Paul Maholm is Frustrated and Other Bullets

It’s an off-day for the Cubs, who’ll try to collect themselves after starting the year 3-7, losing all three of their series so far this season. Happy Monday!

  • Paul Maholm was the not-so-tough-luck loser again yesterday, giving up six earned runs in just four innings of work (again). He’s trying to stay positive. “It was kind of the same thing as the first start — you give them base runners and they took advantage of it,” Maholm said. “It’s frustrating but I’m going to bust it this week and make sure I get through it and I get back to where I was.” I expressed some concerns about Maholm last week, and those concerns remain. It’s not as if any of the pitching “depth” is really pushing for Maholm’s job right now – and it is still only two starts – so he’ll have time to turn things around.
  • One of the more active Cubs on Twitter, Maholm was getting both grief and support last night. What an age we live in.
  • The Sun-Times recently ran an article about the lack of African American players on Major League Baseball teams, particularly highlighting that Marlon Byrd is the only black player on either the Cubs or White Sox. For the article, the Sun-Times used a picture of Byrd with the title “Black Hole.” Byrd was upset at the usage, in part because he felt like it was a shot at his poor performance to start the season.
  • Another random waiver claim? How about Rich Thompson, a 27-year-old formerly excellent Angels reliever, who started out the year brutally (and presumably the Angels don’t like what they see beyond the stats), and was just designated for assignment. Taking a chance on a 27-year-old formerly (as in 2010 and 2011) excellent reliever seems like it’s the kind of move the Cubs will strongly be considering. The thing on Thompson, though, is that the Angels are going to try and trade him before placing him on waivers (which a team must do, if at all, within the first seven days of designating a player for assignment – so, he could be waived at any point in the next five days or so). I’m not sure the Cubs would care to trade for Thompson, so they’ll probably just wait to see if he’s waived, and, if he is, whether the Angels are willing to let him go for nothing.
  • Today marks the 40th anniversary of Burt Hooten’s no-hitter with the Cubs. At the time, he looked like a studly young pitcher who was going to tear it up with the Cubs for years – he didn’t just spin the no-hitter, he had a stretch of dominant starts. Naturally, that didn’t happen. He was a Cub, after all.
  • MLBullets over at BCB, featuring Brian Wilson’s arm injury and the difficulty I’m having in not celebrating it.
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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