Play of the Day: Castro is Good at Baseball

Pat Burrell had put the Giants up by a seemingly insurmountable four runs by doing a right-handed imitation of Will Clark facing Greg Maddux in the 1989 NLCS, so most Cubs fans wrote off the game right then and there.

But the Cubs didn't want to go quietly and Starlin Castro came to the plate with the tying run at third.  There were two outs and he already had three hits on the day.  What were the odds this 20-year old would come through again?

100% as it turns out.

Castro got his fourth hit and tied the game at seven.  He also raised his batting average to .320.  Right now, he is still 23 plate appearances shy of qualifying for the batting title, but he is getting closer everyday.  If he qualified as of today, he would be in second place behind Carlos Gonzalez at .322.

Keep in mind that Castro has managed to get his numbers without the benefit of facing Cubs pitching.  He's good.

The Cubs lost later by one-run.... yada yada yada... who cares.  Castro is good and he's only twenty years old.  That is what gets me through the day.

Prior is Back (Not With the Cubs Though)

Mark Prior has returned. Sort of.

Last week it was reported that Prior had signed with an Independent League team in Orange County.  Last night he made his debut.

According to Bruce Levine:

Prior, who was signed by the [Orange County] Flyers last week, worked out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam by striking out the next two batters to get out of the inning. He struck out the side in the sixth.


That's a pretty good outing, especially when you consider he hadn't thrown a pitch in a professional game since before Lou Piniella was manager of the Cubs.

Now this is one outing and I'm not ready to say that Prior will ever be able to climb back to the major league level to be effective and healthy in any capacity.  But let's suppose he can.

Wouldn't it make a great story if he returned to the Cubs?  He could start out as a set-up man to complement Marshall and Marmol, and then when Marmol inevitably loses the ridiculous bite on his breaking ball while still not being able to locate his fastball, Prior can step in as closer.  How perfect.

The problem is that scenario is all but impossible.  If Mark Prior comes back, I'll put money on him coming back as a Cardinal before he comes back as a Cub, just so he can stick it to the Cubs.  I'm sure all the years that the media and the fans called him a pansy as his arm was falling off has not been forgotten.  I'd be a little pissed if the Cubs media relations team did nothing to protect him and his sore arm as everyone piled on.

I'm not innocent here either.  I've made more than one towel drill joke over the years.  Now it looks like I could end up paying for my crimes.

Of course, I am assuming that the Cubs media relations team wasn't helping to push along those sentiments of Prior's alleged wussiness.  It's not like they are above that sort of thing.  *cough* Sosa *cough* Zambrano *cough* Bradley.

It isn't like the Cubs didn't have a reason do go and assassinate Prior's character.  I remember sitting at the convention shortly after the Cubs had tried to trade Prior to the Orioles for former MVP shortstop, Miguel Tejada and upcoming lefty pitcher, Erik Bedard.  As it turns out, the Cubs didn't really miss out on much since Tejada had all but stopped taking the steroids and Bedard has ended up being a left-handed version of Prior with all the injuries, but at the time that was a huge bounty in return for Prior (and I'm fairly certain the Cubs knew his arm was coming off.

Cubs fans were not impressed.  I think the only reason they weren't more upset about Hendry trying to trade Prior is because they were still pissed as hell that he was also trying to trade Todd Walker.  You would have thought they had tried to trade a 500+ homerun hitter for the worst Hairston ever and a garden gnome (oh wait... we were all OK with that trade).

So the Cubs could have easily trashed their own player (or at the very least allowed the trashing to go on without intervention) so that the eventual dumping of Prior would be more palatable to the fan base.

However it happened, I can't imagine that Prior would be eager to return to a fanbase that was so willing to mock the physical pain he endured while trying to apply the craft he was practically bred for. 

Prior coming back could have made a nice story.  It may still... just not in Chicago.

Play of the Day: Castro Knocks Out Lincecum

Last night's Cub game should be Exhibit A in the argument that people who bet money on baseball games would be better off just putting their wallets in a blender and hitting "liquefy."

