In the 2009 Spring Training, Lou Piniella had Carlos Marmol and Kevin Gregg battle it out for the Cubs' closer role. Gregg won the job, was terrible when the real season came around(23 saves in 30 attempts), and is currently not even a part of the organization. Marmol finally was inserted into the role in August, and converted all 12 save opportunities as the official closer(overall on the season had 15 saves and 4 blown saves).

Well, Piniella says that Marmol won't have a challenger or the closer job in this year's Spring Training:

Piniella said Marmol will be his man no matter what happens this spring. ""There won't be any closer controversy, no closer decisions," he said.

If Marmol wants to keep the job all year, he'll need to improve on the unbelievably terrible control he had in 2009. He walked a whopping 65 batters in 74 innings. An even crazier statistic is that he hit 12 batters, which was the third-most in the National League. That's incredible when he's not even a starting pitcher. But when you have arguably the nastiest stuff in baseball and batters rarely make contact, you can still have a very good ERA of 3.41 as Marmol did in 2009.


Moving on to some interesting stuff involving a former Cub, Mark DeRosa. Cubs general manager Jim Hendry was torn apart by fans and the media all season after trading DeRosa to the Cleveland Indians in the winter prior to the 2009 season, especially since the trade was made in large part to make room for Milton Bradley. If I need to tell you how that turned out, I have no idea why you're on this site. Anyway, DeRosa was a free agent this offseason and signed with the San Francisco. Since the Cubs don't have an everyday second baseman on the roster, many people wanted them to just bring DeRosa back. Apparently Hendry didn't think DeRosa was capable of being that guy anymore:

As for why the Cubs didn't re-sign DeRosa as a free agent, Hendry said they felt his days as a second baseman were over, pointing out that his new team, San Francisco, is using him in left field.

DeRosa will be 35 before the season starts and has lost the range desired for a starting second baseman. However, I think this is just Hendry finding an excuse that's buyable, but not the real reason DeRosa will be playing home games in San Francisco instead of Chicago in 2010. Bringing DeRosa back just a year later would be Hendry really admitting he screwed up.

Source- Chicago Breaking Sports


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