Kevin “Cy” Correia continued his dominance of late (seriously, setting aside one bad outing, he’s been pretty awesome for a month now), and Doug Davis couldn’t keep the Pirates under a couple runs despite their Cub-like hitting with runners on base today. I suppose that’s the problem when you allow a bajillion base runners. The errors didn’t help.
The Cubs, of course, made sure to tease us with a bases loaded opportunity in the 8th and then an ultimately meaningless 2-run bomb by Alfonso Soriano in the 9th (his first since May 2).
Most winning teams have half “A” position players, and the other half “C” level players. You start the “A” players every day, and the “C” players (specialty guys, good defense-no hit, or good hit-but slow, etc.) fill in when needed. The Cubs, however have a teamful of “B” players, almost all above average, but none outstanding. Thus on any given day, you can’t anticipate who is going to do good, and who is going to do bad. Soriano plays good one day, stinks the next. Put Baker in instead, same thing, good one day but not the next. The right guy has to be at the plate at the right time, and that’s hard to manage.
Very well put. The Cardinals have been making hay with the A/C model for years.
Interesting way to think about it – you’re prob quite correct.
I hate when I can just tell that the offense isn’t going to do a thing by the 4th inning. It makes watching the games pointless.