Sorry, late to the party on this one but:

1- Soriano. He's supposed to be one of the top offensive threats on this team, and when he's on, he can carry a team. That simply didn't happen this year.

2- ARam's Injury. Again, losing the biggest bat in the lineup for a major portion of the season will always be a killer. When combined with #1, there just wasn't enough offense left.

3- Soto. Should have been another offensive leader to help fill in the gaps from #1 and #2. A slump is forgiveable, but simply being out of shape is not.

4- Hendry. He made a lot of bad moves in the offseason, and predictably, they mostly blew up in his face. He allowed the team to get worse in the offseason, even before underperformances and injuries. Having said that, he still did build the core of this team which still will have a respectable 85ish win season, one year removed from having the best record in the NL. If Soriano, ARam, and Soto had met expectations, this still would have been a team in the playoff race.

5- Lou. Hendry has always been a GM to get what his manager wants, so he needs to share in the blame. Hendry gets more of it though, because he should be calling the shots. For Lou's more specific responsiblities, his handling of the issues that came up during the season were mediocre at best.

6- Milton. Yet another failure in the revolving RF spot. I'm starting to think that Sosa is to RF what Santo was to 3b before 2003. His behavior speaks for itself, and while his performances didn't help much, they aren't what caused this team to come up short.

7- Other Injuries. These would have been manageable, if it were not for the other problems. Still, they certainly didn't help.

8- Bullpen. Sorry, I'm still of the school that if you expect bullpens to win games for you, you've already lost. Even the best ones are going to have severe ups and downs. Obviously, there were some disappointments here that cost some games, and this was not a strong point.

9- Zell. With the economy, I don't think the payroll was going to expand much regarless of ownership. Maybe this would have allowed for a midseason deal or some better offseason moves, but not a big facor.

10- Fontenot. Expecting him to replace DeRosa's numbers was overly optimistic. He did worse than he should have, but counting on him to be a major factor in the teams success would be the bigger problem here.

Two months too late, but...
---
CarrieMuskat: cubs Kevin Gregg shutdown for rest of season because of crack in rib cartilage. He joins Harden, Guzman and Soriano on sidelines

http://blogs.denverpost.com/rockies/2009/09/28/bar...

whoops, Barmes didn't make the catch on Sunday...

The difference between atmosphere and Chemistry...

Tom Skilling, you're the best!

ESPN 1000, Waddle and Pat Boyle:

...all things considered, has this been your most disappointing season as a manager in the bigs?

"No, We won two divisions in a row and the expectations were high. We made quite a few changes, 10 in all. Different look in the bullpen, the lineup our bench. Things just didn't work out. "

"We've had injuries to key people and for long, long periods of time and we didn't have the depth to sustain that. Our minor league system has some pitching that we've been able to use here at the big league level and actually performed quite well"

"but player position wise, the good players that we have, that will be future Chicago Cubs (in the minors) are at AA and below"

"we got hurt with Ramirez we didn't have a replacement there, we struggled, we finally got Baker, and Baker did a nice job"

"our catcher, we didn't have much depth there, thank God that Hill stepped in and did a decent job, but Soto was out for a month. Our top pitchers, Lilly been on the DL, Zambrano twice, Dempster's been on the DL, Harden.

"...we've hung in there but the expectations by the media and everybody was that we were supposed to win the division hands down. At the trading deadline we were in first place. The Cardinals went out and did some things that blew the division apart. Getting Holliday, Smoltz, Lugo, DeRosa and pulled away from everybody."

"This club isn't very far away from having another good go at this thing, doing a couple of things over the winter, believe me, we'll be right back"

Waddle: Is there any chance you go home in this offseason and change your mind and say I've had enough?

"I don't think so. I've said I'll do the final year of my contract and that's what I plan on doing. I came here to win. We've had three years over .500 which hasn't happened in a long, long time. In the 3 years that I've been here, we won 250 games quicker than any other manager in the last 70 years. I like the city. I like the Cub organization. It's a fun place to play at Wrigley. We're going to have a new owner who's going to bring some TLC to this equation"

"...we need some bounce back years from Soriano, he played with that sore knee for awhile, we need Soto to do better, and we need a nice rbi bat and next year the Cubs can get back to where they were two years ago."

