Hello again, everybody, your old pal Karry Ling here with today’s Daily Dose. I got a call from Andy last night around 9:30 p.m. and it was pretty much just a stream of profanity directed at Michael Barrett, lazy Cubs’ pitchers and Dusty and it ended with, ‘You write the (blankety blank) thing tomorrow.’
I can’t say I blame him. I haven’t seen such a fundamental lack of execution since the guy in The Green Mile chose not to soak the sponge in water before they hit the switch. Ouch.
I can see how a guy can forget to cover first base once, especially on a play where Derrek Lee makes a great play, but it’s obvious that we watch more of the Cubs’ games than the guys in the bullpen or on the bench, because two different guys did the same thing in the same game. By my count that makes six times this season a pitcher has failed to cover first base in time, three last night, Mark Prior in St. Louis a couple of Sunday’s ago, Will Ohman in Yankee Stadium and Kerry Wood early on in the season.
Six? That has to be some kind of record
You notice you don’t see Carlos Zambrano or Greg Maddux on the list. Maddux might get beaten to the bag, but you can guarantee he was running over there from the time the ball was hit, and Zambrano tries to run over the baserunner on his way to first.
What was amazing about last night’s game was that the failure to cover first on three seperate occasions wasn’t the worst display of lackluster fundamentals in the game. Not even close.
In the ninth inning, with the bases loaded, one out and the game-winning run on third base, Dusty followed up one foolhardy move with another. First, he started the inning with Remlinger (always a bad idea), then he walked the bases loaded on purpose and brought in Michael Wuertz. Wuertz is rarely a better than 50-50 proposition when it comes to not walking the first batter…or the first three batters for that matter.
But it should have worked. Wuertz struck out Pat Burrell, only to have Michael Barrett pull off a rare trifecta on one play. First, he didn’t catch the ball, then as Burrell ran to first (which didn’t matter because with first base occupied and one out before his K he could not advance to first) Barrett at first looked like he was going to try to tag Pat, then in mistake number two he took two steps towards the runner, Jimmy Rollins, who was halfway to home and completely screwed, then Barrett threw the ball into left field.
Barrett ran at Rollins but didn’t even get him to committ to running back towards third. That’s the key there. You run at the runner and once he starts back towards third you throw to the third baseman. The worst that can happen at that point is that he’ll beat your throw back to the bag and the bases are still loaded but with two outs. Barrett didn’t even do that. Even had he not made a horrid throw, there’s a good chance Rollins was going to beat the return throw home, especially since Barrett was completely out of position to take the return throw. To complicate matters, even had he been able to hustle back to the plate before the throw came back, Michael Wuertz was standing right by the plate, too. In the world of the Cubs, what would have happened is that Wuertz would have thought Barrett was going to take the throw and Barrett would have though Wuertz was, resulting in a throw sailing between them to lose the game. Now that would have been epic.
Yesterday, Andy wrote that he’s never seen a team so full of excuses as the Cubs are. Mostly, Dusty makes excuses for the guys. Dusty thinks he’s still a player so he tries to cover for his guys. That’s fine. I’m sure they appreciate it, even if it serves to make him seem like the dumbest man in any room. But Dusty wasn’t going to make an excuse for Barrett, and nobody can blame him. So Barrett made his own. Check out this nonsense.
I can’t blame [home plate umpire Dana DeMuth]. The place is so loud. I was expecting a foul tip call and didn’t get it.
Wait a minute. The catcher wanted a foul tip call on a third strike so that the batter wouldn’t have been out? And the same guy didn’t bother to catch it because he thought it was foul tipped?
Look, if you’re so keenly aware of your surroundings that you can determine when a ball is foul-tipped and make a nanosecond judgment to let the ball go because you don’t “need” to catch it, you are in the wrong business. You ought to be an air traffic controller, you have such a gift at making quick decisions. It’s impressive.
Look, Mikey. Nobody cares that you didn’t catch the pitch, whether it was foul tipped or not. It was when you threw the ball to Todd Hollandsworth instead of Aramis Ramirez that created the angst.
All this does is point out what we’ve known for a long time. The Cubs haven’t a clue how to play baseball. Every player on every team will make a bad throw on occasion. But it was the panic that proceeded the throw that is most troubling. Barrett didn’t know what to do.
