Irony Is Not a New Tribune Department

By now, we all know that the man in control of the Tribune conglomerate is billionaire White Sox fan Sam Zell.

When hallowed Wrigley Field, long considered a minor step up from a South Side sandlot in terms of playing surface quality, needed its facelift, the Cubbies called on White Sox head groundskeeper Roger Bossard.

New "chief innovation officer" Lee Abrams, charged with dragging the Tribune into the 21st Century? White Sox fan.

What's next, the Cubbies steal away a popular White Sox broadcaster and eventually erect a statue of him outside the ballpark?

--Brett Ballantini

Picks to Click?

Throughout the 2007 season, you'll recall there was constant talk from Tribune White Sox beat writer Mark Gonzales about the White Sox keeping players through their walk years. This wasn't in order to compete and win in 2007 as much as it was that by losing free agents, the White Sox would receive those apparently coveted sandwich picks in the amateur draft.

It was sort of funny to read, because sandwich picks became Gonzo's pet project in 2007. (Don't re-sign Jermaine Dye--you'll get picks when he leaves! Trade Mark Buehrle? But what about those picks?) You'll recall that after the World Series, every White Sox notes column by Gonzo seemed to be peppered with tidbits about performance incentives, like "Jim Thome's 500th at-bat will reap him $250,000" or "with his 30th home run, Paul Konerko gets a Harley." Sandwich picks were Gonzo's incentive clauses of 2007.

Yet because the White Sox are having trouble dealing Joe Crede, one of those popular free agents in his walk year, the Tribune's angle is curiously altered. In Gonzo's recent "Joe Crede vs. Josh Fields" feature, there was no talk of, "be cool, Sox fans, if Crede plays out the year and Scott Boras sends him to the Blue Jays as an international bonus baby, no biggie...sandwich picks!"

No, according to Gonzo, if Crede plays out his contract with the White Sox, "the Sox face the prospect of receiving no compensation besides draft picks if they cannot trade Crede before he becomes a free agent in the winter." (In other words: Sandwich picks? Yawn. Boy the Sox are lame if that's all they can get.)

The Tribune: All the news that suits it.

--Brett Ballantini

Opening Day!

And everybody in the Trib Tower is drinking that delicious blue Kool-Aid.

Gulping by the gallon is Phil Rogers, baseball expert.

Dr. Phil's Cubbies season prediction? 95-67. Yes, you read that correctly. 95 wins.

The Cubbies have won 95 games or more exactly twice in the past 62 seasons.

Such optimism deserves a deeper analysis.

Phil's Pros
Adding Kosuke Fukodome and Jon Leiber.

Oh, and--careful, bizarre qualifier coming--having "played .578 ball over the last four-plus months [of 2007] without any hitter having a career year." Too bad you can't just take your favorite chunks of each season and place it on the back of your baseball card, Phil.

Phil's Cons
Little things like no "high-profile [read: dependable] No. 2 starter and established closer." Those things probably wouldn't haunt a team in a 162-game season, would they, baseball expert?

In fact, it would probably be easy to win 95 (yes, 95!) games without those two things, right? Because, after all, you know, like, no hitter had a career year in 2007. And they got the guy from Japan, and they installed the most oft-injured and disappointing young pitcher in recent baseball history as their closer.

When Underachievement Means Overachievment
Know what's funny? Even if we assume the real Cubbies showed up sometime in June after Sweet Lou finally pushed the right tantrum button--that managing technique's not gonna grow old this year, is it, Phil?--and the true Cubbies are a .578 monster, .578 projects to only 93 or 94 wins over the course of a season. So in Phil's eyes, not only do the Cubbies get a mulligan for being horrible last April and May, they'll actually be better than their overachievement in the last four months of the season. Which, you'll recall, featured a car-crash sort of pennant race wherein neither the mediocre Cubbies or barely-there Brewers wanted to win the division.

You'll also recall that Dr. Phil and the rest of the Tribune crew decided to take the team's flaccid end to the season into account, instead oddly twisting it into a slingshot that would shoot the Cubbies to a NLDS win against the superior Diamondbacks (in fact, if you smoked enough of the Tower herb, like Paul Sullivan, you predict a sweep!).

Blind Spot: The NL Central
Dr. Phil doesn't even dare denigrate the gilded Cubbies by acknowledging that one reason he feels they could improve, or at least should win the division, is that teams in the NL Central would have trouble competing in the Pacific Coast League. That's a legitimate, simple statement that would largely shut up the critics who might be tempted to, y'know, poke holes in Dr. Phil's "analysis."

But no, as far as we can tell the good doc feels the NL Central is pretty dadgum good. Why else would he predict that five of the six NL Central teams would improve in 2008? And no, not just an improvement of one or two games, but the best turnaround of any division in major league baseball. According to Dr. Phil's breathless caffeination, the six teams of the NL Central--acknowledged even by grandmothers and house pets entirely indifferent to baseball as the worst division in baseball--will finish 488-484 this year!

Yep, this offseason the Cubs treaded water, the Brewers did about the same, the Reds added Dusty and a closer, Houston can't pitch, Pittsburgh is Pittsburgh, and St. Louis lost more major-league talent than anyone this season (at least in Phil's eyes). But somehow, some way, the division will get better by a whopping 29 games.

