CHICAGO -- Rich Harden is the perfect Cub.
He's got plenty of talent. His numbers are good. And there's still that sense that something could go sadly wrong.
Just like his team, right?
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| Rich Harden has been a strikeout machine in the NL. (AP) |
"My reaction (after the trade) was that we just went from being a really good team to one that has a chance to really win this thing," second baseman Mark DeRosa said Tuesday.
He's right. Let the Brewers have their Cy Young winner, CC Sabathia. Let the White Sox show off their future Hall of Famer, Ken Griffey Jr.
The Cubs will have Harden, and they'll have no regrets.
As long as he doesn't get hurt. As long as they really do win.
There's every reason now to believe that they could. Well, except for the 100 years of evidence that they won't.
Same goes for Harden. There's every reason to believe that he's the dominating starting pitcher the Cubs needed behind Carlos Zambrano. Every reason except for the five trips to the disabled list in the last three years.
"We have to watch him," manager Lou Piniella said. "We knew that when we got him. That was part of the equation."
For now, Harden is healthy and dominating. He wasn't at his best Tuesday, but Piniella said it was tired legs rather than any arm trouble that played a part in his sixth-inning exit.
As it was, he left with a lead, for the fourth time in his first five Cubs starts. As it was, the Cubs won, 11-7 over Houston, pushing their record back to a season-high 22 games over .500.
It's not fair to credit it all to Harden, because the Cubs were 17 games over .500 when they traded for him, and because the stats say that he only has one win himself.
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But in another way, Harden does get credit, because it was his arrival on July 8 that gave the Cubs an instant answer for Milwaukee's Sabathia move a day earlier.
The Cubs will tell you that they were a confident team, anyway. They'll tell you that they'd been working on the Harden deal long before the Brewers got Sabathia.
Fine, but the fact is that the deals came one day apart, and that the Harden deal blunted the impact of the Brewers move.
"That had to be a tremendous confidence boost to the Cubs," Astros manager Cecil Cooper said. "That kind of sent a little bit of a message. The Cubs answered."
The message didn't sink in immediately in the Cubs clubhouse, but only because so many of the Cubs had never even seen Harden pitch. DeRosa, who had faced him once, found himself explaining to teammates how good Harden can be.
"When Rich is on his game, which is a lot, well, you're not going to hit that," DeRosa said. "You walk back to the dugout shaking your head."
It's not just that Harden is tough to hit (with a .204 opponents batting average this year). It's not just the strikeouts (47 in his first 30 National League innings).
It's also this:
"When he pitches, he wins," said Chad Gaudin, the useful reliever the Cubs also acquired from Oakland in the Harden trade. "He pitches, he either wins, or at least he gives his team a great chance to win.
"What else do you want?"
For his career, Harden is 32-0 when his team scores four or more runs while he's in the game, and 35-2 when the team scores at least three runs for him.
The Cubs average an NL-best 5.3 runs a game.
"Coming to this team, with the way they're playing and the talent they have, I was pretty excited," Harden said.
Why wouldn't he be? The Cubs are 68-46. They're averaging 40,686 a game in a great old ballpark that officially seats 41,160.
"And the fans know the game," Harden said. "They're into it, every single pitch. You get two strikes, and they're up cheering for the strikeout."
Cubs fans do seem to be into it, maybe more this year than usual.
They don't seem to have taken to Harden yet the way Brewers fans have to Sabathia, or even the way White Sox fans already have to Griffey, but there's time for that.
There's a lot of time, from now to October.
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