White Sox still in the playoff hunt, but are the Cubs?
CHICAGO – When Jermaine Dye says it, it’s somewhat believable.
You can see the White Sox winning the AL Central Division, as Dye stated was possible after his team’s 6-0 win against the Cubs on Sunday at U. S. Cellular Field.
It’s believable. The Sox hit well enough and pitch well enough that, if they can clean up their defense, October ball doesn’t seem far-fetched.
But when Cubs manager Lou Piniella talks of having visions of playing baseball while the leaves change outside Wrigley Field?
Those are cloudy visions at best.
“I think that when it’s all said and done, people will be pleased with what we do here the rest of the year,” Piniella said before Sunday’s game.
OK.
Then optimistic fans watched Sunday’s game and felt most of the confidence in these 2009 Cubs leave the ballpark alongside the Sox’s homers.
The Sox completed their homestand with a shutout, a brilliant pitching performance from John Danks, Dye smacking his 155th home run in a Sox uniform to move into seventh on the team’s all-time home run list, Chris Getz stealing home plate and reliever Scott Linebrink tossing four strikeouts in two innings.
The Sox looked good. They can talk about potentially playing October baseball.
The Cubs should not.
Of course they did, which is not unusual, since hope has kept this team afloat for more than 100 years. But the Cubs did not pitch well – ace Carlos Zambrano lasted 5 1⁄3 innings and allowed nine hits and five runs – did not hit well and looked lackadaisical at best, downright lazy at worst.
Granted, Danks (7IP, 4H, 0R, 4BB, 5K) had a stellar outing. But the Cubs made him look even better with their own ineptitude.
Still, the team pointed over the weekend to all the reasons why that ineptitude soon will be just a distant memory.
They will have third baseman Aramis Ramirez back from rehabbing his dislocated left shoulder.
Fine. But this team was not playing that well before Ramirez’s injury in early May.
Their multimillion dollar men will come out of their slumps, the Cubs said this weekend, and it will prompt a win streak.
Yeah? Milton Bradley, Alfonso Soriano and Kosuke Fukudome already have shown this season they hit sporadically. In the heat of a pennant race last year, Fukudome struggled. Soriano has four total hits in his two postseason appearances with the Cubs. And Bradley, even if he comes out of his slump, hasn’t been the power hitter that the Cubs want him to be.
The Cubs finished the week 1-for-7 with one of the largest payrolls in Major League Baseball. That’s way too much talent making way too much money to underwhelm and underachieve so consistently.
Yes, there have been injuries. Yes, there have been games in which opposing teams simply got lucky late.
Yes, there still is time.
But the Cubs need to start worrying and doing so quickly.
“We’re only three and half games out, so we’re still right there,” Zambrano said.
Mathematically, yes.
“... [Better play] could start the first of July, it could start [Sunday] for that matter,” Piniella said.
It didn’t start Sunday; the Cubs could start winning today. If they want to keep the postseason in view at all, they probably should. This team is losing the privilege to talk playoffs by the day.
• Maureen Lynch is a sports writer for the Northwest Herald. Write to her at mlynch@nwherald.com.
