The Problem with an Interim Manager Like Mike Quade: Tyler Colvin to Remain in the Outfield

Being the manager of the Chicago Cubs – even in a mere interim capacity – brings with it certain indelicacies. Most notably? The microscope. Every move you make is scrutinized by a rabid pack of irrational freaks.

Today, I am but one of those freaks.

Cubs interim manager Mike Quade took the reigns yesterday, and in his first lineup, there were more than a few surprises: Alfonso Soriano had been dropped to 7th (good move), Geovany Soto was back to 8th (bad move), and Blake DeWitt was batting leadoff (more on that in a bit). But the most surprising move was a guy that didn’t move: Tyler Colvin was back in right field, not at first base, where we’d been told for days he would be playing this series.

And it wasn’t just a one-game aberration, either. Quade says he doesn’t expect to put Colvin at first any time soon.

“Nothing imminent for me there. We’ll pick a spot,” Quade said. “Maybe see him over there in a late-inning game, where maybe it makes sense to do that. It’s something that we’ll look at, but sparingly, probably.”

Colvin, who started in right field, has been working out at first since the Cubs traded three-time Gold Glove Award winner Derrek Lee to the Braves on Wednesday. The rookie hasn’t played first since his sophomore year in college at Clemson. He had his most intense workout Sunday under the tutelage of bench and infield coach Alan Trammell.

“It’ll hold off. I guess I’m not quite ready,” Colvin said. “It’s good to work over there and I’ll do the work on the side and I’ll be ready for it. It’s fine taking fungos the whole time, but game speed, that’s different. Once I get some balls hit hard at me, I’ll see what I do with those.” cubs.com.

Here we see the clear problem with having an interim manager like Mike Quade. Do I mean that Quade is, himself, a problematic manager? Of course not. I’m sure his managerial style is just fine.

The problem is: he’s up for the Cubs full-time gig in 2011. So when it comes to making choices on a game-to-game basis, Quade is going to make the choices that help the team win today – even if the choice is at the expense of the future of the organization. Quade has himself called his interim job an “audition.” Does anyone really believe he’s going to do anything that lessens the chance he’ll win during his audition? More on the conflicting incentives the Cubs have created, after the jump.

Good Luck, Derrek Lee

In mid-November 2003, I was bitter.

The Chicago Cubs had just blown their best chance to head to the World Series in decades – a better chance even than their 4-1 NLCS loss to the San Diego Padres in 1984. They had a rotation built for the playoffs, and Sammy Sosa still crushing. Yes, I was bitter. I was angry.

And one man, more than any other, drew the full thrust of my ire at that time. How I hated him. No, it wasn’t Steve Bartman. It wasn’t even Alex Gonzalez.

How I hated Derrek Lee.

The hate may not have been rational. The Marlins first baseman had not even had a good NLCS against the Cubs – he put up an anemic .188/.235/.344 line, and was largely invisible for the series. But it was his two-run double in the top of the 8th inning of Game 6 that made my salivary glands pump poison. It came right on the heels of the Bartman play and the A-Gonz boot, and tied the game at 3 – and we knew it was only going to get worse.

I hate you, Derrek Lee.

Just a few weeks later, Derrek Lee was a Chicago Cub – traded by a penny-pinching owner who knew how to win in his small market – and I didn’t miss Hee Seop Choi a lick. Suddenly, I loved Derrek Lee!

And it was more than mere I-love-this-guy-because-he’s-a-Cub-and-I-love-all-Cubs love. I realized that I had secretly been a Derrek Lee fan for a while. He was a hulking kind of guy – a guy who’d turned down a basketball scholarship at North Carolina in favor of playing baseball. He was a Gold Glover at first base (something that made all Cubs fans at the time feel atwitter, remembering Mark Grace as fondly as we did), and he was clearly entering his offensive prime.

I love you, Derrek Lee. And I didn’t even know the half of it yet.

