I think most Cub fans are aware that, by most accounts, Kevin Gregg did a terrible job closing for the Cubs in 2009.

I was one of several GROTA folks that defended a few bad outings here and there with regard to Gregg, trying to focus on the forest rather than a few mangled, dying, termite-infested trees.

But in the end, Gregg had an insurmountable problem that we just couldn't ignore. Worse, it was a problem that major league closers simply cannot survive with.

Gregg gave up 13 home runs in 68.2 innings pitched.

To put that in perspective, let's think about what that home run rate would do for a starter. Work with me here on a little math.

A typical starter would have three times Gregg's workload in a given year (60 * 3 = 180, 70 * 3 = 210, which is a reasonable range for SPs). They'd usually get that amount of work in over the course of 30-some starts.

13 times 3 is 39. That'd mean, in 30-something starts, Gregg would give up 39 home runs.

I mean, WGN would have to develop an "Inevitable Kevin Gregg-Allowed Home Run" graphic for every start!

The statheads among us think home run rates have a bit to do with luck (if you've ever read anything about BABIP, it's the same idea here). So maybe Gregg was simply unlucky in 2009, as over 15% of the fly balls opponents hit off of him left the park. That's about twice as many as his career average.

But then I think back to That One Game (I forget the team we were playing at the time), and how The Other KG served up an ice cream cone of a fat fastball to some division rival, and the guy hit it across the state border.

Not fun.

So, yeah, it didn't work out, which is too bad. If we had to have a closer with a crappy ERA, I'd have much preferred to keep Kerry Wood than to have traded for some goggle-wearing schmo from California. (Nothing against California, just being angry.)

Speaking of that trade, anybody have any idea what Jose Ceda's up to?

Go Cubs!

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Alright then. So, it turns out that perhaps our earliest suspscions of Gregg were right -- after blowing last night's game against the hapless Padres, the Cubs are cutting the cord on Gregg's role as closer and turning to a different arm. As one of the Gregg defenders*, I'm disappointed by this turn of events, but I give props to the usually slow-to-act Lou Piniella for his quick response to three weeks of regular Gregg implosions. He's said after last night's debacle that the Cubs will finally be re-arranging the bullpen. But who wants to place bets on the likelihood of Lou turning to the right reliever?

Typically on GROTA we like to wax the baseball philisophical, but we do from time to time have the ability to actually use statistics to prove points.  With that in mind, let's revisit the Kevin Gregg saga one last time.

At this point, the majority of Gregg haters appear to be reactionary fans and pundits.  I don't blame the pundits so much for that -- guys like Kaplan have to shout into a microphone for hours at a time in an attempt to break through to an audience that tunes in and out every few minutes.  In other words, they are bound to express really stupid opinions, they are doomed to find themselves defending really bad ideas, and they will often find themselves under the microscope of fans who can exercise critical thought.  Still, that's why we're here.

The argument against Gregg can be surmised as follows:
-He's not elite
-He gives up too many homeruns to be a closer
-His stuff is not overwhelming
-He hasn't earned it
-I hates him!  I hates him forever!

Taking a closer look at Gregg and the other closers in baseball, we find the following:

He is indeed "average."  His 21 saves put him at 15th in the majors, and his 81% save conversion rate is in the lower half of the top 30 closers, along with his ERA.  However, we've never denied that Gregg isn't elite.  The problem is that elite closers are really, really rare.  I'm talking about the ones who save 90% of their games, who throw lightning rather than fastballs.  But the question is, do teams need that to win the World Series?

