Lee Elia apologizes

Lee Elia, loathed by most of Cubdom for remarks that really should never be made about fellow human beings, is apparently trying to patch things up with the Wrigley faithful. This is after a monologue that, mind you, had to be bleeped 54 times. And the fans Elia was referring to were rooting for his team.

His language, though, is as rough as ever — if you read between the brackets of the carefully crafted MLB.com story.

“I’ll tell you one thing — it’s time the Cubs get hotter than hell this season and [stick it to] the rest of the baseball world,” Elia said. “The 40,000 fans who fill this ballpark every day and work hard for a living are no nickel dimers. They deserve a championship. They’re real Chicago Cubs fans. And print it.”

Oh, c’mon. We all know what he said. And it wasn’t “stick it to.”

Cubs’ fans seem to be ambiguous about the fence-mending effort. Which, well, you would be too.

(Not) Veterans’ Day

Wow. It’s been a rough few days for veteran pitchers.

First came the word that Matt Morris had been cut loose by the Pirates. Which should so send them to first place in the division.

In truth, the Morris deal was one of the Pirates’ most puzzling moves in recent years. And this is a team that’s had 15 consecutive losing seasons. A team that clearly should have been rebuilding traded to bring in an above-average veteran (at the time) with no hopes that he would put the Pirates over the top.

And team president Frank Coonelly said: Don’t let the door hit in the butt on the way out. Or words to that effect.

“The decision to acquire Matt Morris last July did not turn out to be a sound baseball judgment,” Coonelly said in a statement issued by the team. “Ownership’s willingness to acquire Matt’s contract … demonstrated ownership’s commitment to fielding a championship team. I am confident that the investments that we are now making in this club will be far more productive.”

Classy guy, that Coonelly. Must’ve learned his personnel-handling skills from Jim Bowden.

But wait! There might be a place for Morris anyway.

“We’d like nothing more than if Morris would like to continue his career in baseball with this organization in some sort of role,” general manager Neal Huntington said. “The preliminary groundwork has been laid and the ideas have been formulated. We’ve expressed our interest to him already.”

Um, are we all on the same page here?

You suck. Please teach our pitchers.

That would probably be a more graceful exit than that of Barry Zito, who just blew away Mariano Rivera’s status as the highest-paid reliever in baseball.

Of course, when the San Francisco Giants signed Zito to a 7-year, $126 million deal, a bullpen role probably wasn’t what they had in mind.

“I know it’s fun to run with stories — ‘Oh, is Zito done?’ — or whatever you guys are going to say. Go say it,” he said. “But from my standpoint, it’s a bump in the road — a big bump. It’s a battle. It’s stuff that I’ve gone through, but there hasn’t been the kind of scrutiny around it because of the market or the contract.”

It is, though, a fair question. With few exceptions, Zito has not pitched well for the Giants and hasn’t really returned to Cy Young form since he won the award in 2002.

Zito was the case study for whether long-term, big-money deals for pitchers could work. Right now, it’s not looking so good. But if he really needs a strikeout, he could always wait for a chance to pitch to Geovany Soto.

Both those problems pale in comparison to the latest problems for Roger Clemens, who reportedly had a ten-year affair with Mindy McCready. Which would be bad enough, even if McCready wasn’t 15 years old when the affair began. Which, of course, she was.

I would spend more time on this, but the jokes really write themselves. The two partied with Monica Lewinsky and Michael Jordan, and McCready got Jordan to give her a cigar for Clemens. Again, writes itself.

The moral of this story: Never sue your personal trainer.

Apocalypse Now?

Start looking for locusts.

The Tampa Bay Rays (14-11) are in first place. Granted, they’re tied with Boston. And Baltimore — ! But all of this makes baseball’s most bizarre division thus far even more confounding. Boston, check. Baltimore? Tampa?

Next, he parts the Red Sea.

How did this happen? Well, the Rays have won six straight, are 8-2 in their last ten games, and just swept Boston. Yeah, the defending World Series champions.

