His old tricks are (1) vastly improving the pitching staffs he coaches and (2) providing sportswriters with colorful material. His success with the Texas Rangers is profiled here by Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. Grant writes:

In his first job as a major league pitching coach, with the Chicago Cubs, Acosta oversaw the single-biggest staff ERA improvement in the NL from 2000 to 2001. The Cubs’ ERA fell from 5.25, which ranked 14th of 16 teams in the league, to 4.03, which ranked fourth.

He seems to be doing the same thing with the Rangers. The team began the final day of April with a staff ERA of 4.69, more than two runs better than their 6.72 ERA for the first month of 2001.

In particular, the starters, who usually spend more time with a pitching coach than do relievers, have a seen a drastic drop. They took a 4.28 ERA into Tuesday’s game, the fourth-best rotation ERA in the league.

Indeed, the reason for the Rangers’ poor start hasn’t been pitching, but some untimely injuries. The line on Texas at the beginning of the year was they’d score a lot of runs, but give up just as many. Acosta is working the same magic he did with the Cubs to give them a chance to win these ballgames.

Of course, Don Baylor was too stupid to realize that, pressuring Larry MacPhail to fire Acosta because he badmouthed exercise guru Mack Newton. While new pitching coach Larry Rothchild has a lot of experience, I wonder how much better the Cubs’ relievers would be doing with Acosta barking at them every day.

Deciding game of a crucial playoff series between the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers in Boston … how sweet it is. While I would have preferred that the Celtics finish things off in Philly, seeing a do-or-die game five in Boston shoudl be fun. And there’s not much the Celtics could have done. Iverson just took over in both games three and four.

One thing that irritates me is that the first-round games are so far apart. The first Celtics-Sixers game was way back on April 21. How long ago was that? The Cubs have won three times since then!

The NBA has really spread out the first-round schedule so that all the games could be televised and to get as much TV revenue as possible. I think it’s really a detriment to the flow of the first round and extends the playoffs unnecessarily. They already take too long as it is. Why make it worse?

After dropping both ends of a doubleheader to the Dodgers on Sunday, the Cubs wound up 3-6 on their homestand. Just wonderful.

Then they lost their second game on the road to the Padres after a Fred McGriff error that was called a hit by an official scorer who apparently fell asleep on the play. That was five losses in a row for the Cubs. They haven’t won since I went to the game last Wednesday. On the bright side, Sosa hit two home runs.

But they finally won today, 6-1. Offense, simply, is the difference. Yesterday the Cubs could muster only three. The Cubs have this special ability to make even the most mediocre pitchers look like Cy Young Award winners.

Alou hit a home run today, and that’s a start. Sosa, with two home runs for the second game in a row, looks like he’s getting into one of his patented hot streaks. It’s funny, because he hit eight home runs in April, and that’s not considered a really good month for him. So if the middle of the order can drive in some runners, maybe things can turn around. Patterson has an eight-game hitting streak going.

The starting pitching, certainly, has never been in doubt, with a solid 3.61 ERA, sixth in the National League.

It’s the relievers who have been a problem. