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yeah jim hendry is just plain ol awful, there's no way around it. the fact that he purportedly whined to ricketts that THE BIG EVIL TRIBUNE COMPANY MADE ME GO OUT AND OUTBID EVERYONE FOR SORIANO BY ~30-40MIL AND SIGN FUKUDOME and whatnot and THE FACT THAT IT WORKED is perhaps the most chilling thing for the future of the cubs.
it's times like this that i'm glad i'm an expos fan; a veritable free-floating baseball entity not subject to all of the enmity towards that team which cubs fans purport to love.
anyways, i'm one of the few who still loves him some carlos zambrano. the dude is entertainment pure and simple. i've long called him chuckles "dinner and a show" zambrano and loved it when he'd talk to god in between pitches ("YOU MOTHERFUCKER THAT WAS STRIKE") and done dumbass things like broken a bat over his knee when he strikes out against the pirates with a 1-0 lead.
that said, the cubs horribly mismanaged zambrano this year. he gets shelled on opening day (8ER in 1.1IP) then turns around and gives up 3 and strikes out 9 in 7 IP against cincy for the win, then has a meh ~3ER 5.1IP ND against the brewers, then on 4/20 gives 2ER and strikes out 9 mets in 6 innings for a no decision. at this point the cubs were looking like they were about to start taking on water so for some reason i cannot fathom, they decide that tehy NEED THE HOT STARTS BY TOM FUCKING GORZELLANY AND CARLOS SILVA and put zambrano in the bullpen. he faulters, seeing as carlos tends to walk too many guys and be a high whip guy and his K rate had been declining over the years (although it HAD been up in his early slate of starts) and maybe it's some lesson to the team so they have more leverage with soriano and fukudome and others? who knows. lou stopped managing when the cubs went on cruise control en route to the division title in 2008 and he never really started managing afterwards.
anyways, they eventually come to their senses and realize they not only are wasting their staff ace, but completely minimizing his trade value. they have to bring him back slowly on pitch counts and he's meh, but then he gets it together against the lowly angels and then boom, he has a 4 run 1st inning against the whitesox shows DA FIRE AND DA PASHIN and all of a sudden everyone who didnt like carlos had their excuse to banish him, because YOU DONT MESS WITH DERREK LEE. HIS KID HAS OCULAR CANCER OR SOMETHING. HE'S A GOOD GUY. ASK THE BRAVES. then, of course, he comes back to the bullpen because even for $18 million a yer STARTING IS A PRIVLEDGE, NOT A RIGHT ON TEH CUBS. eventually carlos comes back to form, and pulls a mat latos and becomes allergic to giving up more than 2 ER in a start, and low and behold hes 8-0 or 9-0 since his return from banishment and got his overall ERA down to 3.33 and looks like he could be that dude again. keep in mind, back when carlos was good he tended to get hit hard when he threw harder in the mid-upper 90s, as his pitches straightened out and he lost movement. if he can keep that low 90s groove going, he'll be good. i have no worries about him. the problem is that the cubs basically tanked his season by trying to send a message to both him and the team, when in reality he was looking like he was out of that funk from the horrible first start.
as for the rest of the moves.... shit. what can i say? hendry is god awful. even tho he eventually melted down, he traded dontrelle willis for.... matt clement? ricky nolasco (who seems to be a bit of a mental case) for juan pierre, whom he promptly traded for.... a bag of potato chips? phil nevin, reknown baseball philanthropist, was the answer to 1B in 05 when the cubs really started sinking the dusty regime. or how about dusty in and of himself? or lou? i mean girardi was throwing himself at the cubs and yeah the word about him was that he had some major-league redass coming out of FLA, but then again as an expos fan shouting at jeffrey loria in public and telling him he's a dumbass piece of shit is the lord's work in my opinion. girardi was only given a courtesy interview, from what i've heard. so you bring in lou, who came here thinking he had the team to coast into a good title shot and thusly retire looking like a magic man, or if not collect a bunch of cash for doing jack shit and drinking scotch (lou strikes me as a scotch man for some reason) and i mean.... we're giving hendry a chance to hire the NEXT manager?! huh?
his dumbass contracts have gotten the cubs here. fortunately you're now in the process of leaving the soriano contract as there's only FOUR MORE YEARS FOUR MORE YEARS and like, hey the man said it himself this season... the cubs are only about 4 moves away from turning this around and scaring the shit out of the phillies.
it's an insult to cubs fans that ricketts came in and allowed the clown college to continue. i mean, maybe i can get the first year you dont want to do too much and keep some status quo... but even having crane kenney as an executive hood ornament is an insult. at least jim hendry has completely withered and put on weight and looked closer and closer to death with each passing day since he got the job... i mean, he's run this team into a hole where barring a miracle (castro cycles up, zambrano pulls a 25-3 year out of his ass, diamond or colemen turns out to be a 15 game winner, dempster miraculously has a 2.75 ERA, and darwin barney wins a batting title) they won't do jack shit for 3-4 years... fuck. how the hell the cubs can retain this guy is a mystery to me, and should be on any CUBS FAN's (not to be confused with baseball fans... we're different animals) mind when the annual ticket increases come and it's time to commit to those tickets in february.
i'm kind of hoping that the cubs keep quade at this juncture, as girardi is using them for leverage barring a cataclysmic fuck up in the bronx. if quade turns into a company guy and starts spouting out platitudes after being an actual manager, kind of like brenly backtracked after his "dead-ass team" remark, well then.... sucks to be a cubs fan. sucks to be you.
(at least you have a team... sob... vive les expos is the most ironic battlecry ever!!!!)
_________________ Curious Hair wrote: Les Grobstein's huge hog is proof that God has a sense of humor, isn't it?
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