Now, we get to the first entry in my rules of talking about baseball: Never, ever rule out the Cinderellas. You might remember how we were assured in 2006 that the universe would return to normal and the Tigers’ nice little run would end and they would fail once again to make the playoffs. Which, of course, happened was nonsense; Detroit went to the World Series that year.

This is the time of the year for the underdogs to ride a good month to the top of the standings. The White Sux are first in the AL Central, the Marlins stand atop the NL East and the rebuilding Cardinals are in the thick of the NL Central race.

But the Rays are perhaps the most surprising team in the league — the only real challenger being their division rivals, the Orioles. How have they done it?

This is where they get the “duh” award: Pitching. The Rays are second in the AL with a 3.63 ERA. They’ve given up the fewest hits in the league (198). They don’t walk a lot of guys (77). And Scott Kazmir has yet to pitch an inning.

The ace is James Shields, who’s 3-1 with a 2.54 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP.

The only thing that stands out among the offensive statistics — and the ‘metricians will probably kill me for even bringing this up — is speed. The Rays are tied for second in triples and are tied for the league lead in stolen bases, though they have also been caught stealing more than any other team.

Can the Rays stick around? If they keep pitching like this, if Evan Longoria continues to develop, etc., etc. — it’s possible. They are not unlike the Tigers of 2006, a team that has stockpiled young players, held onto a smattering of veterans and waited for that breakthrough year.

That said, MLB.com’s expected win-loss record has the Rays at 12-13, which would put them at 2.0 games out. Coincidentally, the Florida Marlins (15-10) have the same X W-L. But let’s remember that the actual wins and losses are what counts at the end of the season.

Yeah, it probably won’t be this year for the Rays. But don’t rule them out.

Conventional Wisdom

Note: With apologies to Newsweek…

Oakland As. In first place, and now they have Frank Thomas. Maybe they could donate some offense to the Giants.

Florida Marlins. Old CW: Team cheats fans with low payroll. New CW: Mets can spend all they want on Johan Santana; he can only pitch every fifth day.

Chicago Cubs. Win No. 10,000 came courtesy of Kerry Wood. Who had just blown a save. Which makes it completely representative of the team’s history.

 J. P. Ricciardi. Old — and we mean old — CW: Billy Beane protege puts together team that could compete with Yankees and Red Sox. New CW: You released Frank Thomas to give more time to Matt Stairs and Rod Barajas?

NL East. You know, the Central is supposed to be the worst division in the league. Don’t give us a reason to re-evaluate that.

Bud Selig. Gets new drug policy, then turns around and grants amnesty to management figures implicated in Mitchell Report — something he’d already done for players. Well, not total amnesty — they might have to perform “community service.” Just say no to drug … punishments.

Tejada lied about name, age, first car

ESPN — An E:60 investigation has found that Miguel Tejada has not been forthcoming about his age and that he might actually be named Tejeda instead of Tejada.

In an even graver deception, the Astros shortstop has previously said that his first car was a red Honda. But E:60 has learned that the car was likely actually magenta, or even purple.

E:60 also found that Tejada — or Tejeda — or whatever his name is — lied when he told friends he had a bulldog named “Butch.” Tej…Miguel actually has a small gerbil named “Blinkie.”

Blinkie. 

And while Miguel plays for the Houston Astros, E:60 has been unable to confirm that he lives in Houston.

Lester Munson assures us this is important and federal authorities have nothing better to do despite the fact that hundreds of illegal immigrants come across the border with Mexico every day.

The Trouble with Andruw

For those who haven’t been watching the Dodgers — and, with LA being on the infamously slurred West Coast, you could be forgiven — you’ve been missing Andruw Jones’ performance.

Actually, as The New York Times points out, those who have been watching the Dodgers might have been missing Andruw Jones’ performance. Or mistaking him for someone else.

Corey Patterson, perhaps.

Though they should have seen this coming, this is obviously not what the Dodgers thought they were getting when they inked Jones to a big contract, at least for a guy coming off a year in which he hit .222.