I’m sure people will alibi him and say, “Well, he hasn’t been a catcher that long, he’s a converted infielder and…” blah, blah, blah. He’s being paid quite handsomely to be a catcher and he’s a bad one. The Cubs made a decision two years ago to go with offense over defense behind the plate. That decision made no sense at the time, and makes even less now. The one thing this team was supposed to have was great, young, starting pitching. What you needed was a “catcher”, not a hitter who squats.
We even saw evidence of his incompetence on Tuesday night during Ryan Dempster’s “save.” Dempster couldn’t throw anything but his fastball for a strike, and there he was throwing slider and splitter over and over and over again, most missing the plate by a foot or two. Are you telling me that Mike Matheny, or Brad Ausmus, or anybody wearing the Braves’ catching gear would have kept calling for that stuff?
Cubs’ fans, and especially those who hung out here, were all over the Damian Miller-Gabor Paul Bako II catching tandem in 2003, but at the time we accepted it because we felt like the Cubs wanted defensive-oriented catchers to work with guys like Prior, Zambrano, Wood, etc. Bako batted like he was holding a candle at home plate, and Miller wasn’t a whole lot better, but when the Cubs’ upgraded their offense at most of the other seven positions over the past two seasons, they would have been wise to have found two more defense-oriented catchers to give those jobs too. It didn’t have to be them, of course.
We can debate the reasons that the Cubs’ pitchers have an ERA of more than a run less when Henry Blanco catches, than they do under Barrett, for hours. Hank has been catching Prior and Zambrano, so of course his ERA should be less.
But you know that Cubs’ pitchers trust Blanco more behind the plate than they do Barrett. Heck, last year they trusted Bako more than Barrett, and that’s hard to fathom.
Even when they catch the same guy, they call games completely differently. Watch Blanco catch Zambrano. Carlos throws mostly fastballs. In, out, up, down, just fastball after fastball. Then he breaks out the slider or, even better, the 65 MPH change on occasion. With Barrett, Zambrano throws many more sliders. On nights like Tuesday when his fastball was sinking off the table and his slider was just filthy, it doesn’t matter what Carlos throws, the other team won’t hit it. But when he gets into trouble it’s because he can’t throw his fastball for a strike.
Barrett goes to calling for almost all sliders when that happens.
Blanco forces Zambrano to throw fastballs. Remember the day in San Diego when he went to the mound and told Carlos to throw it for a strike or he’d “slap him?” The reason is simple. If Carlos doesn’t command his fastball, he’s going to get hit. Barrett might sneak him through an inning or two with mostly sliders, but eventually he’ll hang one, and if he’s throwing nothing but them, the batter will be sitting on it and it’s going to get hit very hard, and that normally means Carlos will hang the next one, and then the one after that.
And that’s just one example. It’s just the most obvious. Does it mean Blanco is a catching sage? Of course not. As much as we enjoy pretending he’s a folk hero, Hank’s merely an above average Major League catcher defensively and a below average catcher offensively. Barrett is just the opposite. That’s fine. It’s nice to have a catcher with an actual clue at the plate, and though he failed miserably on three seperate occasions last night, Barrett’s an asset most nights with a bat his hand. It’s just that when your bread and butter is supposed to be your pitching staff, it seems ridiculous to choose offense over defense at that spot.
What it also begs you to consider is that perhaps the Cubs are just inadequately coached. Dusty lamented the fact that Major League staffs have to “teach” more than they used to. Well, then do it.
Unless Corey Patterson is the most stubborn human on the planet (and he might be), you have to wonder not if the Cubs were trying to fix his approach at the plate, but rather how they were trying to fix it. Has anyone stopped to consider that maybe they were giving Corey plenty of advice and that it wasn’t that he wasn’t trying to incorporate it, but rather that the advice was all crap?
Tiger Woods could hire me to be his personal coach and I could stand out at the range with him for hours giving him tips and he’d get worse every day because I don’t know squat about how to break down a golf swing. If you’ve seen me play, you know that to be true. Tiger would eventually get the point where he couldn’t even draw back on his old, proven, swing because I would have confused him so much he wouldn’t be able to recall it.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you Sarge Matthews and Gene Clines!
Should big league pitchers be able to remember to cover first base. Yes. You’d think so.
