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Cubs right now = bad. Cubs Embargo = good. Try it, friends, at least until Nos. 21, 22, and 34 return. As Cubs fans, we take the good with the bad, but the bad is a lot easier to take when we don't pay too much attention to it. I still have faith, as should you.

I played a whole shitload of wiffleball yesterday. This was excellent. Part of the fun of backyard wiffleball is taking it way too seriously, and I was able to do this for the better part of 4 hours on another pretty nice spring Saturday. The highlight had to be the abbreviated 3-inning game played at the end of the day, which featured a sterling pitching duel (involving yours truly) and some extra-innings drama that ended when a clutch 2-out double by Adam Bolur drove in the winning run. We rejiggered the groundrules for this final game, and were quite satisfied with the results: scoring dropped from 30+ runs a game to under 5, and the field rewarded hard-hit liners instead of nubbed grounders and flyballs as it had previously. Good times.

In other sports news, I have actually acquired the ability to throw a breaking pitch. Yes, it's with a wiffleball, and yes, it's sad that I hadn't previously figured it out, but I now throw a tumbling slider that will frankly make you check yourself if you're a righthanded batter. Like many righties, I am still trying to figure out how to get lefties out, but wiffleball affords me the chance to put into practice theories about baseball to which I never gave a passing thought when I was actually playing.

FYI, the King of known wiffleball pitchers in my experience is Rick Bach, a tough, tough lefty who dominates with filthy, made-up breaking pitches and great command. If your plate coverage is not exceptional, you will not hit him at all. Rick: you are a bastard.

That's it for today. I need to eat some yogurt.

The mini-blog below was published 2 seconds before Aramis put the Cubs up 1-0 with an opposite-way single. I had a premonition.

My other premonition, now that the Cubs have seized a 4-0 lead after D. Lee decided to actually hit a baseball, is that the game will be called on account of rain. No more runs, please! Let's get in 5 and put this game on the books.

A word on D. Lee: I still have a great feeling about him, and he is actually hitting fairly serviceably, but that dropped 1-3 putout in yesterday's 9th was like a little league play. This guy's a gold glover, and simply dropped a baseball for no reason. Frustrating, as was watching Alou's surrender to Isringhausen in the bottom half of that same ninth.

A word on Reggie Sanders: why throw this guy a fastball? He's the real-life version of Major League's Pedro Serrano.

"Straight ball I hit very much. But curveball: bats are afraid."

Aramis Ramirez.
Aramis Ramirez.
1-1

That's how baseball goes. Clement goes eight strong innings last night, gets zero run support (literally) for the second straight game, and loses his second straight decision. Tonight, Zambrano plays with fire the entire game, actually records more flyball than groundball outs (which is a real bad sign for a sinkerballer), gives up a home run to Michael Tucker, and the Cubs win. I had a feeling that Moises might hit his walk off homer tonight, although to be fair I've had that feeling lots of times before strikeouts or GIDPs. It was nice to be right, for once.

I'm trying hard to adjust my thinking about the Cubs. This is a good team, and I'm trying to train myself to expect good things from them, without being disappointed when good things fail to happen. Baseball is a game of repeated failures, so it's hard to find a good healthy attitude about your favorite team. So I will try and fail repeatedly to find it.

Congrats to my cousin John, who recently celebrated his 21st birthday. Congrats also to Kevin Garnett, for finally getting the monkey off his back. Now he can unload his gat, his M-16, his joints with the silencers on them, and his missile launchers. Ah, to be a 7-foot tall millionaire. Brilliant!

I can't even fathom how screwed up I would be right now, if not for The Cubs Embargo. It's really a sad, sad commentary on my inability to put a lot of things in perspective. But it helps me to enjoy the Cubs, and this is an absolute good. We pursue that which recedes from us, and the converse is also true.

I am sure it's been mentioned elsewhere, but when I read "Moneyball," I didn't picture (current Padres shortstop) Khalil Green as a white man. Despite the handicap of being caucasian, Green plays absurd defense and is putting together a fine rookie season. The Cubs got Bobby Brownlie in the same draft, so they're not sweating it yet. The way Cubs pitchers are going, though, they may need to bring somebody else up before the year is over. My writing of late has been reprehensibly bad.

Wow blogger's got a horrible new interface. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Cubs not looking too bad right now. It would've been nice to, you know, totally dominate the Rockies and D-backs, but I am satisfied with the results they have thus far posted.

The Cubs Embargo has been excellent to me. I have come to the conclusion that I lack the ability to distinguish between important and unimportant games. This, coupled with my belief that I have a finite number of games that I can watch without going insane, perfectly justifies TCE and makes me feel good. I feel powerful and secure in the knowledge that this move will allow me to catch many, many more important games down the road.