Let's take a look at the last 7 teams to win the Series, and their closers.
2008 - Phillies, Brad Lidge (41 saves, 0 blown, 9 homeruns surrendered, 1.95 ERA)
2007 - Red Sox, Jon Papelbon (37 saves, 3 blown, 5 homeruns surrendered, 1.85 ERA, 93% save rate) 
2006 - Cardinals, Jason Isringhausen (33 saves, 10 blown, 10 homeruns surrendered, 3.55 ERA, 77% save rate)
2005 - White Sox, Dustin Hermanson (34 saves, 5 blown, 4 homeruns surrendered, 2.04 ERA, 87% save rate)
2004 - Red Sox, Keith Foulke (32 saves, 7 blown, 8 homeruns surrendered, 2.17 ERA, 82% save rate)
2003 - Marlins, Braden Looper (28 saves, 6 blown, 4 homeruns surrendered, 3.68 ERA, 82% save rate)
2002 - Angels, Troy Percival (40 saves, 4 blown, 5 homeruns surrendered, 1.92 ERA, 91% save rate)

On the surface, we've got some elites in that crowd (Lidge, Pap, Percival) and some duds (Ishringhausen, Looper).  Teams do not need an elite closer to reach the playoffs, or even to win a World Series.

Furthermore, this "he gives up too many homeruns" nonsense is just that - nonsense.  It's true that Gregg has certainly served up an awful lot of homeruns this year, but from Brad Lidge and his 0 blown saves (despite the 9 homeruns he allowed) to Jason Isringhausen and his 10 surrendered longballs to Keith Foulke, who gave up 8-or-more homeruns in a season as a reliever/closer 7 times in his career, it is not the end-all be-all proof that Gregg's not reliable.  In fact, it all comes back to the conversion rate.

As of today, that rate is hovering at 81%.  Before the two ugly Florida games, he was at 88%.  Chances are, he'll finish the year closer to 85% than to 80%, and unless Lou misuses him (see: calling him to pitch the day after a 40 pitch effort) he'll probably have an ERA closer to 3.50 than to 4.00. 

So, again, Gregg is not exactly a world beater.  He won't follow the trail of Gagne toward Cy Young glory.  In fact, if Marmol is too wild to be effective in the 9th, which now appears to be the case, Gregg's tenure as the Cubs closer should probably only last this season assuming they have a shot at upgrading in the winter.  But for now, all things considered, Gregg is the best option the Cubs have.  Despite the ass-kicking dealt to him by the Marlins this past weekend, he's done nothing to lose the job and his work the previous three months was impeccable.  And even if he's "merely average," there is a precedent of teams winning championships with closers worse than he. 

Therefore, sorry FroDog, apologies Kap, but you're wrong if you want him booted and you're wrong if you think he'd be the reason the Cubs might not win it all.  Gregg isn't a problem, but his use by Piniella may become one.

Seriously, Cub fan nation? You're going to be that fickle? You're going to hate Kevin Gregg because of back-to-back blown saves? Really?

This one's gonna be short, because I enjoy writing about embarrassing Cub performances about as much as you like reading about them.

Which is to say, not very much at all.

This weekend would have been a lot more fun if our bullpen could have gotten outs every time they took the mound. On Friday, Marmol stunk it up. On Saturday, Samardzija and Gregg coughed up leads. On Sunday, Gregg was at it again.

Before we all start hooting and hollering about who the Cubs closer should be, I just want to point out two things.

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1) Kevin Gregg's June/July numbers.

His April was pretty shitty, and his May was pretty meh-diocre. But let's look at the groove Gregg had been in before this past weekend.

In 27 innings pitched between June and July, Gregg had allowed just 17 hits, 8 walks, and collected 25 strikeouts. With only seven earned runs allowed, that gave him a 2.33 ERA for the J months.

Clearly, he's a capable reliever. And he's gotten a ton of saves already. So what gives with the last two outings?

Saturday is hard to account for. Two outs, two strikes--you gotta close that out, man. Maybe pitching in Florida made him nervous; maybe the opposing staff knew what he was going to throw (did we have that advantage against Wood?); maybe he's an idiot.

But Sunday was a little more surprising.

2) Kevin Gregg threw 38 pitches on Saturday.

