CHICAGO – For the majority of the Chicago Cubs’ 2009 season, their manager, Lou Piniella, has worn a look best described as amused disgust. He forces a smile to shield himself from the reality: His Cubs are a flawed ballclub, plagued by injuries and inconsistency, and deserve their place among baseball’s biggest underachievers.
Just don’t mistake Piniella’s countenance – or the seeming lack of aggression that accompanies it – as a sign he lost interest and does not care. He said Friday he expects to be in the Cubs’ dugout again in 2010, the last year of his contract.
“My plans are to come back next year,” Piniella told Yahoo! Sports before Chicago’s 17-2 blowout against Pittsburgh that halted a five-game losing streak.
Piniella’s status for next season came into question in late June, when he would not commit to managing next year even though the Cubs exercised a $4 million option last September. The organization always assumed Piniella would manage the Cubs next season, and that has not changed.
“It’s not even a discussion for us,” Cubs general manager Jim Hendry said. “He’ll be the manager for us next year unless he chooses different.”
Should he return, the 65-year-old Piniella chooses a team defined by a century of futility, a silly curse and the special sort of fan that tosses a beer on an opponent mid-catch. Managing the Cubs is the job of a masochist, and this year has been so filled with pratfalls that it borders on sadistic, too.
There is the matter of the disabled list. The Cubs’ DL has been more like a disabled novella. Their top four starters have all spent time on it – Carlos Zambrano(notes) and Ted Lilly(notes) are there now – and their fifth, Randy Wells(notes), started the year in the minor leagues. Third baseman Aramis Ramirez(notes) dislocated his shoulder in early May and remains sidelined. Catcher Geovany Soto(notes), the reigning NL Rookie of the Year, missed a month and still can’t get his OPS much above .700. Outfielder Alfonso Soriano(notes) dislocated a pinkie and hit the DL, where he might’ve been better served to stay.
Soriano’s outright erosion in the third season of an eight-year, $136 million contract is frightening, as was the early season play of free-agent Milton Bradley(notes), whose .394 on-base percentage is offset by an equal slugging percentage. The rest of the Cubs’ lineup, save for Derrek Lee(notes) and Kosuke Fukudome(notes) a hodgepodge of mediocrity, hadn’t scored more than six runs in August until Friday’s outburst.
Compound that with sloppy defense, bad baserunning and the team’s pending sale preventing any moves to fortify the team in July, and the Cubs are stuck with the same team that went from eight All-Stars in 2008 to one this year. The talent, obviously, is there. Some synapse just isn’t firing.
“We’ve taken a big step back,” Hendry said. “We need to get going. I thought we got it back going after the break. A week ago, we were in first place. We still have time to get in. You don’t get anywhere with coulda, shoulda, wouldas. We’ll survive. You can’t dwell on what happened. The record is already in the columns.”
True, the Cubs did lead the NL Central after going 14-5 following the All-Star break. Eleven times in that span they held opponents to three runs or less, and Piniella didn’t have to feign praise. Finally, he had something to feel good about.
Not since an ill-fated three-year trial managing Tampa Bay had Piniella faced any such troubles. He oversaw the Cubs’ worst-to-first run in 2007 and won 97 games last season. Both ended in first-round postseason bomb-outs, of course. Didn’t matter: Lou was the first manager since, who – Don Zimmer? Jim Frey? Leo Durocher? Charlie Grimm? – that almost everyone on the North Side supported. He was gruff. He was bombastic. He was right.
Until the losing started – and losing isn’t really accurate, since the Cubs are 59-55. Piniella has never taken to it well. The Devil Ray years wore his patience and grew his belly. He found incredible success in his two spots prior to Tampa – winning a regular-season record 116 games in 2001 with Seattle and a World Series in 1990 with Cincinnati – and handled the New York Yankees about as well as any manager under George Steinbrenner in the 1980s.
“It’s been tough on us,” Piniella said. “I’m the first to admit it. But why complain about it. Nobody wants to hear it, and the other team basically doesn’t care.”
Actually, the other teams relish it. Of the nine franchises with $100 million-plus payrolls – the Cubs’ $135 million ranks third, behind both New York teams – only the Mets, Cubs and Astros would not make the playoffs today. The Cubs are a group of haves that have not done diddly.
“It’s been a long season,” Piniella said. “It has been grinding. It’s tiring.”
And still, Piniella wants more. Probably. The Cubs are only 4½ games behind St. Louis. One sustained run and baseball in October isn’t far-fetched. The Cubs’ starting pitching, when healthy, matches up with any team’s, even if their relievers carry the unholy stench of gasoline and hazardous materials. Should they brave the NL, winning four games against the AL’s best team isn’t the least bit inconceivable.
That happens, and Richard Daley steps aside for Mayor Lou.
More likely is the Cubs’ season dying a slow and painful death, error by error, mistake by mistake, hair-graying blunder by hair-graying blunder, leaving Piniella a real decision to make. A lucrative – and easy, by comparison – television career beckons. He’d make a mint giving speeches on leadership and confronting authority figures.
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