2011 Cubs: Year in Review

Join Jim Hendry, Kerry Wood, and me for a look into the Cubs' future.
Image courtesy of Worst Photoshop Ever, Inc.

If you have yet to take a virtual stroll through the 2010 recap unfolding over at Aisle 424, you're missing out. Last I checked he was reliving the horrors of June. Since Tim's doing such a remarkable job of it, and since I have no desire at the moment to write anything about the ghosts of failures past, I thought I'd jump into the DeLorean and investigate what happens this year.

I won't spoil the whole season; we all need some reason to watch, right? But as long as I have the means, you can bet your flux capacitor I'll take more than a few peeks at the upcoming candidate for the position of The Year. Okay, 2011, whatcha got?

February 2011
1: The Cubs and Matt Garza avoid arbitration by agreeing to a 10-year, $250 million extension to be paid over the next 30 years.

11: Individual game tickets go on sale at Wrigley Field and online. The lucky person with wristband number 12 gets first place in line, followed by 13, and then the line starts over at wristband number 1. Dozens of fans across the country and abroad complain of online wait times up to 30 to 40 seconds.

14: Pitchers and catchers and Marlon Byrd report to spring training. Geovany Soto shows up with an extra 100 pounds of abdominal weight and with only one eyebrow.

19: All players except Alfonso Soriano report to camp. Everyone is super skinny except for Tyler Colvin, who has bulked up with 25 pounds of muscle and 15 pounds of chain-mail under armor.

26: Alfonso Soriano reports to spring training on the mandatory reporting date and refuses to tell reporters how much he weighs or who he is wearing. Steve Rosenbloom prepares the tar and feathers.

27: Cubs Cactus League opener against Oakland. Ryan Dempster takes the mound and pitches 2 shutout innings. Cubs fans celebrate the return of competitive baseball and the rebirth of hope, joy, and all that is good about human existence.

(later that day): Esmailin Caridad surrenders a ninth-inning homer to Adrian Cardenas. Rich Harden pitches a perfect bottom-half for the save. Cubs fans reach consensus that they're sick of spring training.

Day-Off Predictions: 10 Moves the Cubs WILL Make - UPDATE

Meet the Cubs' manager in 2011. Or else.  

10. The Cubs will lift the interim tag off of Mike Quade's title and make him the officially official manager of the Cubs in 2011. (I've heard people say he looks like Skeletor. I thought maybe he looked like Overlord from Spiral Zone. But no, he's Mumm-Ra.)
UPDATE: Yup. It happened.

9. The Cubs will sign Adam Dunn to play first base.

8. The Cubs will move Adam Dunn to right field when they sign a real first baseman in 2012.

7. The Cubs will add another statue of food to go with the giant macaroni noodle. It will probably be a hot dog. Fans will probably call it the Sammy Sosa statue.

6. The Cubs will fire someone insignificant. I don't know for sure who that will be, but I'm sure Umpires Room Attendant Tom Farinella is sweating from the enormous hot seat he's in right now.

UPDATE: Goodbye, Director of Sales and Promotions Matt Wszolek.

5. The Cubs will raise ticket prices while making it look like they lowered them.
UPDATE: Oh, hey, look at that . . . they did.

4. The Cubs will change the Captain Morgan Club to the Old Style Friendship Zone.

3. The Cubs will buy up all the rooftops across the street.

2. The Cubs will invite a handful of bloggers into the press box. They will regret this move when they run out of brownies on opening day and things turn ugly.

1. The Cubs will hire a woman as their next general manager. She will pretend to be nice, but she is not. I'm telling you, she's a nasty, vindictive, blood-thirsty piranha. But she will guide this team to the Promised Land and leave a trail of broken egos behind her.

Half Decent: Setting Expectations for the 2011 Cubs (pt. 2)

Art the Cubs the worst team in Middle Earth? Methinks not.

Earlier this week I took a look at the very real possibility that next year could be the year that the Cubs become a half-decent offensive team again. This time I wanted to look at the pitching (and defense, to some extent) as it is and then, blindfolded, throw a few darts at some possible paths to half-decency. Here are the Cubs pitchers who qualify (.3 Innings Pitched per Team Game) sorted by ERA+ (ERA compared to league average and adjusted for park factor). As it was with OPS+, an ERA+ above 100 indicates a better than average ERA. Below 100 kinda sucks.