The Cubs faced Tim Lincecum with a lineup containing Micah Hoffpauir batting third plus Kosuke Fukudome and Koyie Hill in the lineup.  Short of Alan Trammel taking a page from Jody Davis' playbook and actually not fielding a team at all, that was about as close as the Cubs can come to just forfeiting a game to the Giants.  I would have figured placing a bet on the Giants last night would have been a safer bet than betting that water is wet.  It turns out that water may, in fact, be dry.

When the game started, some pod person in Tim Lincecum's uniform went out and started throwing batting practice. The inning was capped by a two-run homerun by none other than Mr. April, Mr. Fukudome himself, to make it 4-0 before the Giants fans even knew what was going on.  As much as I would like to make his McCovey Cove blast the Play of the Day simply because Kosuke doesn't have that many good days when the calendar changes to summer, I have to choose another moment a bit later on.

You see, the Cubs are still the Cubs and while they provided Ryan Dempster with a surprising amount of offense, the defense was busy being the Cubs we have come to know and giving up extra outs and unearned runs.  Soon it was 4-2 and Lincecum was looking like Lincecum again and the Giants were starting to get confident.

Then more miracles occurred with two outs in the fourth inning.  Koyie Hill got a hit.  Then Ryan Dempster got a hit.  Then Tyler Colvin drew a walk.  Suddenly the Cubs had a threat, but there were still two outs and this smelled of yet another Cubesque moment of coming really close but accomplishing nothing.  Then Starlin Castro stepped up.

He took a Lincecum fastball back up the middle to score two to re-establish the four run lead.  Lincecum finished the inning by retiring AAAA sensation, Micah Hoffpauir, but he was then done for the night.  The momentum had been swung back to the Cubs in a way we haven't seen for weeks. Score a TKO for Castro.

Play of the Day: Plays at the Plate Are Cool

There may have been plays last night that had more to do with the outcome of the game than this one, but I don't care.  Plays at the plate are cool.

Andres Torres ripped a line-drive into right field and Tyler Colvin tried to make a sliding cutoff to keep the ball from going to the wall.  He succeeded in keeping from going to the wall, but he kicked it a bit and that was enough for the Giants' third base coach to to send Travis Ishikawa around third to try to score the winning run.

Colvin recovered, hit the cutoff man, Mike Fontenot, who then relayed a strike to Koyie Hill, and Ishikawa was out at home to extend the game another inning.

I actually pumped my fist as the umpire signalled the out call.  First time I've felt any emotion other than depression while watching a Cubs game in I don't even want to know how long.

Also, Carlos Zambrano managed to navigate through five innings in his return to the rotation, part deux.  He walked seven, but got a couple of double plays and kept the damage to two runs allowed and gave the Cubs' offense a chance to win without his best stuff.

But at the end of the day, plays at the plate are cool.

Cubs Know Hope Sells

Shortly after the All-Star Break, George Ofman and Dave Kaplan were fielding calls on the WGN post-game show from lots of people who were very upset that George and Dave were being such Negative Nellies about the Cubs chances to rebound in 2010.  These were the people who fervently believed that a run like the 2007 Rockies or this year's White Sox was possible for the Cubs.

These are people who really want to believe that the Cubs have just run into some bad luck, and some unfortunate injuries.  They wanted to believe that Tyler Colvin is the next coming of Albert Pujols.  They wanted to believe that Carlos Silva could continue winning at the rate he did before the All-Star break.  They were in denial that Ted Lilly would get traded.

I don't understand how they could have those beliefs as Cubs fans, but there they were calling in and blasting George for suggesting that the Reds and Cardinals would not fall apart down the stretch, and that the Cubs aren't that good anyway.

Over the last couple of weeks, the Cubs have done their best to figuratively hold the believers' heads in the toilet while tearing off their fingernails with pliers and beating them with a sack of oranges.  I can't imagine anyone believes this team can even win as many as four in a row against the middle-aged members of the Cubs Fantasy Team camp, much less the run of actual contending teams that face the Cubs in the next couple of weeks.

Of course, the Cubs still have to find ways to get people interested in the team.  Not only are they losing ticket and concession revenue, but people aren't even bothering to watch them on television anymore.  Lower ratings means lower ad revenues in the future. 

Luckily, the Cubs front office is on the job and Aisle 424 was able to get some exclusive footage of one of their closed door meetings:




In the end, the Cubs will sell what they always sell in the absence of actual good product on the field: hope. 

That is all there is left.  I haven't actually been in a strategy meeting (and neither do I expect I would ever be invited to one), but that is how they will get season ticket holders to renew.  That is how they will get the tens of thousands to come out to Wrigley in February to buy single game tickets.  That is how they convince people to open up forty browsers on their machines to get through the virtual waiting room.  That is how they will get people to pay 20% above face for a chance to buy tickets a little earlier than everyone else.

But how?  How is that possible after the repeated groin kicks of the 2010 season?  Ted Lilly is gone!  Our plucky, not-terribly-bright-but-cute-as-the-dickens second baseman is also gone.  They can't get anyone out because even when the pitchers get someone to accidentally hit a pop fly or weak groundball, the defense manages to screw it up.  It doesn't matter anyway since the offense scores runs about as frequently as I win the lottery.  How in the name of all that is holy will they get people to have hope again?

We will hear lots of talk about a revitalized minor league system that is starting to bear fruit.  There will be an insistence that Tyler Colvin and Starlin Castro are just the beginning.  They will leave out that pretty much anyone who has a realistic chance of helping out in 2011 is already here.  We also won't hear much about Justin Berg.

We will hear about the new attitude being brought in by whoever the new manager will be.  It doesn't much matter who it is.  The talking points will be the same.  Just fill in the blanks with the appropriate names and imply that Lou was at fault all along:

"We are very pleased to have ____________ join us with the Chicago Cubs.  He is the right man for the job as can readily be seen with his success with _____________ and ____________.  We were looking for someone who can handle the major media market of Chicago, the egos of a veteran ballclub such as ours, and can interweave the burgeoning young talent from the farm system into the existing team.  No disrespect to Lou Piniella, but we believe that _________ is the right man for the job right now and we are looking forward to celebrating a World Series title with him in the near future.  Let's all welcome ____________!"

Aramis Ramirez will uncharacteristically show up at the Cubs Convention and talk about how painful his thumb injury was, but that it was no excuse and he will be ready to return to his former self in 2011.  No one will mention that a thumb injury doesn't usually make one swing at pitches over one's head or that Ramirez hasn't really been the model of good health when he was younger than his 2011 age of 33 years old.

Carlos Zambrano will be shipped out of town and there will be lots of talk about how disruptive having a situation like that dragging out over the course of the year can be.  The consensus among players will be that the locker room will be much more relaxed in 2011 and they will be able to concentrate on the job at hand.  They will leave out the fact that the Cubs will be paying about 90% of Zambrano's salary to play for someone else and that they used that script last year when Milton Bradley was sent on his way.

If the entirety of Cubs history can be likened to a compost heap (and I think that it can), then the concept of hope is the biggest weed growing out of it.

But it will work because Cubs fans can be convinced just about anything is possible if you spin it the right way.  We WANT to go there.  We want so desperately to believe in unicorns and the possibility that THIS IS THE YEAR! that we will gladly believe whatever the Cubs machine decides to feed us. Then we get out our wallets.

Harumph.

Play of the Day: Evan Longoria Breaks Up Morrow No-Hit Bid

The stadium was rocking and the fans were on their feet.  People were making sure they had held onto their tickets to prove they were there.  The excitement level had reached a crescendo.

Then Evan Longoria found a hole between second and first.  Aaron Hill made a diving attempt, but could not glove the grounder.  Alas, Brandon Morrow had given up his first hit.  He struck out Dan Johnson next for his 17th strikeout of the game and the final out, but that sneaky Longoria hit kept him from completing the no-no.

What?  You wanted a Play of the Day from the Cubs game? You're sure?

OK, ummm... how about Miguel Cairo grounding into a forceout in the 1st inning?  That may have been the only time in the game where someone might have thought the Cubs could win.  Maybe.  I don't feel like doing a screenshot.

Play of the Day: Aramis Manages to Suck a Little Less

The bottom of the order somehow started a rally where they managed to coax three walks and a hit-by-pitch to get the bases loaded with the Cubs down 4 to 2 in the bottom of the ninth with only one out.

Sandwiched in between strikeouts by Derrek Lee and Marlon Byrd, Aramis Ramirez managed to also walk to force in a run.

Tune in tomorrow when the Play of the Day will be Mike Fontenot not choking on a sunflower seed while sitting in the dugout.