Phil Watch: The Trend Is Not The Cubs' Friend

Editor's Note: There will be no discussion about the Angels allowing no hits to the Dodgers and LOSING THE FUCKING GAME!!!! Ever. I'm dangerously close to becoming a meatball Angels fan that demands they go get Teixeira.

Anybody who's lived within 500 miles of Chicago for their whole life understands the peculiar Cub fan mindset.

When things aren't going well, they're cute in their badness. When things are going well, they're so absolutely blind to their team's shortcomings that any voiced concern about anything immediately brands you as some sort of interloper trying to poo-poo on this fairy tale season.

I give you exhibit A.

At Christo's restaurant, a place about 10 blocks from Wrigley, Cub fans abound. Not the staff, just the customers. Last night, the fans in full Cub regalia came in droves. I left for work with the game tied at five in the fifth so I was curious how the game turned out.

One four-top with two people in Cub jerseys couldn't tell me who hit the homer to put the Sox up, insisting it was Ramirez while another went on a spiel about Fukudome, pronouncing his name 'Koo-Sake' numerous times. I figured they probably watched it at a bar in the neighborhood, drank a few and lost their focus. Nope. Ticket stubs came out.

And, while it's an old and tiresome tale, this shit happens all the time.

Phil attempts to inject some level of concern about the Cub pitching staff in a column today.

It's not a bad attempt (well...it pretty much is), but BRE can do it better.

Let's get started.

Headline: Cubs pitching putting damper on all-Chicago World Series dreams

[sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

[note: headline changed during the typing of this - now it's more reasoned]

From the BRE useless proclamation department, I offer this.

Chicago. Can we please stop this shit? It makes me think that a World Series championship for either fan base would only mean something if it happened against the other team.

By golly, these last two weeks have been chockablock with idiotic idiocy.

Lou Piniella, a full-time manager and part-time oracle, issued a proclamation late Saturday afternoon.

"The White Sox should win that division by a half-dozen games or more, to tell you the truth," Piniella said. "They have everything you need. Everybody looks at the Cubs … look at the White Sox."

Book it, Sox fans. Lao-Tzu has spoken.

Imagine, if you can: An afternoon game at U.S. Cellular Field in October, then a short ride on the Red Line to Wrigley Field for a night game. Madness on both sides of town, times 21.

Phil is channeling his inner-Carol Slezak.

At least he hasn't proclaimed Chicago the center of the baseball universe as Mariotti did today.

It's pretty cool they're both in first place and it makes following baseball in the city distinctly unboring. But let's tone down the superlatives, please.

On Mariotti, can we also stop saying ESPN stands for the Eastern Seaboard Programming Network? It's a stupid-ass joke that every mouth-breathing sports fan says outside of the East Coast. It wasn't that funny 15 years ago.

No, the Cubs' manager didn't guarantee that the White Sox would run away with the American League Central. But after losing for the second day in a row on the South Side, Piniella did say the Sox "should" win easily over the likes of Minnesota, Detroit and Cleveland. That leaves his Cubs to take care of their business over the second half of the season. And the Cubs are a mortal lock to protect the lead they have had since May 11, right?

Cleveland? WTF puts them into the equation?

Detroit, on the other hand, hit the .500 mark yesterday. 40-40. Verlander's back to form (3.38 ERA and a 1.25 WHIP after a terrible April) and everybody's finally hitting. But lest we forget, this nice little winning streak they've put together came against the malodorous AL West. But they're going to hit their way back into this and Galarraga seems like the steal of the year.

And I'm going to make a prediction that will completely nullify any baseball authority I've acquired over these 35 years on this Earth. The Twins and Royals will finish within five games of each other. Book. That. Ha!

Most people, perhaps even Tony La Russa, Ned Yost and the others chasing them in the National League Central, believe they are the best team, by far. The Cubs have produced 5.5 runs per game, better than every team in the majors except Texas. Their pitching staff has a 3.88 ERA, third best in the NL. What do they have to worry about?

Tony 'Confucius' LaRussa has spoken, my friends. Well, not really spoken but he perhaps did in Phil's head so it's relevant.

The Cubs are 16-12 since May 29, exactly one month ago. Decent little record, right (in the parlance of Phil)?

Here's how the Cubs have performed in June:

Pitching: 4.50 ERA as a team, good for 22nd in the league. 1.42 WHIP, good for 20th in the league.

Hitting: 12th in the league in runs in June. Still in the top ten in most offensive categories but no longer in the top two in any of them, as they were in April and May.

Just a little trend to keep an eye on reflecting 1/3 of the season. Probably more relevant when discussing recent trends rather than the last five games.

For the first time this season, Piniella's pitching staff is in a mini-funk. Carlos Marmol is suddenly a problem. He has had some trouble throwing strikes, and one he threw Saturday wound up on the wrong side of the right-field bullpen wall, courtesy of Carlos Quentin.

As I typed just 2 1/2 minutes ago, not a mini-funk. A 1/3 of the season funk.

And this is 'suddenly a problem'? No. This is marginally irresponsible misuse of Marmol. Like Dusty misuse territory.

