Thunder Matt continues to get crapped on

March 27th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Has there ever been a time in Matt Murton’s career that Jim Hendry wasn’t trying to trade him? Hendry tried to trade him during his rookie season, when Matt hit .321/.386/.521 in 140 AB’s. He tried to trade Murton the next year, when 455 AB’s saw him hit .297/.365/.444, confirming the kinds of numbers people expected. And here he is trying to trade Murton again this year, saying the Cubs don’t have a place for him on the five-man bench. Apparently, Mike Fontenot is preferable.

There are arguments about Murton’s “versatility,” and whether or not he can play in center field, and whether or not he should be confined to the fifth-outfielder’s role again this season. But God damnit, is there nowhere on the Cubs lineup for a developing power hitter with good speed on the basepaths? Is there nowhere for a guy who, even if he hits PECOTA’s 50th percentile projection this season, will OBP .360 and slug .460? Nowhere? You’d rather have Mike Fucking Fontenot?

The bright spot here is that Murton could, if given the time to prove himself a potentially elite power guy, draw decent value in trade. Since the Cubs suck at developing position player talent (and their pitching development hasn’t been so hot recently, either), trading Murton for a couple of young plus prospects sounds just dandy. But when you do everything but released the ginger one from your roster, you make it blatantly obvious that Murton has no value to you except in trade, which therein lowers his trade value. What. The. Fuck.

This normally would have been written over at FanHouse, but because this is so fucking ridiculous, and I want to fucking swear a whole fucking lot, I’m fucking writing it here. Shit.

This E.M. Swift dude has me captivated

November 22nd, 2006 | Posted by PostmanE

I’ll try to make this as quick as possible, as it’s late, I want to sleep and I know you don’t pay attention for longer than 10 seconds anyway. But this feels worthy of your noble attention, if not of a full-on analysis.

There’s actually nothing to analyze here - just E.M. Swift saddening me by telling me the God’s honest truth:

I say this with authority, since I grew up in Chicago and since most of my childhood friends are stupidly loyal Cubs fans. They blindly cheer the team down every dark alley it leads them. They don’t boycott the Cubs. They don’t boycott WGN. They don’t boycott the Chicago Tribune, despite having a perfectly decent alternative in the Chicago Sun-Times. They don’t switch allegiance to the White Sox, who won the 2005 World Series and were in the hunt in 2006 until the final week. Cubs fans are enablers. They show up, win or lose, shell out their dollars, and enable the team to be bad and the Tribune Company to be a bad caretaker of their dreams.

OK, one more:

Here are my predictions. Cubs fans will again buy more than three million tickets in 2007. The Tribune Company will sell itself, which will mean a new owner for the Chicago Cubs and a real reason for Cubs fans to hope. Soriano will not stick in center field. And the team, struggling to break .500, will make it 99 years without a World Series championship.

I am a Cubs fan, and I agree with all of this. I thought I didn’t for a few minutes there … and then it sank in. This is all absolutely correct. The Cubs are a bad team, spending like crazy on the wrong areas, owned by a borderline-evil parent company so driven by the bottom line it’s willing to sacrifice quality journalism AND quality baseball until a sale is just around the corner. That’s all completely true, and there’s nothing I can (tangibly) do about it, except to stop supporting a baseball team I love.

So don’t mind me: I’m going to go down some Prozac, write some emo poetry about Jim Hendry, and paint my fingernails black. It’s getting awfully depressing in here.

Seperating head from soul: The Greg leaves Chicago

August 1st, 2006 | Posted by PostmanE

It’s easy to find a proper excuse for why the Cubs had to trade Greg Maddux. He’s not great anymore, and his $9 million deal is a bit too much to stomach on even the healthiest of payroll appetites.

The reality is, though, that the Cubs had to trade anyone. Jim Hendry had to do something. His name hasn’t risen above culpability for this season’s malaise quite far enough; this team, while thoughtfully constructed, just isn’t built the way it had to be to insure success. Where’s the relief pitching? Where are the extra starters? Where are the non-Cedeno, non-Murton prospects to fill holes inevitably created when the injury duo (Prior, Wood) go down again? This team had no backup plan, no insurance policy, and Hendry had to trade Maddux today, lest he look unconcerned.

All that’s well and good, but the problem is: I really, really like Greg Maddux. He’s still functionally good (his WHIP was 1.28 as of the trade; not fantastic, but not horrid), and owns - dare I say the naughty word - intangibles. (Gasp!) He brings a bit of experience and leadership to a clubhouse that hasn’t been stable the entire year.

But that’s not the only reason I like him. Maddux was the Cub gone Brave success story. He left the tortured franchise early in his career to go off and do miraculous things. And then he came back, full of the promise of redemption, ready to bolster a dynamic, fireballing rotation with a little veteran moxy.

It didn’t happen. That’s obvious. It’s also obvious that this is probably an OK trade for the Cubs, that Maddux wasn’t doing much good in Chicago for much longer. It doesn’t help, of course, that acquiring Cesar Izturis is about as exciting as acquiring a Cesar Izturis Donruss rookie edition. Not a whole lot of value here.

So the emotional attachment is still there. And for all of the rigors of intelligent observation, the glaring thought that Mad Dog could have ended his career in Wrigley, spilling from the dugout onto the field after a routine World Series-ending ground ball, is a sharp pang. Like seeing Michael vulnerable to mortality, it doesn’t at all feel acceptable.