Even when you factor in the injuries to Nomar and Wood and Prior, this Cubs’ team has no business hanging out at the .500 mark. They have underperformed consistently for a year and two-thirds now.
They cleaned out about half their roster in the offseason because last year’s team so fundamentally lacking, and this year’s team isn’t any better.
What’s left to clean out?
Just make sure you pick up all those toothpicks before you leave.
Who the hell are you people?! I love these doses. I feel I should have to pay to read them. If it were a pay site, I have to be honest, I would probably steal your content and read it for free anyway. I guess what I’m trying to say is thanks.
“A FOUL TIP is a batted ball that goes sharp and direct from the bat to the catcher’s hands and is legally caught. It is not a foul tip unless caught and any foul tip that is caught is a strike, and the ball is in play. It is not a catch if it is a rebound, unless the ball has first touched the catcher’s glove or hand.”
Let’s stop the dumbing down of baseball fans right there. It’s one thing for Barrett to call it a foul tip–he’s a proven idiot. But Karry? A foul tip means he would have caught the ball, it would have been a live ball etc. Barrett meant foul BALL and Kerry, you had drinks with Alexander Cartwright for chrissakes, you should know better.
Also, Will Ohman failed to cover first in a Tuesday night game vs. Toronto. That makes 7.
I forgot to cover first in San Diego.
Eight.
I no pretend folk hero, amigo. In Venezuela, I like rock star. I get all the chicas and all the tacos. It’s fung in Venezuela.
The Cubs are still a bunch of racist crackers! (*#&$* fuckers!!!!
Hey everyone, next time you’re in NYC, be sure to check out K Lounge, my Kama Sutra bar!
Hank is just another Venezuelan F#%K! I am the real rock star mang! Being me is fung, Hank, not so much. I am a sex macheen!
I love yooouuu Ozzie
Ya’ll tell em’ Delino. Where’s my Cris’?
Juan Uribe is the most exciting player in the AL. Eeeeyessss!!! He Gone! Gas!!!
Does my article have real link to it? Or just blue text?
Yeah Joe, you tell em’ brotha’.
F You Joe Morgan….
HOLY SHIT I HAVE NO LEGS
Jeez, cut these guys some slack. It is not as though they are being paid millions of dollars to paly this game.
I’m not getting the big bucks yet, but I seem to be the most fundamentally sound player on the team…hmm….
Hi Cub fans. Hoops here letting you in on my big scoop from MAAAAJOR league sources.
___—-….;;;”’====”””;;;;””'[[lko[[[[[[‘;'”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To decipher this code, it will only cost you $49.95 for UNLIMITED access to PREMIUM content. Bye for now friends!
anyone have Jerry Hairston to Minnesota on their radar? My insider sources and Bruce Levine may or may not.
My sources say that a deal of some kind will go down at some time. Some player will be traded for another player from one team or another. Does anyone have this or anything on thier radar?
I’m telling on you #18, prepare to be banned by the super moderator.
OMG! Hoops is on to something here gang! OMG!!! Dunn is GOD, he will never clear waivers though, he is the best player in the game. I wonder if Hoops will reaveal his source on this one…LOL. Probably not, a good magician never reveals his secrets. Hoops, keep us informed buddy, damn I don’t know how you do it.
Hooooooops, where are you!??! Something happened and we need information!! Hooooops! We neeeeed you!!!!! :-( :-(
:wall: :wall: :wall: :wall:
Hoops, once again you could be on to something here.
That really really hot day in Cincinnati where Maddux pitched just 5 innings, I think I forgot to cover first as did Remmy.
Make it 10.
Should Len’s new word of the day be “numbnuts?”
Scootch over Lenny, you’re hogging all the blankets. Ooh, I fell crazy today, I’m gonna get that Toblerone out of the minibar, I know I’m nasty. Maybe our word of the day can be Chocoholic.
I meant Willie, I’m drunk on man love.
Why do I love will Ohman?
Andy…you should coach the Cubbies from now on. It’d be a modest improvement.
The Cubs are 54-53 at this point. That means they have 55 games left this season. Let’s say they need to win 90 games to win the Wild Card. That means their record has to be 36-19 the rest of the way. THAT MEANS THEY CAN ONLY LOSE 19 GAMES.
