Regular-season success rings hollow
LOS ANGELES - It was a nice 97-win regular season for the Cubs, filled with exciting times on the North Side.
But so what, said catcher Geovany Soto late Saturday night at Dodger Stadium after the Cubs had been swept out of the playoffs in the first round for the second year in a row, this time by the Los Angeles Dodgers.
"It doesn't matter how many wins you have in the regular season," Soto said. "We're now packing our bags, so what does it do for us? Nothing."
There's no getting around the point that what the 2008 Cubs are going to be remembered for is not their 97 wins, but the 3 losses in the playoffs when the team expecting to go to the World Series played some of the worst baseball imaginable.
It started with Ryan Dempster walking seven in a Game 1 loss and continued right through the final out of Game 3 when Alfonso Soriano feebly swung at a Jonathan Broxton pitch in the dirt for the final out that put the Cubs out of their misery.
Soriano went 1-for-14 in the series with 4 strikeouts, making him 4-for-28 in his two postseasons with the Cubs - and without an extra-base hit.
"We have to think about how we want to pay in the playoffs because we didn't play good enough to win," Soriano said.
It's funny how Soriano says the Cubs need to rethink how they play in the playoffs when he might be the biggest problem as a leadoff hitter than can't get on base under the pressure of the postseason when it matters most.
Can you say batting fifth for the Cubs next season and playing left field, Alfonso Soriano?
Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez didn't have an RBI in the series, though Lee batted .545 with 3 doubles.
But it's tough to drive in runs when Soriano isn't getting on base and No. 2 hitters Kosuke Fukudome, Ryan Theriot and Mike Fontenot combine to go 1-for-12. The Cubs scored 6 runs in the series, with Mark DeRosa driving in 4 of them. But even DeRosa was a goat with a critical error in the second inning of Game 2 that led to 4 unearned runs and sent the Dodgers on their way to a 10-3 victory.
"I don't have any answers," DeRosa said. "Obviously we didn't play well. This is the best team I've been on in my entire career and for us to play three games like this, we didn't give ourselves a chance, we really didn't."
The Cubs looked more like a team that lost 97 games.
"We kicked the ball around, we didn't hit, we put too much pressure on our pitchers to come through," DeRosa said. "We never made them (the Dodgers) get on the defensive at all. We never had any momentum, expect early in Game 1. A lot of guys were just trying to do too much.
"We didn't deserve to win."
Cubs manager Lou Piniella, standing in the middle of the quiet clubhouse after the sweep, tried as best he could to explain what went wrong.
While Piniella attempted to put on a strong front, he did allow brief glimpses of the anger that was no doubt eating at him inside.
"No, it's not shocking. Nothing is shocking," Piniella said. "I said that once you get into postseason all eight teams start equal and they all have a chance.
"But let me tell you this: You can play postseason between now and another 100 years and if you score 6 runs in a three-game series it's going to be another 100 years before you win here. So we've got to score more runs, period."