Cubs Week One Awards
The Cubs won two-of-three from Houston this weekend to finish their first week with a record of 3-3. With nearly 4% of the season in the books, I think we're overdue for some awards:
Rookie of the Week: Kosuke Fukudome. What an amazing debut. Every at-bat at Wrigley Field was electric, and its amazing how the crowd has warmed up to him so fast. He's probably already gotten more standing O's than Jacque Jones had in the previous two years combined. I guess the crowd likes you when you get on base at a near .600 clip with clutch hits and stellar defense. Hope he keeps it up, and I hope the crowd doesn't turn on him quickly when he eventually cools off.
MVP: Derrek Lee. He was directly responsible for both Saturday and Sunday's win, with a 4-for-4 with a HR Saturday and the game-winning HR Sunday. He's on fire. Even when he makes an out, he's smoking the ball.
Least Valuable Player: Bobby Howry. Normally pitchers don't get in on the action for MVP/LVP awards, but Howry has managed to be terrible in each of his three games, and he got the "L" in the "would have been a classic if they actually won" opener. I'm pretty sure he'll snap out of it, but the supposed ace setup man has been awful.
Worst Week for a Guy I'm Not Worried About: Alfonso Soriano. Before today, he had the LVP practically wrapped up. But his homer and his assist at the plate were key in today's 3-2 win. The rest of the day he continued to look awful, but they very well might have lost without those two contributions.
Worst Week for a Guy I'm Worried About: Felix Pie. He had a few hits, but for the most part he looked clueless. Where's the guy that tore up Spring Training? The guy that hit .362 at AAA last year? He's looked just as bad as he did last September, when he couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat. Reed Johnson didn't really accomplish anything more than Pie in his two starts, but he at least looked like a professional at the plate. I suspect that's why Lou gave him back-to-back starts against righties even though there's two lefties coming up in the next two games. If Lou holds true to his original plans for a platoon, that'll be four straight games for Johnson. On paper, Pie deserves to play. But it's hard to fault Lou after actually watching Pie for the first few games.
Best Timing: Carlos Marmol. He's good when they need him to be good, he's shaky when he's got room to be shaky.
Worst Timing: Mark DeRosa. He hit .350 with a homer and three RBIs, which sounds great. But he left a lot of people on base and/or hit into double plays at the absolute worst times.
Best Performance by a Fifth Starter (at best): Ryan Dempster.
Worst Performance by a Fifth Starter (at best): Jason Marquis.
Guy I'm Still Happy We Signed: Jon Leiber. He gave up two runs in his only appearance (and got the loss), but he didn't really get hit that hard and looked a lot better than his numbers would suggest.
Guys Who Don't Seem as Exciting as Last Year: Ryan Theriot and Geovanny Soto. Even though he doesn't have a lot of hits, Soto has hit the ball hard most of the time and I suspect he'll be every bit the hitter we expect him to be. But his defense was lousy this week and his arm was even worse. Didn't see that one coming. As for Theriot, he's been doing an awfully good Neifi impression, and I'll leave it at that.
Guys Who are More Exciting than Last Year: Kerry Wood. He's pretty much been a non-factor since 2004, and his three saves were great to see. Other than the high profile blowup in the opener, he's been pretty much perfect.
Time for the first road trip. "Opening Week" ends tomorrow with Pittsburgh's home opener. Then they're off Tuesday before continuing the series Wednesday. That's crap scheduling if I've ever heard of it, but hey, that's Major League Baseball for ya.
Have a good one.