Who's Got the Power?

A week ago in Phil Rogers' "Power Poll" feature on ChicagoSports.com's "Hardball" blog, the 14-10, first-place White Sox ranked No. 4. The 16-9, first-place Cubs ranked No. 3.

Both teams had a rough week. The White Sox took the collar, losing the five games between polls, and falling to second place. Dr. Phil rightfully spanks the punchless Sox down to No. 11 in his poll. He also makes the incongruous comment that the White Sox have no run producers in the minors save for Josh Fields.

Dr. Phil, there's a guy on the White Sox named Carlos Quentin. White Sox GM Ken Williams acquired--the overeager might go so far as to say stole--him from the Arizona Diamondbacks for a Single-A first baseman, Chris Carter. Well Phil, on Sunday there were 11 players in the majors with an on-base + slugging percentage of better than 1.000. Astoundingly, only one of those players was in the American League.

His name? Carlos Quentin.

Quentin's the guy who made a preposterous throw from left field, on the fly, to double off a Tiger at first base early this season. He's already been hit by seven pitches this season, but he's such a bad-ass he doesn't wear any of that Barry Bonds armor to the plate. If Quentin was on the north side, fans already would be wearing some form of offensive T-shirt to "celebrate" him. So Phil, look him up; he's in the White Sox media guide, really.

Quentin is brought up not to deflect attention from the hapless White Sox offense. After all, saying this ballclub is the 11th-best in the majors is a fairly big stretch at the moment. But Rogers and his gratuitous shots at the White Sox GM are way out of line. Even in a short skinny as part of a space-filler of a power poll, Rogers can't resist letting loose on Sox brass.

The purpose of competing in the majors is to have the best major league roster you can. A terrific Single-A hitter like Chris Carter is an asset, but he's not a major-leaguer who earns you major league wins. Quentin's OPS+, is 177, essentially meaning he's hitting 77% better than the average American Leaguer. The next-best White Sox hitter is Joe Crede, whose OPS+ is 119. Quentin is by far the White Sox's best hitter through the first month, and he was essentially shoplifted out of the Diamondbacks organization. But your readers would probably rather read your fiction pieces about win-win trades with Arizona you're spinning as lopsided, so keep the cheap shots coming, Phil.

Oh, and the Cubs? They didn't have a very good week, either. They went 2-4 (and then lost Sunday night's game, which was completed after Phil posted his power poll), falling to second place. Funny, while Rogers admits the Cubs are "spinning their wheels" and have no closer, he can't see dropping the Cubs even one spot in his poll. His beloved bumblers choke away two series, one home and one away, to their two closest division rivals, but they're still the third-best team in the majors.

Another crisis averted. This is a the guy who Cubs manager Lou Piniella referred to as irreplaceable in the Tribune lineup?

--Brett Ballantini

Tower Struggles to Cover Lesser Buildings

Cell Trounces Wrigley Again in SI Fan Poll

The White Sox play in the eighth most popular ballpark in America, according to Sports Illustrated's annual fan poll, while Wrigley Field (that "sacred garden" revered by the people who own it and their army of pajama-clad followers) finished 15th. The Cell consistently stomps on Wrigley in that poll, but the Tribune always finds a way to circumvent the comparison, which would, of course, debunk the Wrigley Field myth at a moment when it is poised to earn the Tribune several hundred million dollars. The Tribune's take this year? Neither stadium finished in the top five. Hmm. Now why do you suppose the Tribune only looked at the top five instead of, like Sports Illustrated, honoring the top ten?

-- Thanks to Lone Ranger for this post.

Tribune: Wrigley Building to Remain in Chicago

Both the Tribune and its yuppie-pandering Redeye edition published this marble-mouthed sentence, reassuring us, to our great relief, that the Mars Corporation is not going to hoist the Wrigley Building onto the back of a flat-bed truck and haul it out to Mars' headquarters in Maclean, VA:

Though most of Wrigley's operations will remain in Chicago, including its executive offices and ornate white building on Michigan Avenue, the shift in Wrigley's power base, including the fact that the founding family will no longer be owners, means something, experts said.

