Grinding It Out

Carlos Zambrano's injury has to be the last straw. There are no gods left willing to act this cruel, piling more on a baseball team. Even if your gods are statistics, we're way out past the 99th percentile on the injury front. This means that it just cannot get any worse. The Cubs have bottomed out. Right?

I have no doubt that Dusty will be under fire for letting Zambrano go so deep in his previous start. I also have no doubt that Zambrano's long outing is related to his elbow soreness. But this is not a situation for blame. Baseball is a game where you put your body on the line -- less so than other sports, perhaps, but still -- and everyone that wants to win sometimes goes too far. Zambrano wanted to stay out there. Baker wanted him to stay out there. Every instinct I have agreed with them, too.

It's just that the game is changed. Pitch counts don't get that high, and when they do -- now -- they're risky. Throwing 136 pitches isn't necessarily too many for a guy like Zambrano, but it is too many when he's not used to throwing 120. It's like avoiding a stress fracture: you have to gradually build up your stamina to avoid too much stress on pressure points. For a pitcher, there is no greater pressure point than his elbow. Usually, athletes get stress fractures precisely because they feel so good that they push themselves too hard. I'm guessing this is the case with Z. Early exits in a couple of games meant that he hadn't really stretched himself out enough yet this season. Even the times he stayed in late, pitch counts were high enough that he left it to the bullpen, and he never stretched it out like this.

Specifically, after throwing 118 pitches on April 20th (that brilliant night in St. Louis), in his next two outings he threw 105 and 96. To jump from 105 and 96 to 136 pitches is probably pushing it too far for most guys. Even over the course of the season, he had averaged 107.33 pitches per start, with a standard deviation of about 7.25. That means that 136 is four standard deviations.

In other words, on a normal bell curve, 136 pitches is way the hell out there past normal.

Or at least now we know that it's pushing it too far for Zambrano. Math is what it is, but it's only helpful after the fact because you don't know whether a guy can handle load way past normal until he's tested. Maybe he had strength that they had under-used all season; they couldn't have known this would happen until it did. Plenty of guys air it out and come back alright, and most of them aren't as strong as Zambrano. That's why I don't think this will be a chronic problem, but now we know that Zambrano has to build up his stamina a bit before he can throw that many. Maybe he would have been OK if he hadn't had to work so hard to throw 64 pitches into the fourth inning, but some days are like that. He looked alright early -- better than alright, actually -- but his arm was too stressed.

It just sucks because things are looking very bleak again. Misfits can win games, but they rarely win series. With Ramirez day to day with back spasms and a sore groin, there are once again too many holes in the lineup for RBI opportunities to die. I hate to say it, but with the ammunition they have available right now, this looks an awful lot like a .500 team in a weak division. At best, they can hope to tread water until better resources return. (Don't make me say 'If they return.') It's not just the injured guys, either. Some other guys need to step up next week as well. (You hear me, Hollandsworth, Hairston & Perez? If it's not you guys, it will have to be the rookies.)

The fire I noticed in the team last week is still there, but all the enthusiasm and intensity and effort in the world can't make up for absent talent over a sustained period of time. If you take away Zambrano for a start or two, and Ramirez is at 75%, they don't have the talent right now for at least another week. It's as simple as that.

Although, on the other hand, the Cubs play Pittsburg, Houston and Colorado for nine of the next twelve. Even depleted, the Cubs are good enough to win five or six of those nine. Plus, the other three are against the White Sox in Wrigley, and if anything can fire up a bunch of scrubs it's a weekend series against the White Sox in Wrigley. So maybe I can talk myself into this team's success again.

(Hopefully Zambrano's elbow isn't chronic, but I guess my optimism is.)

Let me throw one more out there: if they can somehow be within reach in June, they'll have plenty of close game experience after that. This could be an advantage. They'll have to recalibrate to the point where being uptight in a close game is almost normal, which will help them feel even looser in big wins.

Still, I did my best to try to put things in the larger perspective, but they really needed to win that game today against the Nationals. The difference between four under .500 and two under .500 is a lot larger than two games for a team like the 2005 Cubs. This game was a pretty big setback.

Either way, though, they're going to have to grind it out for a while because they don't have the talent to go for the big score. They're a lot more like Joey Knish right now than Mike McDermott. Maybe in a few months that'll translate into wisdom and experience, but right now it flat out sucks.