Phil Rogers: A Real Baseball Writer?
A real baseball writer wouldn't say the Cubbies would win 95 games and the division just because the company memo demanded it.

A real baseball writer would point out that Ryan Theriot had a "career" year, Jacque Jones most definitely hit better than anticipated, and Alfonso Soriano, Derrek Lee, and Aramis Ramirez may not have had "career" years, but performed about how you'd expect.

A real baseball writer would point out how preposterous it is that one of the Cubbies' best power men (Soriano) batted leadoff last year because, well, he wanted to. Or that this year's leadoff hitter, Theriot, had an on-base percentage of .326 last year.

A real baseball writer would point out that the team's splashy free-agent acquisition, Fukodome, essentially replaces a guy they already had in Matt Murton, whose .281/.352/.438 numbers in 2007 will be grounds for a Trib-sponsored Fukodome Rookie of the Year campaign if the Japanese import manages to match them. (Of course, that doesn't factor in the overseas ad dollars that will work their way onto the hallowed brick walls of The Shrine, but those numbers don't show up on a baseball card.)

A real baseball writer would acknowledge the team's lack of confidence in five-tool prospect Felix Pie could derail the career of the most promising player to come from their system in years.

And Wait a Minute...What About the Pitching?
While the offense (apparently) didn't have any "career" years or overachievers, the Cubbies' pitching staff did, which is something Dr. Phil conveniently ignores.

The team had a 4.04 ERA, second in the NL.

Ted Lillly went 15-8, 3.83, and pitched 207 innings with career bests in wins, Ks, and IP; for his career he averages 12-10, 4.46.

Rich Hill went into 2007 with career numbers of 6-9, 123 IP, and a 5.12 ERA; in 2007 he was 11-8, 3.92 ERA, 195 IP.

Sean Marshall entered 2007 at 6-9 with a 5.59 ERA and had a 7-8 season in 2007, with a 3.92 ERA.

Ryan Dempster managed 28 saves with a 4.73 ERA in 2007, which may have alarmed the bleacher bums, but Dempster's career ERA is actually 4.82. And his ballyhooed return--a retreat, really--to the rotation ignores the fact that as a starter, Dempster has a 5.01 career ERA.

Bob Howry posted a 3.32 ERA in 2007, better than his career 3.49.

Michael Wuertz has a 3.48 ERA in 2007, better than his career 3.59.

Lieber, the (consolation) prize pitching addition of the offseason, is 38, hasn't had an ERA under 4.00 in four years, has combined to go 12-17 with a 4.87 ERA in the past two seasons, and pitched well enough in spring training to...work in long relief to begin the season.

Even Carlos Marmol, the prize of the Cubbies pitching staff, is suspect. He brought a career ERA of 6.08 into 2007 and in his first relief season posted a 5-1 record with a 1.43 ERA.

2004 All Over Again
Four seasons ago, noted baseball expert Ron Santo wet himself over the idea that the Cubbies would win 100 games. Rather than joke about the notion, the Tribune took it seriously, assigning Paul Sullivan to provide a detailed analysis of just how the team would hit the century mark, month-by-month, game-by-game. Apparently it took months for the paper to see what the rest of us saw--a disintegrating club that would wheeze to a 89-73 finish--because it published several "updates" to this fictional 100-win campaign, deep into the summer.

The question is, has Ronnie been whispering sweet nothings to Tribune staffers again this spring?

--Brett Ballantini

Same Old Same Old

Did you notice that when the White Sox beat the Cubs 5-3 on Saturday, the Tribune barely covered the game? Instead, Dave van Dyck covered "a few oddities" he noticed during the game, such as Neal Cotts in a Cubs uniform. Could have sworn we saw that last year, but whatever, the Tribune has always been a little slow on the uptake. Dave seemed mostly concerned with making excuses for what remains, as April looms, the company team: "The visiting Cubs didn't bring their second, third or fourth hitters," he wrote, and suddenly we were transported back to the ballfields of our youth, which were paved with asphalt, and listening to the whiney babies who just lost saying, "Yeah, but we didn't bring our best players." You know if the Cubs had won that game the Tribune would have given them a banner headline: "Cubs Trounce Sox! And They Didn't Even Bring Their Best Players!"

Yes, it's like the ballstreets of our youth all over again, only with the Tribune cheerleading for the other team, it's like hearing it from the other team's parents rather than the kids themselves. Most unseemly.

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From Cubune Watcher Brett Ballantini:

Reluctantly, Phil Rogers announces today that the Orioles may be looking for veteran infield help (Juan Uribe) in a Brian Roberts trade. I'm not sure how I feel either way about acquiring a guy from the substance abuse hit list, but Rogers' addendum is what caught my eye. Now, Rogers won't acknowledge that if Baltimore wants vet infield help back, the foregone conclusion of Roberts-to-Cubbies is scuttled. That would bust the company line, wherein, the Cubbies are supposed to be able to hold up any team they want to get the players needed to pathetically attempt to snap the streak before it reaches 100. No, Rogers points out that, y'know, Roberts-to-the-Sox sure SEEMS plausible, but the minor league system is so bare, there's no way a deal could be made.

Totally off the top of my head: Brian Anderson, Carlos Quentin, Brad Eldred, Jason Bourgeois, Lance Broadway, Andrew Sisco, Nick Masset, Jack Egbert, Mike McDougal, Joe Crede, Charlie Haeger...