While in Chicago, Lou Pinella Went to some State Championship Playoff Games

The Cubs are rolling.

As of right now, there aren't many teams that opponents want to see less that the Chicago Cubs. The starting pitching is good enough, the bullpen is good enough, and the hitting is good enough, nice and timely.

What's making the real difference you ask?

I played baseball in high school at Hinsdale Central. We won or shared our conference title my freshman, sophomore and senior year. We had good teams, solid pitching and we were well put together. We always had strong starts to the season but began fading some towards the end. This resulted in none of the great HC teams ever winning a regional championship in history until a not as hyped team won HC's first regional a few years back.

We would have pretty decent seeds going into the regional tournament. But we would lose to teams that sometimes we beat throughout the course of the year. Why? The coaches tinkered with their lineups, rotations, and batting orders as the season went on to prepare for the state tournament. Their goals were not to win conference, but win in the state tournament. This is where we got greedy looking back.

Other teams used the regular season more like spring training. Messing around, finding the right pieces of the puzzle so even when the great HC team of '99 with Brad Zimmer and Brendan Ford made it to the regional championship, they got beat by none other than a Hinsdale South team with high pre-season expectations that weren't lived up to in the regular season, but did the trick in the post season, where it counts.

Lou Pinella has treated the Cubs the same way. Look at the lineup now...Soriano has been hitting in the five spot off and on recently. Michael Barrett is gone, Matt Murton, last year's leading hitter is in Triple-A with Felix Pie and '06 opening day shortstop Ronny Cedeno. Up the middle is the 2000 LSU double play combo who have obviously had some time working together.

Pinella, along with a number of players, came to this new environment of Chicago never playing together before. It takes time to put something together, just like in high school when your players change every year. There is time that must be taken to evaluate what you have and where it fits. Pinella is doing that perfectly. Rumor has it that Kerry Wood threw 95 the other day. Not sure what that means, but it could be good. He may not be able to miss a bat. Who knows.

Even if Wood came back, Pinella might not want him. Why disturb the chemistry of the team that right now is playing outstanding ball? It seems that Lou will make the right call either way.

Pinella is managing for the future. Tomorrow, the next game, and the next series by finding the best combination of players he can put on the field and evaluating the results every day. He's doing and awfully good job right now of it. Moral of the story? If Lou Pinella was the Hinsdale Central baseball coach, we'd be rolling in the regionals championships right now.