The sentence was penned by none other than David W. Greising, by all accounts one of the nicer and more talented scribes in the Terrible Tower, who nonetheless remains most famous among White Sox fans for somehow overlooking 1.75 million of them crowded on the streets of Chicago in October, 2005. Some fair maiden needs to rescue poor David from that Tower and free his prose from the nefarious influence of the Ring of Power.

-- Patrick Sheehan

Fuzzy Math (or News That Makes Us Richer, Part 2)

Paul Sullivan was lucky enough to witness a 19-5 pasting of the Brew Crew last night. But apparently he was too distracted by the presence of Mark Cuban in the park to bother fully researching his own writing. An excerpt from his game story:

[Geovany] Soto has 20 RBIs in April, the most for a Cubs rookie since records began being kept in 1956.

Wait a just a second. "Records began being kept?" Isn't baseball the most over-recorded sport in human history?

Now, it's possible that the deep Tribune coffers and resources are vastly overestimated, but there were several options available to Sully before he opted out so lazily:

• Page through the Cubs media guide.
• Telephone his newsroom for assistance.
• Drop $29 on yearly access to www.baseball-reference.com's advanced stats and devote 10 minutes to surfing.
• Befriend one of the millions of SABRheads in the world, many of whom already are likely corresponding with Sully. Such perfectionists would likely do a whiz-bang, instantaneous run of the numbers for Sully for free, and in time for Wrigley's seventh-inning warble.
  
• Contact Stats, Inc., which not only would quickly track a straightforward record like most Cubs ribbies in April by a rookie, it'd probably tell him how many batting gloves that rookie went through during the month and the kid's favorite type of hoagie sammich.
• Or, if all else fails, don't print the stat.
  

Not to be outdone in the popular Trib category of fuzzy math, Sully's study buddy Dave Van Dyck wildly speculates about the presence of every north sider's favorite Racer X, Cuban, in the crowd:

Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks (who fired coach Avery Johnson on Wednesday), has publicly expressed interest in owning the Cubs, but it is still uncertain if he could raise the expected $700 million it would take or whether he could get approval from other MLB owners. Tribune Co. hopes to sell the team by the end of the year, and several groups have expressed interest, although Cuban is the most visible individual suitor.

This is unethical journalism to the nth degree.

DVD very fairly speculates on Cuban's ownership interest in the Cubbies. Cuban likely would bring increased interest, aggressiveness, and competitiveness to the Cubs, the team that's bordering on 100 years between World Series titles and counting. That's newsworthy. The fawning is a little unbecoming, but after untold years of faceless ownership, Cuban could be a fresh breath for the Wrigley regulars.

However, DVD, a Tribune employee and presumed stockholder, cannot resist speculating on a price tag for the ballclub, which has been a favorite pastime from the moment the Lovable Losers approached the auction block.

A modest, reasonable price tag might even be OK, for speculative purposes. For example, stating that the Cubs were expected to fetch at least the $XXX million a prior team sale earned is fair play--after all, the cost of buying into MLB's gold mines is stretching ever upward.

But to pull $700 million out of his hiney isn't speculation, it's auctioneering, and the act is absolutely out of line. We know the Tribune has been bandying about a false-bottom price of $1 billion as the likely cost of the ballclub and Wrigley Field for months now, so DVD's numbers surely don't reflect the combo price. DVD can't even employ the specious price of $500 million in his wild speculation; no, the dutiful stockholder/employee has upped the ante to $700 million, citing it in no small measure as a starting point ("the expected $700 million").

This speculation has no place on the sports page, or anywhere in the Tribune, for that matter, at least without a disclosure accompanying it, per Tribune policy. It certainly has no place being created by a fiction writer the likes of Dave Van Dyck.

--Brett Ballantini