In his time with the Cubs, Lee became a star, an offensive force, and a quiet leader. He consistently exemplified what we all wanted to see in a Chicago Cub. He performed; but when he didn’t, he made no excuses, and just kept working. We all – rightly – admired him.

Derrek Lee will always be a part of our collective memory of the 2000s – both for the good and the bad. But one thing is certain: we’re all better for having had him as part of the Chicago Cubs. He will be missed.

Now, having been traded to the Braves in the thick of a pennant race, he’ll have the chance to bookend his time with the Cubs with two championships. Good luck, Derrek. Come October, I’ll be a Braves fan.

Jeff Samardzija Expected to Join Chicago Cubs Soon

On September 1, MLB teams can expand their active roster – usually limited to 25 players – to as many as 40 players; namely, the 40 guys on the 40-man roster. That makes September an interesting time, even for teams completely out of the playoff picture, as fans get to observe youngsters they’ll hopefully see contributing in the near future.

One such September call up is expected to be pitcher Jeff Samardzija. You remember Samardzija, right? He’s the guy who got a five-year, $10 million contract after the Cubs drafted him in the 5th round in 2006 – you know, $100k more than top pick and consensus stud Bryce Harper just got from the Nationals?

Samardzija, who opened the season in the major-league bullpen, has been pitching as a starter at Class AAA Iowa. On Monday, he improved to 10-2 with a 3.05 ERA as Iowa beat Fresno 5-3. He worked 6 innings, giving up 4 hits and 1 unearned run while walking one and striking out five.

The Cubs felt it was a solid outing, with Samardzija pitching at 95 mph and topping out at 98. He also has added a cutter to his repertoire.

“I would expect Jeff here soon,” manager Lou Piniella said. “I don’t make these decisions on who gets called up. But I would expect Jeff to be here. He’s had a really nice Triple-A season, and I’m sure he’s going to deserve this opportunity to come up here and pitch here.” Daily Herald.

Samardzija’s continued stay at AAA while guys like Thomas Diamond and Casey Coleman get shots in the rotation screams “doghouse,” as in, Samardzija is in Lou’s. Thus, color me unconvinced when Piniella says “I don’t make these decisions.” He certainly has plenty of input.

That’s not to say the decisions have been wrong – Samardzija has been tearing up AAA, but he proved last year and earlier this year that he simply did not have big league stuff. He had one decent pitch, and then a couple of crummy ones. Perhaps the Cubs wanted to let him start, and give him plenty of time to develop a truly effective second pitch – which, hopefully with this new cutter, he’s done.

Samardzija may not get a chance to start with the Cubs when he’s called up in September, but he’ll see some action. And then he’ll get a chance to crack the rotation in Spring Training again next year. Hopefully his arsenal, and his attitude, have improved by then.

Is Koyie Hill About to Get the Boot?

Allow me to preface this post with a caveat: I have no “sources” in the Chicago Cubs organization (though you can feel free to shoot me an email if you’d like to become a “source” – there’s no recompense of any kind, but you’ll get to see your name in lights … as “source”).

That said, there is reason to believe that Cubs backup catcher Koyie Hill is not long for the club. Here’s the logic: recently, starting catcher Geovany Soto was placed on the disabled list with a slight sprain in his right shoulder. In a corresponding move, the Cubs called up 23-year-old catching prospect Welington Castillo to take Soto’s roster spot, and split time behind the plate with Hill in Soto’s absence.

Meanwhile, and behind the scenes, the Cubs promoted Robinson Chirinos – arguably the team’s best, albeit oldest, catching prospect – to AAA Iowa, to work behind the plate with Castillo gone.

Why is this remarkable? Well Soto is going to be back soon, and when he comes back, the Cubs will have to move out one of their catchers. Most likely, it’ll be Castillo. But sending Castillo back to Iowa would create a bit of a catching conundrum, with the Cubs’ top two catching prospects both on the same team.

