Chicago

In case you missed it, Lou Piniella had a little back-and-forth jabber with a reporter after yesterday’s 3-2 loss to the Washington Nationals.

It’s good to see that Sweet Lou still has a little baseball life left in him. I was beginning to think he had lost all of his passion, kind of like the Cubs’ offense against the Nasty Nats pitching staff.

The White Sox begin a six-game road trip in Texas tonight and are currently on a three-game winning streak, winning the team's first series of the year against the Seattle Mariners.

The White Sox offense simply doesn't make sense.

There is really no other way to put it.

The team is batting a Major League-worst .222 to go along with the seventh worst number of runs scored, sitting on 74.

Okay, that makes sense.

Like Carlos Zambrano, big-time pitchers Justin Verlander, Jake Peavy, and Josh Beckett are off to awful starts. They are not alone. Names like Jon Lester, Aaron Harang, Javier Vazquez, Chad Billingsley, and Jeremy Bonderman join them on this list of the top ten worst pitchers in 2010.

Virtually all of these pitchers have two things in common. They were expected to be aces, stoppers, shutdown grinders, strike-one dealers. They are all disappointing.

Let’s take a look at how bad they all really are, see if they’re improving, and ask ourselves:

Is this just an April shower?

With such a rich and lengthy history, the Cubs have seen roughly 2,000 don the Cubbie blue over the years. Because of that, I thought it would be fun to name who I feel are the top five players for all 26 letters of the alphabet, going by last name.

To qualify, the player needs only to have played at least one game for the Cubs.

"Because of his stuff," Chicago Cubs manager says Opening Day starter Carlos Zambrano is moving to the bullpen beginning Friday.

So now the Cubs have Alfonso Soriano making $18 million to play seven innings in left, and Zambrano making $17.875 million to pitch 3-5 innings per week.

Jim Hendry: EPIC FAIL.

Manager Lou Piniella went on to say that this isn't a "panic move," but has indicated to Chicago media that it might be permanent.

The Cubs (4-5) missed out on a sweep against the Brewers Thursday, but another sweep-worthy team, the Houston Astros, comes to town starting today at 1:20 p.m.

The offensively challenged Astros (1-8) got their first win of the season against St. Louis yesterday, but the Cubs should have no problem getting back on the winning track with a three-game weekend series against the ‘Stros.

If you look at the box score for Wednesday night's game in Toronto, the White Sox starting nine, plus a few pinch hitters, are batting .227 as a team.

While I know that seems low, to me it shows promise.

In Saturday's loss to the Minnesota Twins the team was only batting .186, a good 40 points lower.

Chicago White Sox left-handed pitcher Matt Thornton's pitching line for Thursday night's game against the Cleveland Indians looks messy:

1 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 1 ER, 3 K

Thornton pitched the eighth inning, surrendering Chicago's slim 3-2 lead and setting up the eventual 11-inning loss the White Sox would suffer. He earned a blown save for his efforts.

But the numbers could not more starkly misrepresent the game Thornton had.

The Cleveland Indians took the rubber match of their three-game series with the Chicago White Sox on Thursday, winning 5-3 in 11 innings.

In the game, Sox manager Ozzie Guillen sent Andruw Jones out for his first start in a Chicago uniform, penciling him in as the center fielder and moving regular center fielder Alex Rios to left.

But while that move worked out fine (Jones reached base twice and stole second base off Jamey Wright in the sixth inning), others of Guillen's decisions should draw vigorous criticism.

All of the promise of offseason trades and unbelievable expenditures culminated on Monday afternoon as the Chicago Cubs traveled to Atlanta to face the Braves.

It only took an inning to ruin the Cubs' season.

Jumping out to an early 3-0 lead in top of the first inning, the Cubs looked like they were ready to stake their claim and end the streak of something like 500 straight years without a World Series title.