We love Lou Piniella. We've given him various amounts of grief throughout his Cubs tenure, depending on the latest performance of our team. We may or may not have had an "axe Lou" series earlier this season, but we realize that, for the most part, he's better than the rest.

At the same time, there's one thing Lou has never been good at, and that's managing a bullpen. Bob Howry and Carlos Marmol are two quick examples of Lou inexplicably overworking arms, often to the detriment of the team.

Does Lou take the blame for Sunday's crap outing from Kevin Gregg? I'd be willing to pin a sliver of it on him. In my recap from the previous game, I mentioned that I expected to see Jeff Stevens and Sean Marshall used in today's game, since everyone else had been worked pretty hard the night before. Of course, Lou didn't use either of those relievers, and stuck with his main 'pen rotation.

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Maybe I'm making crap excuses for a crap closer. But really, what else can we do? He's our guy. Hopefully, it's not close against the Reds, and we get another outstanding performance from a starter like we did in Sunday's game with Dempster.

If you don't buy my excuses with Gregg, please let me know. Regardless, I have a feeling he's still gonna be the closer this month. And I'd say I'm OK with that.

Go Cubs.

Current Record: 55-48
Position in the NL Central: 2nd place, .5 games behind St. Louis
Magic Number: 58 (thanks to cubsmagicnumber.com)
Best Possible Record: 114-48
Worst Possible Record: 55-107
Record needed to win 90: 35-24
On Pace For: 86-76

Well, that was fun.

A lot happened in last night's game. Working backwards: Soriano saw time at 2nd and 3rd in the 10th inning; Derrek Lee hit his 21st home run in the top of the 10th inning, after Kevin Gregg blew a three-run lead despite getting two outs and two strikes on the third hitter; of Carlos Marmol's first 17 pitches in the 8th inning, three were for strikes (he would get two strikeouts from that point); and Jeff Samardzija gave up three notable runs in 1.2 innings pitched in relief of an injured Carlos Zambrano.

Oh yeah, and the Cubs won.

This was a pretty wild game, a game that puts the Cubs in a bit of a bind today. With almost everyone in the 'pen having gotten some serious work, it seems like we can almost guarantee appearances from Jeff Stevens and Sean Marshall in today's game.

Speaking of guarantees, I can also almost guarantee that Jeff Samardzija will be sent to Triple A Iowa as soon as the Cubs add newly-acquired SP Tom Gorzelanny to the active roster. Furthermore, I hope he stays there for the rest of the season and figures out how the hell he's supposed to pitch. It's clear that this kid is not ready for the bigs, and in that case, why is he here?

Other storylines we'll need to keep an eye on going forward: what's up with Big Z's back? Zambrano left last night's game after three innings with back tightness. He claimed it wasn't serious at the time, but who knows what effect this will have on an already thin rotation?

Another injured Cub in last night's game was Aramis Ramirez. Rammy got dizzy after being hit in the "meaty part" of the forearm with a pitch. The dizziness thing sounds more like exhaustion or dehydration than anything serious, so we'll see if he plays in today's game.

Ideally, Ryan Dempster pitches seven innings today, Stevens and Marshall close it out, and the offense scores a bunch of runs. For some reason, I have a feeling it'll be a little more exciting than that.

Go Cubs!

Jim Hendry has deservedly received a lot of flack for his off season moves this year.  He rolled the dice on Bradley -- so far coming up a loser, although time may tell a different story -- he took a risk on Fontenot -- also a loser move -- and he dealt for Kevin Gregg after declaring that Wood had no home in Chicago.

The loss of Wood and Mark DeRosa in particular upset a lot of Cub fans.  How many times have we heard or read this year that "da Cubs would be doin' betta with Da-Rosa!"  How many of us lamented that Kerry Wood -- a certifiable "big game pitcher" -- was to be replaced by Kevin Gregg and his hipster-doofus glasses? 

