In Little League the traditional spot on the field to “hide” your worst defender is right field. That’s where you put the kid with the asthma inhaler and the glasses that are so thick that if they fell off his head and came to rest at just the right angle the outfield would start on fire.

In professional baseball you don’t dare put your worst defensive player in right–wait, that doesn’t explain Jock Jones–OK, you usually don’t put him out there.

So what happens when you’ve got a guy, let’s say he’s very well compensated, and you’re hiding him in left, only lately he’s being found…often?

Unfortunately, in the National League, there isn’t a hell of a lot you can do. Oh, I suppose you could have all the other Cubs wait until he falls asleep in the barracks and then have all of them put a bar of soap in a sock and beat him with them, but apparently the Cubs don’t all sleep in bunk beds in the clubhouse after games (although Jim Edmonds is trying to convince at least one of them to) and bar soap is so 2002.

To be fair, too much was made of Alfonso Soriano losing a flyball in the sun and allowing the tying run to score with two outs in the ninth on Sunday. I mean it happens. Like…once a decade…maybe. If that’s all it was, just one play where a giant, glowing mass of gas interfered with a flyball (no, not Scott Eyre) and cost the Cubs a game it wouldn’t be “that” big of a deal.

But it’s not just that, is it? It’s the ongoing Soriano soap opera. Last spring he couldn’t hit because he was in center, not left. Then he hurt his leg. When he came back he played left and he started hitting. Then he got hurt again. Then he couldn’t run for a month, then he hot hotter than crap in September and missed the plane to Arizona for the playoffs (oh, it only seemed like that). This year he claimed his leg was still bothering him, then he couldn’t hit, then he strained his calf jumping for a pop up and went back on the DL, then he came back, went into the well for a flyball in a loss to the Brewers and nearly sharted when he saw the wall coming at him, the next night he lost two balls in the lights in St. Louis, then a couple of weeks ago he went nuts at the plate, hit everything then on Friday in Pissburgh he couldn’t run, on Saturday he ran a little better but got picked off second base in the ninth inning, then on Sunday he dropped the flyball in the sun.

Whew.

Hey, only six and a half more years of this!

Sensible Cubs fans knew that when he signed that contract before last season that the last few years of the deal were going to be bad. He was going to be a DH playing on a National League team and getting paid way too much money. We just didn’t know that it was going to happen with seven years left. We thought two, maybe three in the worst case.

There’s the whole issue of having to bat him leadoff, not so much because he demands to, but more because he hasn’t hit anywhere else with any success.

That’s another thing with Alfonso. He rarely complains about anything, but his results do the complaining for him. He won’t ever demand to hit leadoff, but when you bat him anywhere else he’s far less productive. He won’t use sore legs as an excuse, but he’ll run like his ankles are tied together.

The closest he’s come to petulance was in spring training in 2006 when the Nationals were in the midst of moving him from second base to left. He didn’t want to do it, but again, he wouldn’t come out and say it. He didn’t feel like he was ready to do it in a game when the Grapefruit League opener rolled around and thought he and his manager, Frank Robinson had agreed that he wouldn’t try it in a game for a few more days. Robinson wrote Alfonso in the lineup card as the left fielder and Alfonso wouldn’t play. He felt that Frank had lied to him. The next night he played left and hit a homer on the first pitch he saw.

By the end of the season, Robinson had nothing but nice things to say about Alfonso. And why not, considering he finished the season with 41 doubles, 47 homers, 41 stolen bases and he even doubled his season best walk total with 67.

That’s the season that earned him the gigantic contract he has with the Cubs. And, it’s not to say that I’m ready to go back to November of 2006 and pretend I thought it was a bad idea at the time. I didn’t, and I still don’t. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues to deal with.

First of all, Lou is going to have to consider pulling Al late in close games for defense. It’s not ideal, and not just because you don’t want to spend $18 million for a guy to sit on the bench the last two innings of games you are leading by a run or two, but also because Soriano’s one of those players whose numbers are pretty much the same in “late and close” situations as they are in any other spot.

Tangent: This doesn’t surprise any of us, though does it. Do you even think he knows what the score is half the time? So far, though, he at least seems to remember how many outs there are most of the time. Or maybe he just always assumes there’s one out? Can’t go wrong there.

The first good Cubs team of my lifetime had a defensively challenged left fielder who was a key cog in their offense, maybe the second best player on the team, in fact. Gary Matthews was considered such a closet case in left that he was routinely replaced by Gary Woods or Henry Cotto late in games.

Just to make sure that wasn’t a figment of my 11 year old imagination, I checked.

In April of 1984 the Cubs played 20 games, and Sarge started 19 of them. He only finished 11.
In May the Cubs played 27 games, Sarge started 26 of them and finished eight.
In June he finished 16 of 28 games.
In July he finished eight of 28 games.
In August he finished 10 of 29 games.
In September he finished seven of 29 games.

Not only didn’t he finish but he left in the eighth or ninth inning 77 times. It had such a negative impact on him that he only finished fifth in MVP voting that year.

