Aces past, present meet today
Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano would just as soon be another card in the deck.
''I'm not the ace,'' he said. ''All five [starters] are the ace.''
Manager Lou Piniella doesn't mind that kind of modesty, even though the facts speak differently.
''To me, on the first and 15th when the paycheck comes, that tells you the ace,'' he said. ''They get rewarded for what they do.''
And, indeed, Zambrano is an ace when it comes to his paycheck. His five-year, $91.5 million contract extension signed last season put him among the richest players in baseball.
''He's right in one respect,'' Piniella said. ''For a team to function, all five [starters] have to be doing the job. But he's the guy we lean on the most -- if you want to categorize him as the ace.
''But why put pressure on yourself? Just say you're one of the five.''
At 26, Zambrano still is coming into his own. The pitcher who longed last season to be the Cy Young Award winner is showing more of the talent to claim that prize someday and an evolving maturity any team needs.
He pitches today against a former ace, Randy Johnson, who has spent almost two decades in baseball and developed into one of the most feared left-handers in the game. Johnson, 44, has five Cy Young Awards, 11 postseason appearances and a World Series ring with the Arizona Diamondbacks. He needs 14 more victories to reach 300 in his career and never has lost to the Cubs. He brings a 12-0 lifetime record and 1.98 ERA into his start today.
Johnson was on Piniella's Seattle Mariners teams in the mid-1990s. And though Johnson might have been an ace on the mound, Piniella said he never has had an all-around pitcher such as Zambrano.
''He's an athlete,'' Piniella said. ''You should see him run with a soccer ball. He's fun to watch.''
Piniella loves to see Zambrano with a bat more.
The switch-hitting pitcher loves that part of the game, too, and he already has tied Ferguson Jenkins for the Cubs' all-time home-run lead among pitchers with 13. He hit six last season to tie Jenkins for the single-season record.
''When I took him out of his last game in Cincinnati [after] the eighth, he wasn't necessarily happy, but he was most unhappy because he was going to lose his at-bat in the inning,'' Piniella said. ''I've used him to pinch-hit and pinch-run. The first thing he tells me when a runner is on base, 'You want me to hit or bunt?' I don't think he knows the bunt sign.''
In his last start against the Reds, Zambrano worked eight scoreless innings in an eventual 3-0 victory, lowering his ERA to 1.80 and running his record to 5-1.