While the fan in me still misses Wood considerably, at this point Hendry's decisions look less decisively poor and more ambiguously positive than they did back in May. 

Wood presently has 14 saves and 4 blown, while posting an ERA of 4.93 through 34.2 innings of work.  Not exactly elite.  Compare that with Gregg, who has 21 saves to 3 blown with an ERA of 3.42 in 47.1 innings of work.

DeRosa, meanwhile, is still hitting the crap out of the ball -- he's batting .266 with 18 homeruns so far this year.  Although, since coming to St. Louis, DeRo is hitting a Fontenesque .244.

Speaking of Fontenot, at this point he has me longing for the days of Mickey Morandini.  Font is batting .229 and should never, ever face another left handed pitcher in a game that matters.

As for Milton Bradley, he is doing better but not great.  He's certainly not earning his contract this season.  He was chosen by the Cubs over guys like Bobby Abreu, Adam Dunn, and Raul Ibanez, all of whom are either lacking power, defense, or a legitimate "I'm doing it clean" argument. 

Nevertheless, the Cubs are now leading the NL Central.  They'd undoubtably be better off with a guy like DeRosa on the team, but Gregg at least is looking very good.  And Bradley?  Meh.  Let's talk about him again in a year.

Does anybody else remember the gut-blow we took back in December when we found out that not only was Kerry Wood not coming back to close but the player tapped to assume the role was the glasses-wearing Marlins dork Kevin Gregg? 

Like so many new Cubs, Gregg's debut in Chicago was less-than-thrilling.  He began the year looking mediocre-at-best after barely winning the closer's gig from Carlos Marmol in the Spring.  Even still, a lot of us assumed he wouldn't keep the job all year long and his early struggles confirmed our worst concerns.

Then, he started to turn it around.  In fact he's been pretty reliable since April 20th, assuming you ignore his outing against the Astros in which he surrendered 4 earned without making a single out.  If baseball allowed us to take away that one, terrible performance, Gregg would have an ERA of 1.99.  Even with that awful outing, his ERA is a middle-of-the-road 3.57. 

So here's the question: should Kevin Gregg lose the gig after last night's wretched blown save?  Meh.  I guess it depends on your expectations.  Somebody in the ShoutBox said that a closer should flat out not blow more than three saves a year or else he's not doing his job.  With all due respect to that Goat Reader, that's a pretty crazy expectation to have on any closer. 

Looking back the past 5 years, there have been 77 closers to save 30 games or more.  Of those 77, only 15 blew 3 or less saves.  Also let's take a look at the past 5 World Champions, the '04 Red Sox, '05 White Sox, '06 Cardinals, '07 Red Sox, and '08 Phillies.  Of that bunch, only the '07 Red Sox and '08 Phillies had closers you could call "elite" based on the 3 blown saves or less condition.  And the '06 Cardinals had 10 blown with Jason Ishringhausen. 

I think we'd agree that there are different levels of competency when it comes to closing, as well as the fact that teams who win the Series do not always -- or even often, necessarily -- have an elite 9th inning pitcher. 

But there are the elite closers who dominate -- the Hoffmans (91% success rate since 2002), Riveras (91%), and Wagners (88%) of the world.*  Then there are the reliable, competent closers who will regularly get the save, post ERAs below 4 but above 3, and occupy the rosters of most teams in baseball.  There are also the LaTroys, who just plain suck, but thankfully they don't get to close for too long before losing their gigs.

(*Note: if the average "great" closer manages about a 90% success rate, assuming he gets 45 chances a year he's still going to blow 4 or 5 games.  The "3 or less" rule is simply unrealistic to the nth degree)

Randy Myers -- a pretty good closer himself back in the day -- used to say that a good closer will save 80% or more of all opportunities.  Kevin Gregg this year is at about 78%.  In other words, he's competent, he'll probably save 30 this year, and then in the playoffs he'll leave us at the edge of the couch, white-knuckled and nervous.  But the Cubs could upgrade at other places that would help them more, so I don't expect the closer's position to be a target of improvement in July this year -- and if it happens, it should happen from within.

