Manager Dale Sveum all praise for the Chicago Cubs' bullpen – MLB News
Chicago Cubs' manager Dale Sveum on Sunday, September 23, defended and praised the bullpen’s performance this season. With the 2012 regular season nearing an end for the Cubs, the bullpen has come to be the strength of the club.
A quick look at the numbers they have put in last 16 games shows that the club is in a building phase, will come to boast a powerful bullpen in few years down the lane. A 2.98 ERA in just over 63 innings is a testament to that.
For Dale Sveum, it is increasingly reassuring that the Cubs have fared better in this aspect of the game.
"Bullpens are very difficult to put together and any general manager will tell you that," Sveum said. "Sometimes there's a lot of luck involved in it, finding diamonds in the rough. ... It's just the hardest thing to put together is a bullpen, so it's nice to see these guys coming back from a little bit of adversity and doing nice things."
Cubs on Sunday concluded the three-game series against St. Louis Cardinals wherein they could not quite maintain their grip after winning the opener. However, it was a good display once again given the challenge they posed to the Cardinals.
Cardinals are putting an extraordinary effort to book a spot in the postseason games through a Wild Card spot. This will be the second year to go to the playoffs with the Wild Card, if they succeed in achieving this. That march was momentarily thwarted, thanks to the tough resistance by the Cubs.
Kerry Wood, the Cubs’ pitcher, sees a bright future for the club as a whole with the likes of Theo Epstein being there as the Cubs’ president of baseball operations.
"I see the long term of what we're trying to do here and I know how hard Theo and his team are working and what they're doing," Wood said. "It's not going to be easy, but they're doing what they need to turn this organization around.”
Cubs are now scheduled to play a three-game series against Colorado Rockies, beginning from Tuesday.
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