Folks you don’t have to work for NASA to figure this one out. THE CUBS ARE FUCKED!
You’re a team that struggles just to win a series. This is a team that doesn’t know the meaning of sweeping another team but knows enough about getting swept.
It’s so simple to see and could be easy to do, but Jim Hendry needs to put up the white flag this year and make a stand by firing Dusty Baker effective immediately. You make Chris Speir interim manager now and see what happens. He might do great and you can sign him next year as your manager.
It worked for Houston last year by getting rid of Jimmy Williams, why can’t it work for the Cubs? By sticking with Dusty, this team is doomed. It’s just so painful and disgusting for us fans to watch this shit. It really makes you hate this organization.
Baker Basher
Hey it’s not our fault! We keep giving up these screaming rockets to the right side that are supposed to be singles and doubes. But DeeLee keeps catching them and catching them. He’s like fucking Rodan over there. Your first instinct is to look real sad after giving up a smash like that and wipe sweat from your brow but with Lee you never know you might have to go over and cover the base. He’s making us all look bad I tell you. He’s the one who should be run out of town! Not we!
Morgan’s article is fixed. Karry gets a little excited sometimes. That’s always messy.
Why not? I’m sexxxy
AHAHAHHHAHAAHAHAHAHHAAH!!! That’s a good fucking joke. I mean I’m a… heh heh heh.
We can all see the big Dustygate coming. I can’t wait. I don’t really care who takes over the team…at this point Dusty has lost his marbles. I saw that Todd Hollandsworth got a two-run judy last night. Did he start in LF? Why can’t Dusty let Murton play LF and throw the savior Lawton in CF?
P.S., Harold Reynolds wants to know why C-Pat is still a Cub.
I’d like to play center but I take very poor routes to balls. Not a good thing for a CF to do. Jeromy is a better option there.
Adam, I just spoke with Harold, and he asked me that very question. I told him to check with Jim and gave hiom his cell number.
Today’s batting order (the Cubs Live goes up in a few minutes)
Lawton, lf
Walker, 2b
Lee, 1b
E-ramis, 3b (no, really, he’s batting cleanup against a righty)
Burnitz, rf
Neifi?, ss (guh)
Macias, cf (double guh)
Hank, c
Prior
You’ve got to be kidding me. Macias? So it was OK to play Burnitz in center for the last three innings last night, but it would have killed him to have used Murton or Hollandsworth, insted we go with the Gremlin, who on top of not being a good hitter isn’t a good outfielder.
Bravo, Dustmeister! Bra-frickin-vo!
Harold is a f*cking idiot. In the name of Ryne Sandberg I hate him…
Lawton is faster than Jeromy (even though J-Burn is still quite fleet of foot) and the reason I said that was to get The Lesser out of the lineup.
Macias is playing OF for Little Jerry instead of me today.
I’m going to be in the dugout today, and so is Williamson, does Hendry know we don’t have to wait for Kerry to come off the DL (tomorrow) for us to be able to play?
Hey, I’m not great in any of the three OF spots, but since I have no arm, doesn’t it make more sense to play me in center instead of that wild ass rotation we pulled last night where I went to right and Burnitz went to center?
Andy, do you think that Dusty is doing that thing where he makes a move (like playing Macias over Murton over and over again) just so Hendry wakes up and realizes that Macias is wasting the rest of the bench’s oxygen by keeping him on the team? I sure as hell hope so.
Wait:
“What’s left to clean out?
Just make sure you pick up all those toothpicks before you leave. ”
Who hired the toothpicks? Who handpicked Barrett?
Might look to toss out the Krispy Kreme’s too/
Hey #27 (Adam), I wrote this Dose, not Andy! Does that mean I should be the Cubs’ manager? Because I’ll do it! I used to babysit Jack McKeon, so I’ve got all kinds of knowledge!
Broken News Cub Fans!
I have it on good account that today’s dose was in fact not written by Andy and in fact not all doses are/are not/ or maybe are/not/and/is/possibly written by someone other than or equal in regards to Andy. That’s a freebe
Damn…my bad, Karry. Go ahead…and for the love of Jimminy tap-dancin’ Christmas please get rid of Jose’ Macias. Wouldn’t Ben Grieve do a better job than that little troll doll? In fact, will Macias be around when Nomar gets back? We will have a versatile infielder by the name of Neifi! who can stand half-retarded like at 3B, SS and 2B and do a better job than Macias.
