Thursday afternoon, I turned on the TV just in time to see Marlon Byrd blast a three-run homer to dead center fielder off Dan Haren, which led to this exchange:
Kasper: It's a three-run blast, and now Haren has given up at least one in eight consecutive starts.
DeShaies: Well, we talked about that earlier with the scouting report on Haren, an extreme fly-ball pitcher who's going to give up his fair share of home runs. You hope he could get away with it, in this big yard. But that was really torched by Byrd.
With the wonderful benefit of hindsight, we might wonder why the Cubs were so interested in adding Haren to their rotation. Entering Thursday's start against the Giants, Haren ranked 86th among 88 qualifying pitchers in ground-ball percentage, and had given up more home runs than anybody else in the National League. His ERA has (or had) been saved by an exceptionally high left-on-base percentage: 82 percent, fifth-best in the majors. Otherwise he'd pitched like a replacement-level starting pitcher.
The bad news is that the Cubs actually gave up a decent pitching prospect to get Haren. The good news is that Haren's the No. 5 starter and probably wouldn't even make a postseason roster. I do wonder why the Cubs thought Haren would give them something Tsuyoshi Wada and/or Travis Wood wouldn't.