That was part of a trend. The last time Jones hit better than .270? That’d be 2003. His OBP numbers were better, but not by much. (And they were probably helped by pitchers trying to pitch around someone who was typically hitting 34+ home runs a year.)

So what’s going on?

Well, there’s the surface. Jones is striking out a lot — but he’s always struck out a lot. He went down on strikes 112 times in 2005, when he finished with 51 home runs and second in the MVP voting.

On the other hand, Jones’ numbers have gone from bad to staggeringly bad this year; if he plays in 157 games, his career average, at the current rate he’d strike out 182 times. That would mark a career high. And he has as many home runs this year as Felix Pie.

At least one person close to Jones thinks he knows what’s wrong, and he told the Times.

“He needs to go the other way, he needs to hit to right field,” said [Eddie] Pérez, the Braves’ bullpen coach and a former Atlanta catcher. “Everybody in the National League knows he wants to pull everything, so they pitch away and away and he swings.

“We know him. He’s on the Dodgers now and we’re not going to let him pull it. As soon as he starts to hit it to right field, and then they start to pitch to him, you will see the real Andruw come back and scare people. Just watch.” …

Jones has one hit to the opposite field, a triple against the Pirates on April 14.

And, let’s face it, hits against the Pirates really shouldn’t count.

I’m going to speculate — always fun. He’s not just trying top hard to pull the ball, he’s trying too hard to pull home runs.

The only time Jones ever hit .300 came in 2000, when he hit .303. It was also the first time he hit more than 35 home runs (he hit 36) and the last time he stole more than 20 bases (he stole 21). In the seven full season since, Jones hit fewer than 35 homers three times, and one of those times he hit 34. He never stole more than 11 bases and never hit better than .277.

The Times article is the latest to note that Andruw has packed on a few extra pounds, and he wasn’t exactly a thin man when he finished playing with the Braves.

These are the hallmarks of a guy who has decided he wants to hit home runs instead of being a five-tool player. Did the Braves push him in that direction? His teammates? His fans? Or did he go there himself?

It really doesn’t matter anymore. But Jones might find that the best way to get out of his slump is to leave the long ball behind.

Pie gets 14th coach

Felix Pie has evidently set a record for the number of coaches devoted to one person. Now, the Cubs are pulling up minor league coaches to help the Corey Patterson clone talented prospect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone tell him he didn’t just hit a HR.

Alas, though, progress might be on the horizon: Pie did hit a three-run homer to break open the Cubs’ 7-1 win over the Mets. So that should help an outfield that lacks depth with Reed Johnson, Kosuke Fukudome, Mark DeRosa and the soon-to-return Alfonso Soriano.

Tinybrenner: Yankees Suck

Well, the headline of the day for most people has not just been the substance of what Hank Tinybrenner said about moving Joba Chamberlain to the starting rotation, but how he said it.

“I want him as a starter and so does everyone else, including him, and that is what we are working toward and we need him there now,” Steinbrenner said Sunday by telephone. “There is no question about it, you don’t have a guy with a 100-mile-per-hour fastball and keep him as a setup guy. You just don’t do that. You have to be an idiot to do that.”

Of course, it’s not really nice for the owner to say mean things like that about the GM. But, let’s face it, you have to question either the sanity or the IQ of someone who has chosen to work for the Steinbrenners as long as Brian Cashman has.

But Tinybrenner’s comments didn’t stop with Chamberlain — instead, he decided to also take a whack at Mike Mussina and, well, the rest of the Yankees’ rotation while he was at it.

He also said he thought Mike Mussina, who is 39, “just needs to learn how to pitch like Jamie Moyer,” the Phillies’ 45-year-old starter, suggesting that Mussina shouldn’t try to rely on his diminished fastball to get hitters out.

“The starting rotation is not what I would have chosen at the beginning of the year, but that is not a big news flash to anyone,” Steinbrenner said.

Phillies fans might argue with Tinybrenner about whether he actually wants Mussina to pitch like Moyer, but apparently the boss isn’t happy with the current crop of starters — not that the owner can say anything about that or anything.

Like Boss, like boss.