The Cubs offense has been sparked not by Milton Bradley, Lee, Soriano, or Aram but Ryan Theriot. We heard last week that Lou told Ryan to start to drive the ball more and boy, did he take it to heart.
Ryan his hitting .323 with 3 homers, 15 RBI, 14 Runs, and 6 steals on the young season. He has recently become the spark plug of the offense and also the power supply. He has hit 3 homers in 4 days which is tied for most in his career and it is still May. In fact Ryan Theriot is hitting better than guys such as David Wright, Milton Bradley, Jose Reyes, David Ortiz, and has more homeruns than the starting infield for the Oakland A's.
It seems to me that Ryan has been bitten by the power bug and it does not look like he will let up anytime soon. All us Cubs fans have seen something similar to this before with Ryne Sandberg hitting just 7 homers in 1982 and 8 in 1983 then coming into his own by hitting 19 in 84 and crushing 40 in 1990. I by no means want to say that Ryan Theriot is the next Ryne Sandberg but I am just comparing there power trends. If Theriot can mirror about a quarter of what Sandberg was we are in for a treat.
One thing is for sure is the Cubs need to really get the bats going especially with our bullpen the way it is. Maybe Ryan can host a hitting clinic for them?
3 comments:
The problem is Theriot is 30 years old. When sandberg was 30 he was hitting 40 homers a year not 18 to 20(which in itself is still far out of reach of theriot)
Maybe when we bring Wells up on friday. The Cubs could send Samardzija down too. Reinhard, Stevens, C.Fox or Ascanio would be fine with me.
absolutely. they rushed samardzija way too fast. He needs to learn a 3rd pitch to be effective in the bigs. He got away with 2 pitches last year because of the batters being unfamiliar. Now a 92-94 mph fastball and an unconsistant splitter will not do the trick. His arm slot isn't quite right for a slider. Look for them to develop an overhand curveball for him.
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