Is it possible that, instead, the Cubs are planning to transition Castillo onto the big team as Soto’s full-time back-up, and are therefore planning to give Koyie Hill the boot? Consider, Hill has never offered very much in the way of offense as a backup. He’s a free agent at the end of the year, and it’s hard to imagine the Cubs bringing him back unless they have no other option to back-up Soto. What better way to find out whether you have a solid backup than to let one of the young kids serve in the role for the last couple of months of the season?

One thing to keep in mind before jumping to any of the conclusions I’m sheparding you toward: ML rosters expand on September 1. That means anyone on the 40-man roster at that time can be up with the big club, and the Cubs could very well let Castillo and Chirinos split time at Iowa for the next few weeks, before calling Castillo back up (or Chirinos, for that matter). It’s also possible that the Cubs don’t expect Soto to return from the DL when his stint is up next week.

Ultimately, it’s unlikely that the Cubs would dump Hill in order to avoid three weeks of organizational discomfort in Iowa. But the fact that they promoted Chirinos – knowing that Castillo would be back to claim his spot in just a couple weeks – instead of letting someone like Steve Clevenger work some time in Iowa is, at the very least, strange. For more on the various Cubs catchers, read our Prospect Primer on Castillo, Chirinos, and Clevenger.

Blake DeWitt is a Chicago Cub, and Brett Wallach and Kyle Smit are Chicago Cubs Prospects

Now that the non-waiver traded deadline has passed, we can all look back confidently and say, “yeah, I knew that Ted Lilly and Ryan Theriot were going to get dumped.” And in retrospect, it’s probably fair to give ourselves that prescience. Theriot, a non-tender candidate, simply didn’t have a future with the Cubs. Lilly, a free agent, has more value now to another team than to the Cubs. It was obvious that they were going to go – they had to go. Right?

Now we’ll apply that same level of magical hindsight to evaluate whether the return for those two guys who had to go was adequate. Surely you can now see the irony that will inform the entire analysis. We allow ourselves to believe that we all already knew that Lilly and Theriot just had to be moved, no matter the cost, and now we’ll pick-pick-pick at the return the Cubs got from a team that also knew that Lilly and Theriot just had to be moved. Maybe we shouldn’t be disappointed, no matter what we find. A full analysis of the players received from the Dodgers, and of the deal itself, after the jump

On Free Agent Draft Compensation and Making Trades

This time of year, trade ideas are thrown around like so many flying fish in Seattle. Most will never happen – indeed, most could never happen – but it’s still fun. Let’s send this overpriced, skill-declining guy to this team for these seven top 100 prospects. I could totally do this GM thing!

Increasingly, however, pundits and bloggers are tossing some poo in the proverbial punch-bowl: draft pick compensation.

As they explain it, when considering trading a soon-to-be free agent veteran, one must also consider the fact that, if the team simply kept the player, they would totally get draft pick compensation for him at the end of the year. That’s pretty much how those folks leave the discussion – as if mana from heaven, the draft picks just float down upon the lucky team. Grrr! Don’t trade soon-to-be free agents!!!!1!!!1!!!!

But here’s the thing about draft pick compensation. It ain’t that simple. Or exclamation point-y. And for the 2010 Chicago Cubs, knowing the finer points of draft pick compensation is critical to understand the moves the Cubs make – and the ones they don’t. Get your draft pick compensation knowledge on, after the jump

Lou Piniella Wants Tyler Colvin and Starlin Castro to Stay at the Top of the Order

Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella has never been a completely conventional guy (Carlos Zambrano to the bullpen?), but neither has he been a statistical renegade – eschewing stats in favor of his “gut,” as former Cubs manager Dusty Baker was wont to do. So when Lou put rookies Tyler Colvin and Starlin Castro together at the top of the order this weekend, it was fair to assume he was just trying a little something out, but would soon come to his senses.

I guess his gut got the best of him.

The Cubs’ continuing look toward the future could involve an extended look in the present at rookies Tyler Colvin and Starlin Castro batting first and second.

Manager Lou Piniella, who batted them back-to-back atop the lineup for the second straight game, said he wants to see how it works for a while and has considered flip-flopping them in the top spots.

