King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Cubs manager Dusty Baker: We just need to gain a game a week. Translation: We're screwed. Plus: The Futures Game.

July 12, 2004 | We've had this year's first sighting of that old baseball manager's chestnut, the quote about how the club just has to make up one game a week.

There's no surer sign that a team's goose is cooked in a race than when the manager of a team several games out of first place in the second half of the season starts talking about how all they have to do is make up one game a week and they'll be fine.

"Hey, man, we have time," Cubs manager Dusty Baker said as his team headed into a weekend series in St. Louis, where they lost two of three to fall from six to seven games back in the National League Central. "That's what I was taught. You don't have to make it all up right away. I was taught in my Dodger days by Tom Lasorda. A game a week -- that's all we ask. Pick up a game a week."

Actually, with 11 and a half weeks to go, the Cubs would win the division going away if they picked up a game a week. Here's the problem: You don't pick up a game a week. It doesn't work that way.

Remember, Baker didn't say, "If St. Louis would only collapse, we'll be fine," so let's assume the Cardinals will keep playing at the .621 pace they've set so far. If they do that, they'll win just about four games a week, on average. So Baker's asking his team to gain a game a week on a team that's going 4-2 or 4-3. That means the Cubs have to go 5-1 or 5-2.

In the 14 full weeks of the season so far, the Cubs have won five games in a week three times.

Put another way, if the Cardinals play .580 ball the rest of the way, the midway point between their surprising first-half run and the Cubs' disappointing .540 winning percentage, St. Louis will end up with a record of 98-64. To win the division, the Cubs would have to go 52-23 the rest of the way. That would be way better than anybody's played so far this year in either league. It would be six and a half games better than the surging Marlins played after the All-Star break last year on their way to the championship.

Teams come from seven games out and farther, but they don't do it by gaining a game a week. They do it by going on a hot streak, preferably while the team they're chasing is on a cold streak. They make up five games in one week, not one game a week for five weeks. A shortcut is to beat the first-place team a bunch of times, which the Cubs can't do now because they only play the Cardinals two more times. They've gone 8-9 against St. Louis so far.

Next page: So what did Baker really mean? Plus: Future rushes up on 23-year-old teen sensation