Now it’s easier said than done to just take Soriano out in the eighth inning of games you’re ahead by a run or two. It handicaps you a little bit with the way you use your bench. The 1984 Cubs spent most of the season with ten pitchers, so they had as many as seven guys on the bench to choose from. The 2008 Cubs, like most teams carry 12 pitchers so Lou only has five guys to use on his bench. Of those five, how many of them do you want to see in left field with the game on the line?

Probably not the Fat Kangaroo (or his fill-in Micah Hoffpauir) or Hank White, or Mike Fontenot or Ronny Cedeno. So that leaves Reed Johnson. Either Reed comes off the bench late in games to play left, or Jim Edmonds comes in to play center and Reed moves over to left, depending on which one started that day.

You could move Mark DeRosa out to left and put either Fontenot or Cedeno in at second, but as bad as Soriano’s play was on Sunday, was it any worse than the routine flyball that DeRosa turned into a ground rule double on tax day when he filled in for Alfonso?

DeRosa broke in on a ball that ended up almost 100 feet away from him and bounced into the bleachers in left center.

Basically, Lou can’t let Soriano’s defense hold his in-game moves hostage.  But if he gets to the eighth or ninth inning with a one or two run lead and either Edmonds or Johnson is on the bench, it’s probably time to get Soriano out.

And then you know what’s going to happen.  The Cubs are going to lose a game because Reed makes a bad throw from left and a runner scores and Cubs’ fans will cry that Soriano would have thrown the guy out.  Because though he can’t catch fly balls very well, he does throw quite well.

On a related note, how great was it to hear Bob Brenly go off on Soriano?  Not because we wanted to hear Soriano ripped on, but rather because a Cubs’ TV broadcaster wasn’t pulling any punches.  It could just be that Bob is still upset about the homer that Soriano hit in game seven of the 2001 World Series, but I kind of doubt that, considering it just set up the big comeback in the ninth inning.  From time to time it’s nice to hear an announcer unload the pent up enmity that we all feel during the course of a long season.

Speaking of broadcasters, Dave Kaplan of WGN Radio is now firmly in the ‘move Soriano to second base camp.’  This is dumb on so many levels that of course Kaplan sees logic in it that does not exist.

You do not move a poor defensive player closer to the ball.  There’s a reason that the Nationals moved Soriano to left from second.  He wasn’t a good defensive second baseman.  They decided that they’d be better off with Jose Vidro, who had no knees in 2006, than with Soriano at second.  Soriano’s offense would be far more valuable at second than it is in left, but it’s a non starter.  When healthy he wasn’t a good defensive second baseman.  Now?  He’d be a scarecrow with a glove.

Besides, if you made the move Kaplan seems most in favor of, swapping DeRosa for Soriano you’d make two positions weaker.  One of the reasons the Cubs are a good team is because they generally play excellent defense.  Their defensive efficiency (a Bill James measure that estimates the number of batted balls turned into outs by a team) is .709, second in the National League only to Atlanta.  Overall it’s fourth behind only Tampa Bay, Toronto and Atlanta.

You’re not just finding the most convoluted way to solve a problem that in the long run isn’t likely to be that big, you’re creating more problems.

Right now, Soriano’s probably not even close to being the worst defensive left fielder in the division, much less the league.  Adam Dunn on his best day is more hilariously inept out there.  Ryan Braun doesn’t get to nearly as many balls as somebody with his speed should.  Chris Duncan?  Carlos Lee?

Still, he’s clearly regressing, which is a problem, and if it continues he will slide below all of those guys except for Dunn.  He seems increasingly afraid of the ivy which is something the extra three feet of warning track they installed this offseason was supposed to alleviate.

Lou insists it’s not for a lack of effort.  Soriano, he says, takes a lot of extra flyballs every day.  But you have to wonder if having bad legs, or even if it’s just a lack of “confidence” in those legs (which is complete bullshit and we all know it) is devaluing the worth of taking extra flyballs.  If you’re always taking them half-speed because you’re favoring an injury you’re either going to take them half-speed in the game, or you’re going to go full speed and not be able to relate the experience to what you practiced.

The time has come for Lou to get it across to Soriano that if he’s really not hurt that he needs to run.  His jogging around the bases cost the Cubs a run in the sixth inning yesterday at a time when they were desperately trying to add on another score.

Soriano’s contact was destined to become an albatross, but his play has become one earlier than anybody ever expected.

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One last thing.  By now I’m sure you noticed what Dusty Baker did on Sunday.  In a marathon extra innings game in San Diego, Dusty managed to use his number one starter for four innings on two days rest and his number two starter for two innings on one days rest.  Aaron Harang threw 63 pitches on Sunday after throwing 103 in a start on Thursday.  Edinson Volquez threw 39 pitches on Sunday after throwing 92 pitches on Friday.  Friday!

We all enjoy joking that Dusty will buy Dr. James Andrews another bass boat with the way he’ll handle Harang, Volquez and Johnny Cueto, but then Dusty goes and does something like this and the joke becomes reality.

Just another reason to enjoy the fact that he’s no longer the Cubs manager.