Well shut my mouth.  No sooner do I post that polemic against Carlos Pena's inability to hit, than (the next night) he nails his first homer of the year, a no-doubter over the right field wall at Dodger Stadium.

Go Carlos!

Cubs won tonight, thanks first to Pena's game-tying homerun in the 7th, and then his taking a critical walk in the top of the ( Read more... )

Dear Coach Quade,

This is Carlos Pena.  Universally acclaimed as a great clubhouse guy.  Good dude.

Bad baseball player.

Okay, so he seems pretty good when holding down the fort at first base.  But at the plate?  I'd rather have the pitcher up.

Pena has 2 hits in his last 21 at-bats.  That's a .095 batting average.  He's hitting .157 for the season ( Read more... )

Late last year, the Cubs' veteran coach, Lou Piniella, opted to retire mid-season in order to be with his ailing 90+ year old mother.  The team's third base coach, Mike Quade (KWAH-dee) was selected to fill in as interim coach until the end of the season, at which point a more long-term solution would be selected out of the many qualified ( Read more... )

Reed Johnson hit a walk-off pinch-hit home run in the 11th inning just now.  Cubs win, 2-1 ( Read more... )

The Cubbies managed to get over .500 for the first time since 2009 yesterday, but today's game was a brutal reminder of the team's defensive woes.  In particular, a misplay by Marlon Byrd followed by an official error by Alfonso Soriano led to two runs the Diamondbacks shouldn't have scored, at least not in that play.  Marlon dove for a low line ( Read more... )

Well, shazbat!  Looks like the game today ended on our dear friend Aramis Ramirez hitting into a force out, i.e., with runners on base.  Kosuke on second (walk) and Castro on first (infield hit), to be precise.

Yup, that's Aramis.  Mister Clutch.

Come ON!

Cubs lose to the Pirates, 6-3.  Like the link said, Dempster got hit up by homers, including one grand slam.  Cubs were up by 2 until the slam, and Starlin Castro had a good day.  Cubs even put up 11 hits, which ain't too bad, but when it came time to score those hits... well, they went 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position (RISP).

I can only ( Read more... )

You'll recall at the start of this month, I wrote a post about my enduring faith in Carlos Silva, the burly, oft-troubled pitcher who came to Chicago as a replacement for the clubhouse cancer known as Milton Bradley.

Well, I don't think I wrote about it way back when, but I held out hope that MB would get it together back when he was still a Cubbie ( Read more... )

Going to try to cover a number of topics today, as Opening Day is only a week away and I wanted to hit at least some of these before then.

First off: Aramis a leader?  According to this article, ARam has had some impact on the development of 20-year-old star-in-the-making Starlin Castro.  The details, however, are a little fuzzy, and it comes off as ( Read more... )

I can't find an origin for the name Aramis that doesn't stem from the classic swashbuckler novel.  And yet, in spite of my love for The Three Musketeers, I just can't find it in my heart to love Aramis Ramirez, veteran third-baseman for the Chicago Cubs.  He's been on the team for closing on eight years now, he was a crucial part of their ( Read more... )