Half-Baked

Three words come to mind when I think about the Cubs' performance over the last two weeks.

One is "shameful."

Another is "ignominious."

The other is one I can't say here (there could be children reading, after all), but it's what gets swept off the street after, say, the Fourth of July parade in your hometown.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the current losing streak is how we've been losing games. When we get good pitching and play good defense, the offense fails to take advantage of opportunities (as indicated by the fairly sizable runners left on base numbers last week).

And when the offense scores some runs (which, lately, means three runs), the pitching goes to hell, and the defense starts throwing the ball around like they're auditioning for the lead role in The Steve Sax Story.

To all the gab that I hear about how all our woes can be traced back to losing Lee, I say: horse hockey! Not even Derrek Lee at his best last year could have saved this bunch of sad sacks.

At the beginning of the year, I said the Cubs wouldn't get any better if they didn't get better at getting on base. Well, we haven't. We're staying off base in droves.

It's a simple truth that I learned reading Bill James: you can't score runners who aren't on base. I'm looking at you, Juan Pierre. You too, Jacques Jones.

If Pierre and (to a lesser extent, which is really the only extent that you can count on from him) Jones don't kick their games up a notch, we're sunk. It won't matter if Lee comes back tomorrow and hits .800 for the rest of the year. It won't matter if Wood, Miller, and Prior come back next week and combine for thirty starts apiece, because they won't be able to throw the thirty perfect games they'll need to in order to have half a chance of winning.

What to do? Well, if you listen to Cub Fan and the Chicago punditocracy, all our problems disappear if GM Jim Hendry would just go out and get better players. Somehow, even that blinding bit of insight looks rational when compared with Dr. Phil's repeated calls for Jones or Matt Murton to take over at first base in order to get Felix Pie into the lineup. Hell, Dr. Phil has even suggested putting Pie at first base!

But however distasteful it is to agree with Dr. Phil, I have to agree with one of his comments today: why bother having John Mabry as back-up first baseman if he's not going to play first base?

With Lee out, Baker has made Todd Walker the everyday first baseman. This has the unhappy effect of installing a Jerry Hairston-Neifi Perez platoon of sorts at second base. That ain't good.

I don't know if Mabry would be any better. But the bar is set pretty low when you just have to outhit Neifi. Why not let Mabry play a little first base? Will it make the team play worse, Dusty?

Can help be on the way? The Cubs recalled Ryan Theriot and sent down Michael Restovich (another first baseman who didn't play). Theriot almost made the squad out of training camp, and Baker has hinted that he will be giving a shot at second base.

Theriot's bat isn't going to make anyone forget Ryne Sandberg. But, as I said before, the bar is set way low.

In recent days, a new subplot is making the rounds: will Dusty make it through the year?

There has been a sizable contingent of Cub Fans who have been anti-Baker since Day One. Needless to say, recent events have gained converts to their cause.

Will playing musical second basemen or firing Dusty actually accomplish anything? Or is it just rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg (to steal a phrase)?

I've been watching the Cubs for over thirty years now, so I have some experience with bad teams. But what makes this year really frustrating is that this wasn't supposed to be a bad team. Maybe not a great team, but at the very least an OK team.

At this point, we'd need divine intervention to get to OK. Unfortunately, there is no help on the immediate horizon. For better or (probably) worse, we're stuck with this lot.