Carrie Muskat called this one an "excruciating loss" in her recap. Not sure there are really too many other ways to describe it.

Usually the Cubs win when they score four runs, but a pinch hit home run off the Cub closer put the Tigers into the win column in Tuesday night's contest.

Intrepid reader Dizzle pointed out that Gregg's last 9.2 innings had happened without his giving up a run. Beyond that, Kevin Gregg has quietly been having a pretty fantastic June. He's struck out eight and walked just one opposing batter in 10.2 innings of work, posting a 1.69 ERA.

Was Kevin Gregg, in a way, on the wrong side of the "due" list coming into tonight's game? Unfortunately, I'd have to say, kinda.

Does that make him completely useless from here on out? Hardly. Before tonight's disaster, Gregg had an ERA below 3.00 since May 1. Furthermore, he's turning out to be a considerable improvement over the guy the Cubs passed on this offseason.

I hear ya, guys--losing this way sucks. Unfortunately, it's a pretty likely thing to have happen once or twice over the course of a season. Let's hope Gregg can get back on track and be ready to go the next time we need a save in a close game.

There was no moment more sickening last night than when the Braves spoiled a Ted Lilly's good performance by tying the game in the 7th.  Scratch that -- it got real sickening when it went to extra innings for the second straight night.

It's not that I lack faith in the Cubs' ability to win extra inning games.  No, my problem is more that the Cubs bullpen is built of balling wire and bubble gum right now and any game in which they are turned to excessively is a game that will be tough for the team to win.

Fortunately, the Cubs pulled out all the stops pitching-wise, turning to the Marmol-Guzman tandem for 3 straight innings.  Marmol in particular has been spotty, especially with his control, but he was balls-to-the-walls last night* and Guzman was his usual untouchable self.  I'm pretty sure that it was Goat Reader HarryCaray who proclaimed in Spring that Guzman would be important to the '09 team and so far he's been spot-on in that regard.

(*Disclaimer: I'm not actually sure what "balls-to-the-walls" means)

The only problem is that after the Cubs managed to snatch the lead in the 11th, thanks to a rare Hoffpauir-Lee tandem, Piniella turned to Kevin "Better Dead Than" Gregg for the save.  Surprisingly it was mission accomplished.  But I'll reiterate what I said yesterday evening... the Cubs need to re-assess their bullpen and Gregg needs a new role.  And if even Marmol can't handle the job, then at least the Cubs would know it and could add "closer" to their trade deadline wish list.

Incidentally, I wanted to note that Derrek Lee is now batting .263.  Hardly the stuff of legend but not bad for a washed up double play machine.  All told every Cub regular except Three Finger got at least one hit last night.  The Cubs need to better capitalize on their success at getting on and play for the series win tonight.

UPDATE FROM Yarbage: So, for the second straight night I made my way to the "Ted", only to see an extra inning game. I could really use a blowout tonight, but I doubt we'll get it with the pitching match up.

There were a few things that caught my eye last night from the stands. First off, the Cubs should really hold a bunting practice all day today. I'm not a fan of giving up outs, but if Lou's going to keep sending up people to bunt, they have to get it down. My buddy, Scott Lange, couldn't even watch when Ryan Theriot tried to lay down a bunt late in the game.

I never saw the replay, but it was nice to see Geovanny Soto throw out somebody. At this point, we'll take anything.

Finally, I hope the Braves get some bad luck tonight after cutting Tom Glavine to avoid a roster bonus. The players and fans had no clue that it had happened. We found out from somebody that got to the game about the second inning. I understand that Tommy Hanson is going to be a star, but you just don't treat players that way. If you were going to cut him, then why have him go through all that rehab?

If the rain holds off, I will add something for the game later.