Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Seriously, Dale Sveum did the EXACT same thing that Yost was fired for that I mentioned in my post yesterday. Piniella pinch-hit for someone, bringing in the lefty Ward with runners on first and third and then Sveum reacted by bringing in the LOOGY Shouse. The second he is called in Piniella does another pinch hitter (don’t forget it’s 40 man rosters) Blanco, a RH, to bat against him. He predictably gets a single and the Cubs take a two run lead going into the ninth.
Some quick Shouse stats to illustrate my point:
ERA vs RH: 5.24
ERA vs LH: 0.95
AVG vs RH: .301
AVG vs LH: .173
OPS vs RH: .829
OPS vs LH: .476
During that inning I said to my cousin that if the Cubs scored that was the game and it was. Prince Fielder has been playing out of his mind lately with 4 HRs in the past week. The one he hit in the street, wow. It’s just too bad he’s the only one. Hardy and Hart looked horrible as did Cameron. Braun doesn’t look healthy. I don’t really understand why Counsell batted in the eight and Kendall batted in the ninth as Weeks OPS is about 60+ points higher than both of them. Kendall bothered me more than Counsell because he was leading off the inning so the reason for putting Weeks in is two-fold as he has speed and power and works the count better than anyone on the team (against a new pitcher), but I digress.
The Cubs are good, real good. This really could be the year for them which pisses me off because I hate people saying “this is our year” or “it’s gonna happen” or really carrying around the W flags. I mean, you’re team is supposedly cursed and you are going to jump to those types of conclusions? Didn’t you people learn anything from 19-0 Pats fans? I’m not a superstitious person whatsoever, but it’s pretty ridiculous to say things like that if you ask me.
