The Cubs Chronicle

Major League Baseball reduced Kyle Farnsworth’s three-game suspension to two games without Farnsworth even appealing.

To avoid having only 10 pitchers for those two games, the Cubs recalled Juan Cruz, who had been pitching well at Iowa, and sent down Bobby Hill, who has hardly played at all since being called up.

UPDATE (11:50pm): Friday’s Chicago Tribune reports Dusty Baker “said he’ll continue using Cruz in middle and long relief, just as he did before Cruz was sent down.”

After Bobby Brownlie’s near no-hitter, and two more good pitching performances, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports that Daytona, the Cubs’ high Single-A team, has not allowed an earned run in its last 27 innings. They still managed to lose yesterday’s ballgame, though.

Cubs 1st-round draft pick Ryan Harvey took batting practice at Wrigley yesterday, reports the Daily Herald. And while it’s not exactly the same as hitting a home run in your first professional at-bat, Harvey did hit the first BP pitch he saw out to rightfield.

Finally, the Cubs have signed their 4th-round draft pick, catcher Tony Richie out of Florida St., and assigned him to low-A Lansing, according to the Lansing State Journal.

From the Chicago Tribune recap of today’s game:

[T]he bullpen, usually a dependable and efficient unit, had an awful day. Five relievers—left-handers Mike Remlinger and Mark Guthrie and right-handers Antonio Alfonseca, Joe Borowski and loser Todd Wellemeyer—gave up 11 runs and 11 hits in four innings.

After last year’s terrible performance by the bullpen, it’s really nice that today’s performance is the exception rather than the rule.

Of course, it also doesn’t hurt my mood that the Diamondbacks have turned into a good team again, sweeping the Astros.

The Associated Press reports that Kyle Farnsworth was suspended three games for his fight with Reds pitcher Paul Wilson. The AP indicates that Farnsworth thought the suspension was fair, and is thus unlikely to appeal it.

Wilson, as the instigator of the fight, was suspended five games.

I had a lot of fun watching the Cubs hit six home runs on the way to defeating the Brewers 9-1 tonight (yes, it’s my wedding anniversary, but the official Clark & Addison wife chose this week to come down with pneumonia, so instead of going out, we watched the Cubs). In fact, I have fun everytime the Cubs act like they’re a human playing the computer in RBI Baseball.

I didn’t think I’d ever see someone hit a home run like Glenallen Hill hit when he hit one that landed on the rooftop of one of the apartment buildings across Waveland. But Sammy Sosa’s second home run tonight, off of Luis Vizcaino, was just as amazing. In fact, it may have gone further than Hill’s. Fox Sports Net estimated the distance at 520 feet. The ball was hit just to right of the building Hill hit and looked to me like if it had been hit to the left a bit would have also landed on that building. Instead, it went down a side street. If Sosa can get on a hot streak, perhaps Dennis Goodman’s wish for a team hot streak will come to pass.

Milwaukee’s starting pitcher was Ruben Quevedo, whom the Cubs knocked out in the 1st inning. I was disappointed when the Cubs traded Quevedo to the Brewers in July 2001 for the half-season services of David Weathers. At the time, the Cubs weren’t as stocked in pitching prospects as they now are. And I thought Quevedo had shown that he could be a good major league starter, if only Don Baylor wouldn’t lose track of his pitch counts. He hasn’t done anything since arriving in Milwaukee, however, that would justify my disappointment with that trade. And I have to agree with Steve Stone, who said tonight that Quevedo looked like he wasn’t completely healthy. His fastball never got higher than 86mph. He’s still 24, though, so he has some time to turn his career around.

UPDATE (11:00pm): Scott Lange has posted a picture of the last known position in the solar system of the ball hit by Sosa.

UPDATE II (6/25/03 10:15pm): The Waveland Chronicles has a first-hand account of Sosa’s homer. (Link via Let’s Play Two.)

UPDATE III (6/26/2003 11:05am): According to the Daily Herald, “WGN radio’s David Kaplan said he walked off Sammy Sosa’s tape-measure home run Tuesday night and reported the ball carried 538 feet. Sosa homered over the left-field wall onto Kenmore Avenue.”

Baker takes a lesson away from Sox series (Mike Kiley, Chicago Sun-Times, 6/24/2003)

“Mikey79″ alerted me to this in the comments section of an earlier post: Instead of pitching Kerry Wood and Mark Prior over the next two days, as scheduled, Dusty Baker has moved Prior back to Thursday in order to have Shawn Estes pitch on Wednesday. Here’s the reasoning:

The Cubs were mindful of what happened against the White Sox over the weekend, when Estes lasted only one inning Friday and Matt Clement pitched only 3-1/3 the next day. If both pitchers should struggle again and fail to go at least five innings, manager Dusty Baker would rather they didn’t pitch on consecutive days to avoid overtaxing his bullpen. Todd Wellemeyer had to pick up Estes with four innings of work, and Kyle Farnsworth had to go 2-2/3 in relief of Clement.