As teammates in the minors, Castro batted ahead of Colvin, usually in the 2-spot, with Colvin batting third.

”That’s something we talked about, but we figured the 2-hole was better for Castro,” Piniella said. ”Colvin was a college player, more experienced. Castro hits behind the runner well. It doesn’t really matter, one or two. Let’s keep it this way for a while and see what happens.” CHICAGO SUN-TIMES.

To be sure, Colvin and Castro are doing many great things in their respective rookie seasons. But getting on base with any kind of regularity is not one of them.

Colvin, thanks to 20 pounds of added muscle, is driving the ball like he never has before. His .535 slugging percentage screams middle of the order run-producer. But his paltry .318 OBP screams it even louder. In no universe is that a guy you want leading off, and it defies logic to pretend otherwise.

As for Castro, he may someday be a great fit in the 2 or 3-hole, but at present, he’s probably a better fit in the 1-hole. He’s got a .345 OBP, and he runs the bases as well as anyone on the team. Putting him in a role where he’s regularly expected to give himself up, or perhaps run the bases behind someone else makes no sense.

Zambranogate: Carlos Zambrano Says It was Derrek Lee’s Fault

As the World Turns…

Video of Zambranogate shows the pitcher storming into the dugout after giving up four runs in the first inning on Friday, shouting – at no one in particular – and gesticulating wildly. Derrek Lee can be seen shouting “shut the f*ck up” to Zambrano, who turns, and directs his anger more visibly at Lee. All reports – from writers, the players, and management – indicated that Zambrano’s initial yelling, though not directed at Derrek Lee’s face, was about Lee’s play in the first inning, as well as other Cubs.

Carlos Zambrano apparently says that’s not the way it happened.

Zambrano already is calling his actions Friday ”completely misunderstood” and blaming Derrek Lee for turning it into a big deal by confronting him during his ranting and raving after the White Sox’ four-run first inning.

”All he wanted to do was pump the team up. It was completely misunderstood,” a source close to Zambrano said, adding that Lee ”took it personal” and told Zambrano to ”shut the f— up.”

Yet team sources say Zambrano’s rant — much of which was in Spanish — included yelling, ”This team is horse s—-!”

That’s when Lee is caught on camera intervening and telling Zambrano to shut up.

They had to be separated.

So, about Zambrano’s version?

”That’s not the way we see it,” said Alfonso Soriano, who planned to call Zambrano on Saturday night. ”If he explains, maybe we can see it the way his friend sees it. But what he said wasn’t right.”

As one Cub put it, ”Anybody who believes [Zambrano's version] must be smoking something.”

Asked if teammates could forgive Zambrano, Soriano said, ”I don’t know.” CHICAGO SUN-TIMES.

Zambrano has never had a vocal group of supporters in the Cubs clubhouse, but I honestly never believed it would come to this. Teammates are going out of their way to criticize Zambrano – something that, although common for the Cubs in recent years, you just never see on other teams.

He’s not helping himself by staying out of contact with the Cubs (though Carlos saw fit to go out to dinner with Ozzie Guillen the night he was dismissed from the team), but if there is this much hostility directed toward him over an incident that appears, on first glance, to be little more than Carlos being Carlos, that suggests that he’s probably right to keep his distance.

It also suggests that there’s a lot more than meets the eye going on here. A few years ago, Zambrano lost it on teammate Michael Barrett in the dugout. Carlos chased him down in the clubhouse, and beat his ass. There was some flap over it, but nothing compared to what’s happening now. Might that be because there’s more going on behind the scenes?

When was the last time you heard a manager and GM – and teammates – being so vocally critical of a player? Ok, bad question to ask Cubs fans. But again I say, on other teams, this shit just doesn’t happen. I’m not getting into the whole the-Cubs-pick-the-wrong-players-and-take-on-unnecessary-risks thing; I’m just saying that there’s probably a whole lot more to this story than we’ve yet heard about.

And Zambrano offering his side is just the beginning.

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