Half Decent: Setting Expectations for the 2011 Cubs (pt. 1)

When I was in high school, one of the youth leaders at my church routinely discussed three topics more than any other: the unholy trilogy of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. It really didn't matter what biblical story or teaching we were covering, the focus was almost always redirected to the condemnation of one or more of those three vices.

I remember one lesson in particular in which we were told that physical attraction should be the least of our concerns when deciding who to date or court or arrange a marriage with. While anyone who has ever been in a relationship can attest that appearance isn't the most important attribute in a significant other, trying to tell a teenager to ignore it completely is like persuading a shark to eschew seafood.

After hearing variations on the diatribe for a few weeks, all the members of my youth group knew the answers we were supposed to be giving and that they directly conflicted with the protests of our hormones. So when our teacher asked us what qualities we would look for in a potential boyfriend or girlfriend, my fellow classmate Dwight Stowers attempted a compromise between the proffered high moral ground and his basic primal urges into a succinct summation of what he wanted in a woman:

"Half decent?"

As Cub fans, we find ourselves in a similar struggle between what we want and what the baseball gods are telling us we can have. While by no means immoral, it's looking pretty unrealistic that fans of baseball on Chicago's North Side will ever find ourselves in a long-term relationship with a 10—but is it too much to ask for a 6 or 7?

A Portrait of Cubbieness

Ricketts and Hendry reflect on the Piniella era: it's not success, but it ain't that bad.

Now that we know Lou Piniella's days as manager of the Chicago Cubs have a definitive number (while Jim Hendry's do not) and we've all endured the initial explosive reaction from media both social and mainstream, it's time to take a deep breath of whatever gaseous substance you wish to inhale and look at where the Cubs really stand. Between the lines of yesterday's press conference is a rather clear portrait of what the near future of the Cubs is going to look like.

While I can't argue too fiercely with interpretations to the contrary, I don't think it's that bad. Let's strip down yesterday's off-the-field developments to bare facts.

Lou Piniella is retiring after this season. I always thought this was the plan, but until yesterday Lou had discussed his longterm outlook with a certain je-ne-sais-Favre. Speculation swirls as to why Lou's agent let the news slip at this point in the season, and I can answer that question with resounding certainty: I don't care. I mean, really, between the trades that aren't happening and the NL Central deficit that isn't shrinking, there isn't much left to distract from. The reasons behind the news leak or Lou's decision to retire construct a thoroughly boring mystery. I trust Lou when he says he's retiring because he wants to retire and not because of the product on the field. No one really cares about the why, it's the what next that's generating real buzz. And Lou's replacement is far less important than the matter of Hendry's job security.

2010 Cubs Predictions: They're NOT Gonna Happen

More optimistic than psychic, all hope and no sense, these predictions are guaranteed never to come true. But if even one does, I will brag about it for the rest of my life. Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak (Also posted at LOHO)

This is the last worthless weekend that we'll have to spend. All introductory east-coast-biased Sunday Night Baseball aside (that's right, Yankees and Red Sox, we don't care what happens between the two of you, no matter how much Joe Morgan insists that we must), Monday marks the dawn of the 2010 baseball season. So we're running out of time to make bold  educated  sabermetrically generated half-baked predictions for what the Cubs will be able to accomplish this year.

If the LOHO NCAA Pick 'Em Challenge has taught us anything, it's that my annual tradition of picking Kansas to win it all is guaranteed to go dreadfully wrong every year (except in the occasional instance when I break from tradition and allow them to succeed . . . sorry, Jayhawks). And if it has taught us two things, it's that I suck at predicting things. So here is a list of things I'm utterly confident will not happen, which is precisely why I am prognosticating that they will:

Alfonso Soriano will hit 40 homers. Do you remember last April? Soriano started the season hotter than a Gatorade-machine-bashing tantrum. And then he decided to test his knee reflex on the left-field wall. I'm hoping it was the injury that caused the precipitous production decline and not a failure to renew some Faustian deal with the devil. If I'm wrong (and I usually am) we'll be seeing more of Tyler Colvin in left than anyone is really hoping to get. (Tyler Colvin's mom excluded, of course.) If I'm right, Wrigley could be hosting its fair share of October baseball.