At the risk of sounding like a broken record, spring training statistics and results are meaningless. People mostly use them to justify opinions they already held, so far as I can tell.
And like I said yesterday, Lou wouldn't be looking at this crazy new lineup of his unless he saw something in it already. And, sure enough, the early returns have come up rosy:
That lineup experiment with Ryan Theriot batting leadoff and Alfonso Soriano batting second? It just may have passed the experimental stage after Cubs manager Lou Piniella used what might be his Opening Day lineup Thursday.
"We're going to stay in that configuration for a bit and take a good look at it," Piniella said.
And he later drove home the point: "The weather's cold in Chicago when we play the first six weeks or so of the season. And to get [Soriano] to the point where he might have to run [batting first], it's just taking chances."
Which... whatever. He got to see the game today and I was watching Gameday, but I really don't know what convinced him that today's lineup was working. Okay, I do know: he liked the idea of the lineup going into the game, and getting the W didn't hurt the idea. It's like pouring lead or reading tea leaves; you get out of it largely what you put into it. Like I said, spring training results are basically meaningless, so if Lou decides to start acting like some mystic when it comes to justifying his decisions - whatever, they're the decisions he wanted to make anyway, so I don't know what would stop him exactly.
[An aside - Lou has convinced himself that it was a lack of small-ball ability that caused the team's struggles early on last season. I'm more convinced that it was a small sample size effect that worked itself out as the season progressed. Lou seems less likely than I to accept that there are things out of Lou Piniella's control, which I suppose I understand but I am growing more and more frustrated with overall.]
Wittenmyer chimes in, calling this a prelude to a Roberts deal. I'm growing rather calloused to Roberts trade talks; I refuse to believe in any such thing until Roberts is actually traded, if that ever comes to pass.
UPDATE: Bruce Miles is my frakkin' hero. Just... go read it all.
Labels: Alfonso Soriano, Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Lou Piniella, Ryan Theriot
Third prize is you're fired!
1 Comments Published by Colin Wyers on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 7:57 PM.
"I don't like the idea of our pitching staff getting hit around, whether it's spring training of playing tiddly winks," Piniella said.Well that's nice and pointless. "Mortgaging the future for today" is truly a bad idea when "the future" is the regular season and "today" is the meaningless exhibition.
Carlos Zambrano, Rich Hill and Michael Wuertz all pitched well to help the Cubs to a 4-1 lead after seven innings, but poor relief pitching by Ed Campusano and Tim Lahey, aided by en error by Casey McGehee, contributed to a four-run eighth inning in a 5-4 loss.
"I'm getting tired of losing ballgames," a visibly perturbed Piniella said. "Even in spring training."
...
But before he left for the long, two-hour bus ride in rush hour traffic back to Mesa, Piniella said he'd take over some of Larry Rothschild's decision-making on when to use the pitchers.
"I'm going to try to bunch up some good pitching together so hopefully we can win some baseball games," Piniella said.
I get it, I really do; he can't sit around planning for his weekend fantasy draft or read up on the Red Hand of Doom for his Sunday night D&D game when the Cubs keep losing these things. He's got to be a lot closer to this emotionally than me.
Most of my interest at this point is centered on figuring out Lou's idea of his good pitching. That should be informative.
Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Lou Piniella
