Gordon Wittenmeyer Has Questions

I don?t know if the Cub beat writers are in a dumbass contest or what, but it seems each day one of them writes something dumber than another of them wrote the day before. Today, Gordo?s got some questions: In those first moments after the Cubs were eliminated by the Los Angeles Dodgers and smashed open that dugout water pipe, manager Lou Piniella paced in his office, back and forth, waiting to be told whether he was going to the interview room near left field or somewhere else to face the media. What nobody needed to tell him was where he had been for two years with this team?and where he wanted to take it. Yuck. Did Bilbo Baggins write that? If you?re going to open a column with a preposition-pronoun pileup, you had better follow it up with some thing good. Alas: Ninety-seven wins? Back-to-back division titles? What did that matter against these postseason numbers: six games, six losses, 12 runs? I?ve finally realized that Cub fans are ignorant, at least in part, because we have beat writers treating things like 97 win seasons and playoff appearances as if they mean nothing. Even worse, that they indicate a need for change. But what should we expect from a man who once called Sam Fuld an accomplished Major League hitter. Only four pitchers who opened last season with the Cubs are assured of spots on this year?s opening roster, and with all the new pitchers and a slew of new switch and lefty hitters, the Cubs will have about a 40 percent roster turnover since the end of last season and more than 50 percent since last year?s opener. Gordon Wittenmeyer spends a lot of time with this team. So maybe he should at least be able to count the players. It?s actually 6 pitchers (Z, Lilly, Demp, Marmol, Cotts, Marshall) and as for the ?slew of new switch and lefty hitters:? slew:?n. (informal) a great number. Number of new switch hitters: 2. Number of new LH hitters: 0. 5 second of research 2, Gordo 0. Onward and downward. ??You don?t see that [kind of turnover] a lot of times when a team?s won 97 games,?? Piniella said. Which raises the biggest question for a team with urgent postseason plans: Is this team better? I took the liberty of disambiguating Lou?s quote, which, you know is something a newspaper writer might do. Gordon is truly a testament to his dying medium. And why is that the biggest question? And what does he mean ?better?? Once again, every projection system available has the Cubs at or over last season?s projections. This is something it would have taken a writer with a research staff 5 seconds to find. Then you could have written an insightful column. But nooooo, you went the lazyassed beat guy route: in lieu of content and argumentative rigor, quote a player. ??It?s hard to say any team is better than the team that just won 97 games,?? core holdover Derrek Lee said. ??Are we better and can we win more games? It?s possible. We?re good on paper. We?ll have to play the season to find out.?? Oh, joy. Another athlete spoon-feeding a beat guy cliches. I bet he laps it up and draws some completely unwarranted conclusion. Given good health, the Cubs are close to a lock to win a division that still looks like one of the softest in the majors. And if that health holds up into October, the versatility in the lineup, the quality of the front-line starting pitchers and the ability to negate the depth questions at the end of the pitching staff give the ?09 Cubs the look of a bona fide World Series contender. Okay so far? But what about the six months leading up to October? And Rich Harden?s shoulder? And Milton Bradley?s history of injuries? And the lack of proven veteran pitching past the fourth starter and first three or four relievers? And what if some of the left-handed hitters, given more opportunity, don?t step up? Uh-oh, rhetorical questions. Those are never a good sign. Oh, and Gordo, just a thought but you know how guys like Sean Marshall become ?proven veterans?? By pitching in actual games as part of an actual rotation. You know, by proving themselves. But I digress. It doesn?t take a Cubs historian to go back just five years for the cautionary tale to compare to this team. Oh, shit. I sense an inept analogy coming. Get it together, Gordo! After the postseason thrill ride to the brink of the World Series in 2003, general manager Jim Hendry added a boatload of hitters and pitchers who made the Cubs look ridiculous on paper entering 2004. /facepalm Greg Maddux joined a rotation that had Matt Clement as the No. 5 starter. Hendry acquired Lee, Michael Barrett, Todd Walker and Todd Hollandsworth to beef up the offense, LaTroy Hawkins to bolster the bullpen. Wait a minute. You just pointed to the 2009 Cubs? depth as a major asset, then you liken them to the 2004 Cubs, who failed because they had no depth. A lot of those players turned out the wrong way, but at the time, they looked like can?t-lose moves. They did? Really? I?ll give you Maddux and Lee, maybe even Hawkins, but anyone who looked at Hollandsworth and Walker as ?can?t-lose? moves should be banned from baseball and forced to watch curling matches for a year. Engage brain, then engage keyboard, Gordo. ?In ?04, we were better on paper,?? Lee said. They even won one more regular-season game than they did in ?03, but they finished third and missed the playoffs. Yet another floating, context-less quote. Better than what? Better than the ?09 Cub team? Better than the ?03 team? Better than the Lansing Lugnuts? Apparently Gordo thought he meant the 2003 team. And once again, the 2004 Cubs failed because they could not absorb injuries. They had no depth, so Gordo?s refuted his underlying premise?that the 2004 Cubs are a cautionary tale for the 2009 Cubs?with his earlier contention that the 2009 Cubs have the depth to avoid the pitfalls of the past. So now we get the faulty and unwarranted inference from the inept analogy, which is itself a stark contradiction to what you wrote a few paragraphs earlier. There?s three more paragraphs, which basically consist of Gordo using Paul Bako quotes to pad out this drivel. I have wasted my life.