Hey there, swizzle sticks. I hate to be judgmental with 159 games left to play, but if I wasn’t, you might not recognize me. Plus, after splittin’ with the Fish today instead of frying ’em up and feeding ’em to some feral cats, I’m not exactly feeling like the Easter Bunny. So, with the season’s umbilical cord still attached, I think it’s time somebody (me, for instance) asked a really obvious question: What the hell is Pedro Strop still doin’ on the Cubs?

To me, that’s like askin’ where astrophysical neutrinos come from, cuz the answer is the same: Nobody knows.

Bringin’ Strop into a game is a total crap shoot, and more often than not, without the “shoot” part. And yesterday was no exception, pallie. Yeah, the guy escapes with the win. Party on, Garth. But that was cuz of Bryant’s base-clearing double in extras, and the setting of the table before it, not cuz Strop came in and exerted his willful authority over the Fish. Hardly. We wouldn’t have even been in extras if Strop hadn’t given up a game-tying hit in the 8th.

Full disclosure: Darvish did his part, too, givin’ up all the hard work our bats did before he was yanked in the 4th (which was waaaaaaay too late, in my opinion. He wasn’t sharp, and anyone payin’ attention to his pitch location could see that he was havin’ a ton of trouble stayin’ in the Miami zip code. Maddon shoulda yanked him sooner.

But the jury is still out on Darvish. Strop, on the other hand, is in his 6th season with Chicago, and has pretty much painted a full color self portrait for us already. Has he had flashes of brilliance? Absolutely. Is he single-handedly responsible for narrowing the coronary arteries of every Cubs fan alive? Also absolutely. Strop is a high trans-fat diet in pin stripes. And that’s what drives me up the ivy covered wall, pal — the fact that he’s so friggin’ unpredictable.

I think his stuff can be pretty darn nasty at times. But he routinely has a serious problem findin’ the strike zone. And when he does, it’s often the part where the hitter happens to have put his bat.

Strop’s WHIP in 2017 was the worst he’s had since joining the Cubs in 2013. Not a good trend. Still, he’s thrown 272.2 innings over that period and racked up 320 strike outs. By itself that’s pretty awesome. But he’s also given up 173 hits, 107 walks, thrown 29 wild pitches and plunked 19 batters along the way. Not exactly Greg Maddux. What makes it worse is those things often seem to come at the most inopportune moments for the Cubs, which compounds their effect.

I gotta hope Theo sees somethin’ in Strop that us mortals can’t, and that he expects it to come out in its full glory this season. Of course, I also hope that Scarlett Johansson is hawkin’ sausages in my section in her full glory for the home opener. Maybe just some Jimmy Choo’s. I’m not sure hope will be enough in either instance.

Joe

PS. (Which in this case stands for Pedro Strop) put your friggin’ hat on straight.