Marmol used to be a starter in the minors so he's thrown a lot of innings before. But a starter's routine is dramatically different from a reliever. He's currently on pace to throw almost 100 innings and has thrown back-to-back games this year 15 times and pitched on one day's rest 13 times. His delivery isn't conducive to the 'rubber-arm' moniker used for Linebrink or Scot Shields and you would expect his workload would increase if the NL Central remains close.

This is an issue.

Rookie Sean Gallagher gutted out a 121-pitch effort Saturday, causing Piniella to say he was "proud" of him. But Gallagher coughed up two leads while allowing five runs in six innings, the fourth game in a row a Cubs starting pitcher has allowed at least four earned runs. That had happened only 21 times in the first 76 games, and never more than twice in a row.

Grinder alert!

Gives up 8 hits, walks 3, allows 5 earned runs and serves up two dingers but he's a gutty grinder channeling his inner-David Eckstein/Darin Erstad (lots of channeling going on today).

"We're scuffling right now," Piniella said. "We're not at full strength."

Zambrano's out. That's it. What does that have to do with the other four days Carlos wouldn't have pitched?

There's a sense that the Cubs think games shouldn't count if anybody's injured. Part. Of. The. Game.

It wasn't that long before the Zambrano injury that Piniella pointed out to reporters the Cubs' pitching staff wasn't as deep as people thought, and he seems to have been right. Without Zambrano and the invisible man, Rich Hill, the Cubs have Gallagher, Marshall and Jason Marquis at the back end of the rotation.

Drop an opinion now and then, Phil.

Starting five: Zambrano, Dempster, Lilly, Marquis, Marshall/Gallagher.

It's just not that good or scary?

At the beginning of the season, we here at BRE said one injury makes this staff go from average to bad astonishing quick.

By not giving Hill a chance to get out of the first-inning mess he created at St. Louis on May 2, Piniella called attention to Hill's problems throwing strikes. He had walked four of the six hitters he faced in that game, throwing 27 pitches to get two outs, but the time before he had allowed only two runs in five innings at Colorado, walking four. Yet Piniella pulled the plug because Hill seemed too unsure of himself.

So Lou should have given him a chance? Hill threw 353 pitches this season with only 194 for strikes, good for a 55% success rate. That's bad.

Thing is...he's never thrown strikes.

From Baseball America:

Background: Hill always had a knockout curveball, but his inability to throw strikes (6.3 walks per nine innings) held him back in his first three seasons as a pro. The light turned on in 2005, which he credits to improved mental focus. Hill led the minors with 13.4 strikeouts per nine innings and made his major league debut.

Weaknesses: For all his progress, Hill didn’t throw strikes when he joined the Cubs and big league hitters took advantage. He needs to trust and use his changeup more often.

It's called a track record.

General manager Jim Hendry hoped Hill, an 11-game winner in 2007, could get himself back together at Iowa, but instead he walked 28 in 26 innings. He's now on emotional life support at the spring training complex in Arizona.

He's missed.

Or the Cubs shouldn't have relied on Hill with no backup plan. Oh, wait...they got Lieber. It's a domino effect. The loss of Hill means Lilly and Marquis move up the chain. That's not good.

Hendry is likely to go in search of starting pitching before the July 31 trading deadline. Among those who could wind up on his radar screen are Cleveland's C.C. Sabathia, Oakland's Rich Harden, the Los Angeles Angels' Jon Garland and San Diego's Greg Maddux.

Oh, JHC!!!!!!

Let's get a couple out of the way. Garland isn't going anywhere because the Angels have nobody...I repeat, NOBODY...to take his place right now. Escobar is ahead of schedule but any real gauge as to his effectiveness won't be known until after the trade deadline. But Garland was drafted by the Cubs and if he came back, Phil would find it to be uh so cute.

And Maddux isn't coming back to the Cubs. Not gonna happen.

The other two are intriguing but both will require a type-A prospect and a couple of low minors guys. Beane or Shapiro aren't going to bite on Pie or Patterson because they're not stupid and Murton doesn't even enter the discussion. So who would the Cubs give up?

Phil is officially a Cub fan. He assumes either everybody else is a moron or wildly overvalues the prospects in the Cub farm system.

Phil's back, people. I'm warm, fuzzy and just let out a little pee.

In the meantime, Piniella can take some comfort in those 93- and 94-m.p.h. fastballs Gallagher was blowing past White Sox hitters after his pitch count had climbed above 100. He probably slept well.

Gallagher threw hard, which was neato to watch. Oodles of pitchers, including many average-to-bad pitchers, throw harder later in the game than they did at the beginning of the game. It's commonly referred to as the 'stretching-out process'. 8 hits, 3 walks, 2 homers, 5 earned runs in a 6 inning, 121-pitch outing. How does that make anyone sleep well? It's just stupid to say that. Is it just me?

"I knew I needed to last a little longer," Gallagher said. "After [giving up four early runs], I didn't see anybody in the bullpen. I said, 'This is my game.' "

It's never too early to start pitching your way onto a playoff roster.

If Sean Gallagher makes the playoff roster and is given anything resembling a significant role, the Cubs have issues and will not go far.

Cripes.