Well, we just dropped two out of three against the Rockies.
And it's not like it was close, either: 15-2 Saturday and 6-3 yesterday. Say what you want with Soriano and Angel Pagan out, hitting can't overcome those kinds of deficits. Good God, this is a mental weakness if a team with a $90 million payroll ever had one.
That's one of the things about box scores in baseball; unlike other sports, the statlines can tell you a lot about a team's mentality. A pitcher giving up 5 runs over 3 innings pales in comparison to the one who gives up the same amount over 7. Reading a statline like that tells a reader that one guy was mentally tougher than the other and kept with it on a day when he didn't have his best throwing stuff.
Why am I so certain that a team's mental focus is a huge part of its baseball success? Look at where the Yankees are right now. Screw the payroll and the aged pitching rotation, they're soaring, and the Cubs are unfortunately headed in the opposite direction. Suffice to say, it's surprising we're only 1 1/2 games out of first place; it feels more like 4 or 5 games (and also says a lot about the makeup of the division).
This, THIS is why you never praise the Cubs when they reach first place in anything. Ever. The media sucks.
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