Forgot to write Hoops after my post, which I do often, in case you forget my internet message board nickname which is provided with each post I make.
Hoops
Little Jerry got hurt last night. Rumor is that the Cubs might recall KPat from Iowa. The bad news just keeps on snowballing.
That means today’s lineup looks like this:
Lawton-LF
Macias-RF
Lee-1B
Burnitz-CF
Ramirez-3B
Walker-2B
Perez-SS
Blanco-C
Prior-P
Once again if Dusty wasn’t such a dumbfuck the lineup would look like this:
Lawton-RF(since that’s where he’s been playing this year the most)
Walker-2B
Lee-1B
Ramirez-3B
Burnitz-CF
Murton-LF
Perez-SS
Blanco-C
Prior-P
Note: Dusty needs to go down to the closest little league field and go over a lineup with a coach from one of the teams playing. Looking over the lineup and batting averages, Dusty would notice that the best hitters are hit at the top of the order and in sequence no matter fucking what. The shitty players and ones that can’t hit and catch a ball are down in the lineup or either on the bench.
SOME PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD JUST DON’T GET IT. DUSTY IS ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE.
Also, KPat will be used in Dustbag’s ignorant double switch in the later innings. Aren’t we all excited about that.
Baker Basher
Sorry, dudes.
Gotta get Macias in.
I’m gonna go with Neifi, Macias, Blanco, 6-7-8. How does that sound?
thats not todays lineup at all, BB
LSD LEGAL IS RUSSIA! MAYBE! YIPPY!
WTF
“Actress Barbara Streisand was one of those, who signed the above-mentioned petition. The actress confessed that it was LSD, which helped her survive the nervous breakdown, when the star discovered that her only son was a homosexual.”
Hey #47, I’ll supply the rumors around here, thank you. I’m checking with my source in DesMoines as we speak.
Hoops
Crone dog taste just rike oliginar!
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/08/03/dog.clone.ap/index.html
HOUSTON…HA..LOW!
(or is it Houston, goodbye?)
#41, Dusty isn’t that clever, he’s playing Macias to try and get Murton off the team, not the gremlin.
“Dude, (Dusty cackles as he writes out the lineup) I’ll show that donut eater, put the Gremlin in CF and Murton can go to West Tenn ’cause his light-skinned a&$ can’t play in the heat. It’s history. The Gremlin is like a heat machine, the hotter it gets the more heat he reflects – dude, he’s gonna blind the hitters!”
I looked like a little leaguer going back for that ball.
Now that we are down 4-0 in the first, I think I’ll give up another run or two and call it a day.
Oh shit, I tried that in Atlanta and Dusty left me out there to hang myself.
first five runners have reached base, four have scored. Nobody out. No visit from Rothschild, who is sucking on his flask and muttering obscenities to Gene Clines.
Prior recovers to strike out the side, after putting us down by a four spot.
That should be plenty for the Phils, as Brett Myers has owned us over his career.
Hey! Get out of my Dose! The gamecast is over here!
https://www.desipio.com/2005/08/04/cubs-live-cubs-at-philadelphia-noon-84/
Jeesh.
Why do you guys have a problem with Hoops? If you hate what is posted on NSBB so much, don’t go there. Although it is funny when someone makes an obvious bunk thread about adam dunn and a 45 page thread ensues.
But seriously, as an avid reader of both NSBB and Desipio, I don’t understand the hate.
Hoops, I wanna make sweet love to you all night long.
Hey I didn’t say that!
At least I don’t remember……
You may be an avid reader… but try posting and going against one of the few “sages” of the board that everyone beats off to. Look up the Algonquin roundtable sometime and you’ll understand.
Who are we?
It’s exciting to have Nomar, Williamson, and Wood on the bench. I don’t know who to hug first! Who wants it?
I am a word, but as Inigo Montoya would say, “I do not think it means what you think it means”
adj.
Arranged in regular rows, as the spots on the wings of an insect.
n.
Symbol y The plane Cartesian coordinate representing the distance from a specified point to the x-axis, measured parallel to the y-axis.