Cubs Pitching: Marshall is Good, Grabow is Bad, Gorzelanny is Ugly

Yesterday, we did the position players.  Today, we find a little bit of good and a little bit of bad for each member of the pitching staff.

Mitch Atkins

Good:  He has appeared in only two games for the Cubs this year.

Bad:  The Cubs lost both games and he gave up a run in each one.

Justin Berg

Good:  Except for one horrible outing in Cincinnati, he's actually been pretty good at preventing runs. Also, he has a great John Houseman name.

Bad:  He has walked 11 and struck out 6 in his 16+ innings.  "You seem to be a little erratic, Mr. Berrrggg."

Esmailin Caridad

Good:  Jim Hendry's dependence on him to be a major positive factor in the bullpen may end up being one of the final straws that gets Jim replaced.

Bad:  He only pitched 4 innings and was so bad, he statistically cost the Cubs half of a win all by himself.  To put that in perspective, Carlos Zambrano has pitched over 55 innings and has a WAR of -.4.

Andrew Cashner

Good:  He's a shiny new hard-throwing pitching prospect that won a lot of veteran respect for drilling Blake DeWitt in retaliation for Vicente Padilla hitting Marlon Byrd.

Bad:  We would have preferred he drilled Rafael Furcal.

Ryan Dempster

Good:  Pretty much everything he does on the baseball diamond.

Bad:  His Harry Caray impression.

Tom Gorzelanny

Good:  He has the best ERA of the starting staff, highest strikeout rate, and he's not giving up homeruns.

Bad:  He kind of looks like a Glurpy Slurpy Skakagrall:

John Grabow

Good:  His pitching has not been determined to cause cancer.

Bad:  ...that we know of.

Jeff Gray

Good:  This is the guy they got for Aaron Miles.

Bad:  He sucks too.

Bob Howry

Good:  He actually has a 1.69 ERA with a 1.25 WHIP since being picked off the Arizona Diamondbacks' scrapheap.

Bad:  Now he'll probably get re-signed.

Ted Lilly

Good:  He has pitched well enough in the final year of his contract (and after shoulder surgery) to get some teams interested in trading for him.

Bad:  He has pitched poorly enough in July to make everyone worried about giving up anything of actual value for him.

Carlos Marmol

Good:  He is on pace to break the K/9 record held by a 'roided up Eric Gagne. Gagne finished 2003 at 14.98. Marmol is currently at 16.8.


Bad: The Cubs will never trade him while he is at the peak of his value.

Sean Marshall
 
Good:  Does absolutely everything Lou asks him to do out of the bullpen and does it exceptionally and without complaint.


Bad:  He gave up the only homerun he's allowed this season on my birthday.  Jerk.

James Russell
 
Good:  He has pitched exceptionally well on the road, allowing a slash line of .208/.246/.340/.585.
 
Bad:  He doesn't like pitching in Wrigley Field as much: .327/.345/.636/.981.

Jeff Samardzija

Good:  He is pitching fairly decently in AAA.

Bad:  We probably haven't seen the last of him on the major league roster.

Brian Schlitter

Good:  His name is easy to mock.

Bad:  His 15.00 ERA is even easier to mock.

Carlos Silva

Good:  He is eight billion times more pleasant to root for as a member of the Cubs than Milton Bradley was.

Bad:  He just can't possibly keep this up.  Can he?

Jeff Stevens

Good:  He has contributed more than Chris Archer or John Gaub after being acquired for Mark DeRosa.

Bad:  He isn't helping to make anyone shut up about trading Mark DeRosa.

Randy Wells

Good:  Ladies, he's single.

Bad:  He tends to get tagged during day games (.317/.355/.454/.808 during the day vs .251/.309/.363/.672 at night ).  So ladies, let's get him home at a reasonable hour, huh?

Carlos Zambrano

Good:  Carlos tried to enter this season a bit more calm and professional, perhaps realizing that his outbursts were not the best for the team.  Remember when he calmly discussed the flaming he took on Opening Day?

Bad:  Somewhere after being shuttled into and back out of the bullpen, and after getting shelled again against the White Sox, all of the "serenity nows" weren't going to do him any good and all the pent up emotion flowed out into Derrek Lee's face and he's now basically useless to the team.

So that's the good, the bad, and in Gorzelanny's case, the ugly.  But if you want to see real ugly, wait for the second half of the season to start in a few hours.  That is going to be fugly.