I caught an important party on Saturday, when my reverse-jinx attempt succeeded completely and I spent an entire day doing the following:

1. Drinking beer from a keg
2. Grilling food and eating it
3. Playing wiffle ball
4. Listening to good music
5. Talking to friends
6. Catching up with people I had not seen in some time
7. Lounging backyard in the sunny, 75-degree reality of a Saturday devoid of responsibility

Only a freak Jason Jennings HR marred the proceedings. I quickly quenched the flames of irascibility with Bud Light, though: don't you worry. I feel like a two-mile run. Later.

I was at Wednesday's Cubs game (company tix, 7th row 3rd base side; nice), and it was terrible to watch. Wood was like Medium-strength Kerry Wood, and the Cubs starting 8 looked like a Triple-A team. I guess the only good thing is that, even on a night when he didn't have his best stuff, K-Rock still only gave up 2 runs on 3 hits in 7 IP. His Stat falls to 148, however.

Is it just that the Cubs have been so frustrating to watch for so long that I find myself wanting to slap this team with the "Yet Another Frustrating Cubs Team" label? Probably every serious baseball fan finds their team infuriating, but this season's team seems particularly hard to watch. In games 1 and 2 vs. ARI, they scored a total of 3 runs. Game 3 of that series and yesterday's Game 1 vs. COL both featured SINGLE INNINGS in which the Cubs bettered that total. The pitching has been almost uniformly excellent, as I believe the Cubs' staff leads the majors in Quality Starts. But I'm coming to the conclusion that consistent hitting is a lot more satisfying to watch than is consistent pitching, as unjust as that may be. I just like it when the Cubs win 11-0, I guess.

Especially when Z goes all 9 and throws less than 100 pitches! I have no idea what to look for today, though, other than rain. And yes, that was an attempt at a reverse-whammy.

Digital instant-read thermometers are rad! I just got one a few weeks ago, and used it for the first time on some hoisin-bourbon glazed pork loins I grilled at Laura's last Sunday. Let me tell you that this invention is a miracle, that it makes cooking meat to the perfect doneness ridiculously easy, that I highly recommend laying out and purchasing one. I am normally not a proponent of pricey and/or fancy cooking equipment, but this one is so helpful you're doing yourself a real disservice if you don't get one. Unless you're just a much better cook than I am, which let's face it: if you're reading this blog, you're probably not. As my right thumb and forefinger can attest, however, the probe is metal, so remember: handle with care.

Growing evidence supports my recent contention that Aqua Teen Hunger Force is, if not the funniest or weirdest show on TV, at least the most entertaining. If I smoked a ton of weed and was more talented, I feel like I could write for that show. Check it out.

Cubs win yesterday, actually score some runs while holding the opposition down yet again. Cardinals' Vaunted Offense total production for the series: 10 runs in 4 games. This after averaging 5.7 per Before Cubs. FYI, here are the Pythagorean Wins projections so far:

Cubs: 98-64
Stros: 109-53
Cards: 82-80

At the risk of damaging my credibility while I point out that the Cubs are just about on pace to meet my 97-win prediction and finish second to the Astros (as I also predicted), I'll also say that there is NFW the Cubs finish 11 back of the Astros. There may in fact be a good reason for this high spread, let me find it while I pretend to go back to work.

In an effort to lower my bloodpressure and overall mood of crapulence, I am instituting The Cubs Embargo as of yesterday. TCE means trying to avoid watching any Cubs game from start to finish, the idea being that since my standards for the Cubs are so freaking high, it will be better if I can just see the results of their games, which objective reason tells me should largely be positive. If I trap myself into thinking that "a good fan" should watch every inning of every game, this season will surely drive me insane. And I need the Cubs to still be enjoyable, you know? Hence, the Embargo.

With that said, I did wind up watching 2 or 3 innings of the game yesterday, in which:

1) Clement was again dominating, much to my surprise,

2) Aramis Ramirez reminded me of why I like him so much,

3) Joe Borowski made me want to kill him for the six or seventh time this season, remarkable for a man who has converted 6 straight save opps (but unremarkable for a man whose opponents' BAA is .295!) I'm frankly stunned that JoBo hasn't given up a home run this year. Feel free to direct hate mail to pkowalsk@indiana.edu when this happens tonight.

Partial disclosure: I am, as you should already know, a stathead, and as such I like making up my own stats. Readers of Moneyball should be familiar with Voros McCracken's argument that the only important stats for pitchers are home runs, walks, and strikeouts. To that end, I have invented the "Stat," (great name) which follows the following incredibly crude but effective formula:

"Stat" = (SO/IP*250)-(BB/IP*250)-((HR*4)/IP*250)

As you can see it's normed for a 250-inning season, to make comparisons between relievers and starters easier. Of course this suffers from sample size problems among many others, but it's still fun and somewhat useful. Some examples: the average of Pedro Martinez's Stats from his best seasons ('97-'03) is 196. Wood's this year is 163. Maddux's is -213. Very good seems to be about 100, conveniently. The highest Stat I've ever calculated was Eric Gagne's 331 in 2003, which sample size but c'mon. I'm going to go be nerdy in private now.