Talking baseball while waiting for Chicago native
Donald Young’s
rain-delayed match against
Andy Murray
at the US Open:
1.
These days, it’s not surprising that the Cubs beat the Reds with
Ryan Dempster
going against
Johnny Cueto
, one of the NL’s toughest starters, but it is surprising that
John Danks
couldn’t beat the Twins. The Cubs and White Sox are both in the process of doing one of the most maddening things a team can do — playing their best when it means the least, and in the process all they’re doing is hurting themselves.
Not so long ago, it looked like the Cubs could pick as high as second in the 2012 draft, with the White Sox also pushing for a top-10 pick. But the too-little-too-late runs have lessened the chances that they’ll pick up marquee talent.
Continuing to play veterans and pitch reclamation project
Rodrigo Lopez
, the Cubs have gone 20-16 since July 30. That wasn’t enough to save
Jim Hendry’s
job — he already had been told by
Tom Ricketts
he wasn’t coming back — but it raised their winning percentage from .393 to .434 and moved them into a tie with the Padres for the sixth-worst record in the majors. They had been better than only the Astros but over the last six weeks have climbed over the Orioles, Twins, Mariners and Royals.
This helps the resume of
Mike Quade
but does absolutely nothing for the organization.
The White Sox have won selectively, but slid just as badly in next year’s draft rankings. They were swept by the first-place Tigers last weekend but nevertheless have gone 19-12 since Aug. 4. During that span their winning percentage has improved from .473 to .504, and their draft position has dropped from 11 to 18.
That could make a huge difference if compensation rules remain in the same in the new labor deal. Teams that finish in the bottom 15 can sign top free agents without losing first-round draft picks but those that pick in the second half lose their first-rounder.
That was the case for the White Sox in June. The signing of
Adam Dunn
sent their first-rounder to the Nationals, leaving them without a pick in the first 46.
Naturally, this time around it probably won’t matter. After running up the payroll to add
Jake Peavy, Alex Rios
and Dunn in the last 26 months, it’s unlikely
Jerry Reinsdorf
will provide the resources to chase big-name free agents. The real question this time around is whether Ken Williams will still be the guy in charge of acquiring talent.
2.
Lopez remains in the Cubs’ rotation for one simple reason: It has been a brutal year for the organization in terms of developing pitchers. Hendry forecast during spring training that
Trey McNutt
and
Alberto Cabrera
could be in Chicago by August, but neither seized the moment after
Andrew Cashner
hurt his shoulder.
Hayden Simpson
, the 2010 first-round pick, reported to Mesa weighing about 155 pounds and never got past low-A Peoria. The one pitcher who was taking a huge step forward,
Robert Whitenack
, blew out his elbow after reaching Double-A.
Baseball America is naming Northwestern product
Eric Jokisch
as the Cubs’ best minor-league pitcher in 2011. An 11th-round pick in the 2009 draft, he wasn’t ranked in the Cubs’ top 30 entering the season but put himself on the radar by holding up when others failed. Jokisch opened the season with low-A Peoria, following Simpson into games rather than starting, and ended it in the Double-A rotation. He worked 139 innings while starting only 14 games, going 10-3 with a 3.09 ERA. He projects as a young
Doug Davis
, using the same kind of unorthodox delivery to create enough deception to get by with a fastball that tops out in the high-80s. He’s a strike thrower, which could get him to the big leagues in time.
3.
I don’t have an AL MVP vote this year, so anything I write is academic. But the J
ustin Verlander
MVP campaign is impacting me, and I know it’s also scoring with some voters. He has joined
Adrian Gonzalez, Curtis Granderson ,Jacoby Ellsbury
and
Jose Bautista
among the legitimate contenders, and you can easily argue that he’s had more to do with getting his team into the playoffs than any of the others. His win over Cleveland on Wednesday raised him to 22-5 and gave the Tigers a 24-7 record in his starts. That means they’re 57-55 behind everyone else. The White Sox have gone 17-10 behind
Mark Buehrle
(and 54-60 otherwise) and the Indians are 18-12 behind
Justin Masterson
(and 52-58 otherwise). Those are fairly typical success rates for aces. The numbers behind Verlander have been exceptional. Oh, and he also is leading the AL in the pitching Triple Crown categories — wins, ERA (2.44) and innings (229). The only one of those he could see slip away is the ERA title, as he has slight leads on
Jered Weaver
(2.49) and
Josh Beckett
(2.49). If I had a vote, I think the top of my ballot would look like this: 1. Granderson, 2. Verlander, 3. Bautista, 4. Gonzalez, 5. Ellsbury.
