A summer of disappointing baseball on both sides of Chicago is over
By MARK JOHNSON
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mjohnson@morrisdailyherald.com
As the longtime joke among the evening employees in the MDH newsroom would say, both Chicago baseball teams got first-round byes in the MLB postseason.
There are no byes in baseball, of course, but there are bye-byes for teams like the Cubs and White Sox who weren't worthy of qualifying. One year after both teams ended the regular season as division champions (the Sox needed a game added to their 162-game schedule to outlast Minnesota), they ended up a combined 14.5 games out of first place in baseball's two most winnable divisions.
I probably will watch the playoffs, if for no other reason than they'll undoubtedly be on the newsroom television. And when it's 12 degrees outside and only the Bulls are on television in January, you can bet I'll miss baseball. But I'm sincerely happy that the 2009 season is over, so I don't force myself to watch the Cubs on a daily basis.
With the possible exception of the 2004 season, this was the least enjoyable Cubs season of my lifetime. The Cubs won 83 games, and I've seen several Cubs teams that couldn't come within a Carlos Zambrano season's worth of victories of that total. But given what I expected out of this team, and what it actually delivered, I've never been so disappointed.
You've got to give the St. Louis Cardinals credit. After trading for outfielder Matt Holliday, among others, in late July, they starting kicking tail and won the division. The Cubs were never out of it until about mid August, but they never showed any of the attitude you'd expect from a two-time defending champion. There was no confidence, no arrogance and very little fire. Consequently, there were very few winning streaks of note, nor where there any extended stretches where the Cubs played outstanding baseball.
On the other side of town, the fans had just as much reason to be disappointed. I didn't predict the Sox to win their division in the preseason as I did the Cubs, but I thought they'd be decent. For a while, they were, but it seemed like as the season wore on, and they added part after part, their play regressed.
Back in early June, I thought the Sox had perhaps the best bullpen in baseball. By September, the only reliever clad in black and white I trusted to record outs was Matt Thornton, and even he seemed vulnerable at times in 2009. Closer Bobby Jenks had his worst full season with the team. Octavio Dotel and Tony Pena were OK but sporadic, and Scott Linebrink went from very effective early in the season to flat-out awful in the second half.
Awful is a good adjective to describe several of the Sox position players as well. Jermaine Dye's second-half performance certainly merits it, as does A.J. Pierzynski's and, to a lesser extent, Paul Konerko's. At one time, I considered the Sox an intriguing mix of steady veterans and good-looking younger guys. Now they're more of a mix of over-the-hill, one-dimensional guys and players like Carlos Quentin and Alex Rios that might never live up to their potential.
There's hope for the future, particularly on the south side. The Sox will trot out a dominant-on-paper starting rotation that includes Jake Peavy, Mark Buehrle, Gavin Floyd and John Danks in 2010. The Cubs figure to be better simply because they figure to jettison the dead weight that is right fielder Milton Bradley well before opening day.
As we learned in 2009 for the umpteenth time, things don't always work out the way you might expect them to in baseball. Especially in Chicago. I'm not sure if either team can recover from its struggles and emerge as a power in its division again in 2010. I do know this, however: no matter what happens then, it can't be any less enjoyable than 2009 was.
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