I’ll take an option #2 with some option #5 on the side.

The one thing that I don’t get about Aramis is this, he can be so damn clutch during the regular season, and yet flop in the playoffs. How can he consistently hit bottom of the 9th walk-off HR after walk-off HR, yet crumble under the pressures of the playoffs?

… your coaches, managers and players have to actually read the scouting reports and put them into action.

…you have to believe hypothesis #5.

It is too difficult to make wholesale changes a team when you have the kind of commitments that we do. The fact is that the core of this team – Z, Lee, Aramis, etc – will all be back next year.

People keep harping on the scouting as though this isn’t a major league team that had success all season. Why would scouting benefit one team more than another in the playoffs versus during the regular season? These are professional ballplayers, it’s a pretty crazy leap to assume that they just said “Who needs scouting!?” when they got to the playoffs.

The simple fact is that they didn’t do the things in this series that made them successful during the regular season. Dempster walked more people in Game 1 than he did in all of September combined. Our hitters couldn’t draw a walk if you gave them a pen and paper. Two solid defensive players made horrible costly errors. It was a slump at the worst time because they were all completely tense, couldn’t relax, and every one of them was pressing, plain and simple. That sounds like a clubhouse problem to me, which is the worst kind of problem as a fan because it’s one that we’re not privy to, and would be silly to speculate about.

I think if you’re going to improve next year you look at the deficient positions, the positions where you got below-average performance on offense and defense, and look to improve those. SS, RF, and maybe CF if you don’t have faith in Pie.

What strikes me as particularly tragic now is the fact that everyone from Lou on down seemed to agree that Soriano was the impetus for this offense. Yet no one seemed concerned about Soriano’s God-awful postseason numbers nor about the fact that Alfonso has never shown the capacity to adjust his approach.

The Cubs coaching staff must’ve known going in that opposing pitchers weren’t going to give Soriano a damn thing to hit in the postseason. And they must’ve known that those same pitchers weren’t likely to make the kind of mistakes that Alfonso’s feasts on during the regular season. So, if one does buy into this “it all starts with Soriano” mentality, the Cubs were doomed from the beginning.

The only possible solution to this problem next season, assuming the Cubs make the playoffs at all, is an unlikely one. Lou has to drop Soriano in the lineup during the postseason. Let him hit leadoff during the regular season when the sheer number of games allows Alfonso’s streakiness to pay dividends. But in the postseason, Soriano needs to turn into the Invisible Man and be buried in the batting order. Meanwhile, the top of the Cubs lineup needs to completely revamp its approach to a bunting/stealing/hit & run offense.

I know this will probably never happen – Lou won’t likely want to make such a drastic change and Soriano might well put up a hissy fit. But, there, I said it.

(And as a parting disclaimer, let me just emphasize that I am no Soriano hater. I’ve defended him many times. But his approach at the plate KILLS this team in the postseason.)

help improve his production. If he has a basic flaw in his swing, it will be exploited if he bats first or eigth. If by moving him down you hope to improve the team’s production, then why only do it during the playoffs? Wouldn’t moving him down be a long-term solution. I have often wondered about this but no one seems to have a good answer.

If you are conceding that he will be no help to the team during the playoffs, then why is he on the team? It seems to me that the obvious solution is to figure out how to transfer his regular season success to the post-season. Maybe we can convince pitchers to only throw him fastballs down the middle of the plate. A certain amount of hypnosis and power of suggestion should do the trick.

big three (Soriano, Lee & Aaramis) had some pretty bad season splits v. the Dodgers. Not as many games and ABs against them as teams in the NLCD, but perhaps Dodgers’ pitchers matched up well v. our best hitters? Lee got it going some in the playoff, though. Oh, well, sort of tired of the whole thing, time to get ready for the remainder of the playoffs and the WS.