Rothschild says he has plan to ignite Big Z

If you heard it once during the Cubs Convention you heard it at least, well, a couple of times:

We have to remember that Carlos Zambrano is only 28.

Fine, we promise to remember his age this year, while also noting that in seven full years a starter he has won more than 16 games only once.

And after his first five years averaging a 15-9 record with a 3.30 ERA and 215 innings, his average dropped to 12-6 the last two seasons with a 3.85 ERA and 179 innings.

That led pitching coach Larry Rothschild to suggest something so painfully simply that it's stupefying.

"He just doesn't concentrate sometimes," Rothschild said last weekend. "He gets almost bored with the routine of it all and he just loses focus."

During games, during side sessions, during spring training?

"All of the above," Rothschild said. "He gets complacent."

So what do you do?

"We have to find that fire in him that you saw earlier in his career, when he wanted to beat every hitter on every pitch," Rothschild said. "That's when hitters didn't want any part of him. We have to find that intimidation again."

Rothschild went as far to say Zambrano may have lost some confidence along the way.

"It's happened to every player," Rothschild said. "These guys are human and even the best lose their way sometimes. They stop believing in their stuff. He's going through that process right now and he has to commit again to the routine, which is what got him to where he was.

"I have some ideas about how to get him interested again, ideas I don't plan to share with you, but there are a couple things I plan to do differently this spring."

Perhaps it's just coincidence that some of that fire has been doused since Zambrano signed a monster contract extension in August 2007, which will pay him $18 million a year for three more years, and probably a fourth with a vesting option.

He has not grown up at all since then, and he also hasn't been the same guy on the mound. And now it sounds like this baseball thing is just too dull at times to get him excited anymore.

"If you want to be successful in this game, it's all in the details, and he has to get back to paying attention to them," Rothschild said. "Expectations for him are high, and rightly so, but he can be just as good as he ever was before.

"I believe he can dominate again. It's just up to him to pay attention to the details like when he first came up. He does that, he finds that fire in his belly again, and he will dominate again."'

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