BASEBALL IS FAILURE

It has been said that the baseball is a game of failure. Even the best hitters in the game only get base hits one third of the time. It is how players and teams react and adjust to these failures which leads to success. Most managers will say after a tough loss that the players have to put that game behind them. The focus is on the game at hand not in the rear view mirror.

But baseball is also a game of repetition. Bad habits are hard to break. Mental depression over poor outings spill over into the next appearance. Some batters in a slump try too hard. It turns into a growing cascade of failure.

The Cubs seem to be in a waterfall of doubt. The team has lost five of the last six games. At 11-20, the Cubs are 9 games out of first place after a month of the season.

As beat writer Bruce Miles pointed out in the Daily Herald:

Former closer Carlos Marmol is now routinely booed by fans. Marmol is 2-2, 2 saves, 5.68 ERA, 1.816 WHIP

Expensive free agent starter Edwin Jackson now sports a record of  0-5 with a  6.39 ERA.   Only 2 of Jackson's 7 starts have been quality starts.

Dale Sveum's last season's MVP, reliever Shawn Camp, has been as ineffective as Marmol.  Camp gave up 2 runs and 2 hits in 1 inning Sunday. He has an ERA of 8.03 and a WHIP of 1.86 as he has allowed 18 hits and 5 walks in 12¹⁄₃ innings. "He's really having a hard time getting anybody out right now," the manager said. "His stuff is flat, and nothing's really real crisp right now at all with him."

The offense was 2-for-12 with runners in scoring position, making it 44-for-243 (.181) on the season. 

Second baseman Darwin Barney was 0-for-4, as his batting average fell to .159. Barney is not the only problem on offense, but he left five runners on to end three innings. On the home stand, he's 3-for-21.

"It's not fun coming up in big situations and not coming through," Barney said. "When you've got guys with runners in scoring position, things just aren't falling. I put some good swings on balls in those situations and they end up right at guys. But other than that, I just haven't been executing my plan very much."

So the batters are pressing and the pitchers are throwing flat. There is a snowball effect of failure happening to the Cubs. There is not one area of play that the team can say with certainty that can right their listing ship. The Cubs defense is spotty; the Cubs hitting is poor; the Cubs pitching and bullpen is suspect; and overall team baseball IQ is stuck in neutral.

UPDATE: Cubs pitching coach Chris Bosio confirms this hypothesis. 

He said  Marmol is rushing his delivery and at times “trying too hard,” Bosio said Sunday in a Sun-Times article.  “The biggest thing for Carlos is his concentration [on] executing the pitch” Bosio said. “I think where Carlos gets in trouble — along with the rest of the guys — is when they get going too fast. [Saturday] was a classic case of that."