Shouldn’t this (along with calling up Francis Beltran for one day just to cover for Estes) tell someone in the Cubs organization that they would perhaps be better off replacing Estes in the rotation. The Cubs, though, have never been known to understand the notion of sunk costs.

In an unrelated note, but in the same article, Mr. Kiley writes regarding the Cubs offense over the course of the franchise’s existence:

Can anyone remember a vaunted Cubs offense that just won’t quit, a collective of guys that stood out as a force? This is an organization that has featured a number of individual hitting stars . . . but no team offenses for a long time that were worthy of making any scrapbooks.

He rests this assertion entirely on batting average:

Look in the record book, and 1945 remains the year that the Cubs died off. Not only was it the year of their last World Series appearance, it was the last time they hit as well as .277. Only the 1993 Cubs have reached as high as .270 ever since.

Last year’s .246 batting average was unusually low. But this year’s .260 is nothing to make anyone too hopeful that the long championship drought is over, even if .260 was all the 1984 club hit when it advanced to the National League Cham-pionship Series before losing to the San Diego Padres.

Granted, the Cubs have had a lot of teams that have struggled to score runs. But both the ‘84 and ‘89 teams led the league in runs scored. Why can’t we make scrapbooks of those teams?

And the 1945 club? They were fourth in the league in runs scored out of eight teams. That team won because of its pitching.

In any case, accepting the assertion that Cubs offenses have in general struggled to score runs, who’s to blame? Mr. Kiley doesn’t blame management for poor roster construction. No, the culprit is actually Wrigley Field:

If you want someone to blame, point a finger at Wrigley Field. It’s not a hitter’s park and never has been.

. . . .

Wrigley may be a place where people come to gasp in adoration. But it’s also a sacrificial altar where Cubs offenses have gone up in smoke for decades.

Mr. Kiley, let me introduce you to baseball-reference.com, where we can look up the actual facts regarding Wrigley’s effect on offense. Wrigley has really only turned into a pitcher’s park since (and including) the 2000 season. Wrigley increased offense by as much as 7% as recently as 1999. For the rest of the 1990’s, Wrigley essentially hovered around being a league average park for offense.

But for three decades – in the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s – Wrigley regularly increased offense by between 5%-10%. Its reputation as an offensive park was created during those decades. And it was a reputation honestly earned. Wrigley went through a stretch, like the current one, in the 1940’s where it played the part of a pitcher’s park. But for much of its existence prior to the 60’s, it was a league average park.

In any case, blaming Wrigley as the cause of poor offensive performance by the Cubs through the years ignores the fact that we have metrics (see here, e.g.) for measuring offensive performance which removes home ballparks as a factor.

UPDATE (7:30am): It appears Dennis Goodman at Northside Lounge and I both spent our early mornings writing about the same thing.

According to the Sun-Times‘ Mike Kiley, “[t]here shouldn’t be an argument over the Cubs’ first-half MVP. Closer Joe Borowski wins in a landslide.”

Really? In a landslide? Granted, Borowski has been great, but it seems to me that Kerry Wood and Mark Prior – both of whom have thrown close to three times as many innings as Borowski – have been a bit more valuable.

Cubs’ Brownlie barely misses no-no (Sean Kernan, Daytona Beach News-Journal, 6/23/2003)

Reader Buck alerted me to this last night: Cubs 2002 1st round draft pick Bobby Brownlie almost threw a no-hitter on Sunday for the Daytona Cubs against Vero Beach, albeit in a 7-inning game (Daytona was scheduled to play a double-header, thus the 7-inning game). He had 2 strikes on Willy Aybar with 2 outs in the 7th when Aybar hit a double. As it was, Brownlie recorded his first professional shutout. He walked 1 while striking out 4.

All-in-all, a pretty nice day for Cubs pitching on Sunday. Carlos Zambrano, Juan Cruz for Iowa, Jae Kuk Ryu for Lansing, and Brownlie were all amazing.

Reader Buck sent an email to Lansing Lugnuts radio broadcaster Jim Tocco asking about pitching prospect Andy Sisco, who has been on the disabled list since May 7, and outfield prospect Felix Pie. Here’s Mr. Tocco’s response:

Sisco will make a two-inning rehab outing on June 30 at West Michigan. He’s been throwing on the side with no pain.

Felix Pie looks great. I’m convinced he’s the real thing. Only three things: 1.) He needs better judgment of the strike zone. He’s good at fouling off pitches, but he’s going to need to take more walks as a leadoff man to bring his on-base percentage up. 2.) He needs to improve his bunting. He’s only bunted for two base hits this year, and with speed like that, he should get one per series. 3.) He needs to add muscle so that he can be a realistic five-tool player.

Sisco had a 1.78 ERA in 30.1 IP when he went on the DL. Pie is currently hitting .296/.360/.401.