it help if he said, “Pretty please with sugar on top?” He’ll be your best friend. Please? Anyone?
June 7 – The Cubs select 191st ranked prospect, Hayden Simpson with the 16th pick in the amateur draft. Not that it matters much as whoever gets picked is just going to get traded for someone like Matt Garza anyway.
June 9 – The Cubs install the Toyota sign above the bleachers and add a Sign Viewing fee to ticket prices.
June 9 – Aramis Ramirez is put on the disabled list for what the Cubs call a bruised thumb and what Steve Rosenbloom would call Chronic Laziness.
June 10 – One sign that Lou just doesn’t give a shit anymore comes up when he bats Chad Tracy in the clean-up spot. Tracy exceeds all expectations by actually making contact twice in going 0 for 5 and leaving six men on base.
June 11 – The Cubs begin playing snippets of recorded music of the players’ choice for Cubs batters coming to the plate instead of the traditional organ music. The thought was that if the team was going to play like minor leaguers, the stadium should sound like the minor leagues.
June 12 – Carlos Silva gives up only two runs in eight innings against the White Sox, but still loses his first game of the season because the Cubs’ bats are still afraid of the ball. At this point, Silva was 8-1 and the rest of the pitchers on the team were 19-34. Scientists are still baffled how this could have happened.
June 13 – The absolute highpoint of the season at Wrigley Field occurred when the Blackhawks paraded the Stanley Cup around the field before the game and showed us all what a championship-winning team actually looks like. Ted Lilly and Gavin Floyd then traded no-hit innings into the 7th inning, and Lilly took his no-hitter into the 9th inning and surrendered a lead-off hit to Juan fucking Pierre. Ted found Pierre after the game, shook his hand, and then stuffed him into the Stanley Cup.
June 15 – John Grabow was re-activated from the disabled list. Did I mention they had put him on the DL? I didn’t? Well, he’s back. It doesn’t matter.
June 17 – The Cubs hire Ari Kaplan as Manager of Statistical Analysis. Finally! It’s about time the Cubs embraced some modern analytical methods in an effort to improve their team. Maybe things will start to improve! Jim Hendry was very excited to have Ari on hand:
"It's a game that has to have a strong human element, whether it's scouting or performing. You just don't draw people up on computers and plug them in and that means they can perform at Wrigley Field in a pennant race.”
Or not.
June 20 – Ron Santo says he will not travel with the team to Seattle because there is nothing about the Cubs playing in the rainy northwest that isn’t depressing.
June 23 – The Cubs announce a fantasy camp at Wrigley for $7,500 per person, but have to eventually lower that price when nobody wants to learn to bat from a team that can’t score off of Felipe Paulino.
June 25 – With the season now closer to the trade deadline than to Opening Day, Jim Hendry still has trouble deciding whether the Cubs are buyers or sellers in the trade market. Hard to tell when your team is 32-40 and eight games out of first. Hey, maybe Zambrano’s start against the White Sox today will give some sort of sign!
June 25 – Carlos Zambrano gives up four runs in the first inning, stages a nutty, freaks out on his team, and gets into a shouting match with clubhouse favorite, Derrek Lee in the dugout. He then compounds his unacceptable behavior later that night by eating dinner instead of going to his room to think about what he did.
June 26 – The Cubs and Randy Bush still cannot get over that Carlos Zambrano ate his pre-arranged dinner with Ozzie Guillen the night before:
“Nothing against Ozzie. I would’ve thought with the events of yesterday that Carlos would’ve gone home, spent some time reflecting on what happened, thought about his career and his teammates and where he was at. I’m disappointed to hear he was out yukking it up at dinner.”
How old is Zambrano? 8?
June 26 – Lou Piniella calls a team meeting to find out what he can do differently to help them score runs. They tell him it would help if he posted the lineup the day before a game so they can know if they are playing or not. Again, there is no joke here. That was their suggestion.
June 28 – The Cubs announce Zambrano will be placed on the restricted list and begin treatment. There was no word if he was allowed to eat yet or not. We presume the doctors made that determination. Our only hope is that they posted whether he could eat or not at least a day ahead of time.
June 30 – Cubs players still somehow believe in their season and vow to chug on and turn things around:
"It's not like we're not giving an effort or we're playing dumb baseball," [Koyie] Hill said.
I don’t think those words mean what Koyie Hill thinks they mean.
Holy crap. We're not even to the All-Star Break...
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1 comments:
Here's the thing to be concerned about with the Homer Simpson draft. Either all those added scouts (they did add scouts, didn't they?) saw something in Simpson that nobody else could see or the Cubs are drafting lower echelon talent because they can lowball these players on signing bonuses, thus saving the Cubbies' money.
The Rickettses have stated in the past that they want to increase spending on scouting and player development, but so far I haven't seen anything to indicate that is what they are actually doing. My fear is that they are going to drive down costs (at least once Hendry gets the message or is sent packing) which includes cutting payroll for the Major League roster and the money spent on the minors. Then we'll have the Pittsburgh Pirates, but without the nice new ballpark. And the Pirates make a tidy profit every year despite sucking thanks to MLB's profit sharing and taxes on the Yanks and Boston for having high payrolls.
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