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Good Riddance Damian Jackson

Tuesday, June 1, 2004

Our Chicago Cubs lost a rough one tonight, 3-5. Glendon Rusch had a tough outing, allowing 3 (earned) runs in 5 innings pitched. Francis Beltran and Jimmy Anderson threw 2.1 innings of scoreless no-hit baseball, but then Dusty brought in "The Farns." In my opinion, Kyle Farnsworth appeared unprepared to pitch when he first came in the game (maybe he didn't throw enough warm-up pitches.) With one out in the eigth, and facing his first batter, he gave up a very hard hit single to Richard Hidalgo, and then a fly ball that was nearly a home run to Morgan Ensberg. At this point, the Farns started to look like himself, but a questionable call by the first base umpire ended in Brad Ausmus reaching first on a Todd Walker error. The next batter, Mike Lamb split the left center field gap, which scored two runs. Farnsworth then retired four consecutive batters to finish the game. Although he got tagged with the loss, neither of the runs scored against him were earned.

Offensively, the Cubs were offensive. Solo shots by Todd Hollandsworth (2nd inning), Todd Walker (3rd inning), and Moises Alou (4th inning) were the only runs scored by the Cubs. In the fourth and the sixth innings, the Cubs loaded the bases with none out, but failed to score. Corey Patterson struck out twice in bases loaded situations, and Ramon Martinez struck out once, and hit into a 1-2-3 double play to end another.

The Cubs myriad of injuries really hurt the team tonight. Aside from not starting Sammy Sosa, Mark Grudzielanek, and Alex Gonzalez, the bench featured David Kelton (from AAA), Jose Macias, and Rey Ordonez. Provided a healthy club, Ramon Martinez probably would not have batted in either bases loaded situation, and instead Walker, or Hollandsworth would have pinch hit from the bench. Furthermore, in the ninth inning, Dusty used Rey Ordonez (.247 AVG, .291 OBP, .310 SLG for his career) to pinch hit with a man on first and one out. Once again, Ordonez, who isn't even on a healthy Cubs roster, was the best choice left on the Cubs depleted bench.

The Wisdom of Chip Caray: "Glendon Rusch pitching on 3 days rest has yet to win in the Major Leagues, but he's pitching real well tonight." - Chip Caray commenting on Glendon Rusch's performance after four innings tonight.

At the time, the Cubs were trailing 2-3 in the middle of the fourth. Rusch had permitted three earned runs in 4 innings (a 6.75 ERA), seven hits, a walk (a 2.00 WHIP), a hit batsmen (2.25 Runners/IP), and 2 home runs. Come on Chip, lets think before we speak.

The Wisdom of Cubs Fans: Preliminary All Star Game voting results have been released. Mark Grudzielanek is currently fourth in the second base voting... the same Mark Grudzielanek who is batting .467 with a .529 OBP, and a .467 SLG percentage... in 4 games. Come on folks, I like Grudz just as much as the next guy, but you can't vote for a guy as an All Star who has only played four games in the whole season.

Good Riddance: Jim Hendry dealt Damian Jackson to the Royals yesterday for... well it doesn't really matter. (Gookie Dawkins and a player to be named later by the way.) Long-time reader's know how I feel about Damian Jackson (click here to see the Damian Jackson thread.)

Although none of the papers mentioned it, I assume Hendry dealt Jackson because he was no longer needed with Rey Ordonez on the team, and his 40 man roster spot was needed for... MARK PRIOR, WOOHOO!

The Cubs announced yesterday that Prior will start the June 4th game against the Pirates, and all of the newspaper columnists wrote cheery articles this morning.

Looking ahead: The Cubs' June schedule looks a bit daunting for a banged up team. The first round of interleague play starts on the 11th in Anaheim, and games against the A's and White Sox follow. When not playing junior circuit teams, the Cubs continue facing off against NL Central Foes, the Astros, Cardinals, and Pirates. All of the teams we face are pretty good with a record above .500 or recently handed the Cubs devastating blows last week.

The Composite team is a weighted average of the individual opponents. For example, since we face the Astros 2.66 times more than the Pirates, the Astros winning percentage is given 2.66 times more weight in the composite numbers than the Pirates (White Sox, A's, and Angels.)

Posted by Byron at June 1, 2004 12:00 AM | | |

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