***Waddell: The acquisition of Milton Bradley didn't work, How much of a distraction/disruption in the clubhouse was he?

"Our GM had to do a tough task of sending him home and it wasn't very pleasant for him. The big thing with Milton this year was he drove in 40 runs. Look, we needed a big bat to put in the middle part of our lineup and we thought that Milton would be the one. It just didn't work out for whatever reason and we move forward from there. Now we try to find somebody else and I know Jim will try very hard to do that."

next...questions on Zambrano: (paraphrasing) who needs to work harder as he gets older. He learned a valuable lesson. He's been working hard for the last month or 6 weeks. I had a similar message for Randy Johnson, people who are six-ten need to work harder than people who are six-three.

on fans and expectations...when you lose it's gloom and doom right away, it's not just the fans but the media gets in on it. The good teams invariably win in the end. It doesn't happen every year and you gotta stay healthy. I new coming out of camp we weren't very deep and several people didn't have very good years. We're going to score 150 runs less than last year. Soriano and Soto need to have comeback years and we're going to add one more big bat.

can you find a spot for Jake Fox?

The young man can swing the bat, he has good bat speed and has home run power. His best position is 1B but he can play a little OF and 3B. He needs to work on that.

mentions young pitchers, Berg, Caridad, Wells. Then Fuld, Fox, Colvin (we're resting him the remainder of the way). I like the future of this organization.

Boyle: Did this year change your mind about clubhouse chemistry?

"What's even more important than chemistry is clubhouse atmosphere and the atmosphere wasn't very good this year.

Boyle: can one player create that?

"I don't want to blame it on one player, two players or five players. Last year we had the best clubhouse atmosphere and I had some real good clubhouse atmosphere with the teams I had in Seattle and good chemistry and last year here, this year here the media has reminded us that our atmosphere and chemistry hasn't been as good. It is important. The most important thing is playing well on the field. If you play really really well on the field, the atmosphere and chemistry improve. This year we struggled. The most we got over .500 was 9 games, probably the lowest was 3-4 games under .500. We've been a little bit above .500 all year, hopefully we can finish strong this week and set the tone for next year ."

How about "Cardinals win 90+ games"?

If the Cards were on pace to win 85, this is a very interesting week.

**sob**

per ESPN 1000 website (no person is taking credit for the interpretation of Piniella's words...but their is an audio link (below) starting with Lou promoting Special Olympics.

Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella said Tuesday he's looking forward to adding a "big bat" to the lineup next season, which could mean that disgruntled outfielder Milton Bradley has played his last game for the Cubs.

http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/news/story?i...

the Lou quotes:

"Our general manager Jim Hendry had to do a tough task of sending him home [on Sept. 20], and I'm sure it wasn't very pleasant for him," Piniella said on the "Waddle & Silvy" show on ESPN 1000. "The big thing with Milton this year was the fact he drove in 40 runs.

"We needed a big bat to put in the middle part of our lineup, and we thought Milton would be the one. And it just didn't work out, for whatever reason. So we move forward from there and now we try to find somebody else. And I know Jim will work very hard at it."

http://www.sporcle.com/games/winleaders_mlb1990s.php

gonna go beat myself up now...

Jason Marquis was a serial killer in a past life...

via Rotoworld...

Tracy Ringolsby of FOXSports.com reports that if the Rockies earn the NL wild card, Jason Marquis may not make the postseason rotation.
Marquis earned his first All-Star nod this season and went 14-8 with a 3.58 ERA over his first 21 starts, however he is just 1-4 with a 5.48 ERA over his last seven starts, making his inclusion in a potential postseason rotation questionable, especially with the return of Aaron Cook last Friday. He has two more chances to get it together, facing Brewers on Tuesday and the Dodgers in the regular season finale on Sunday.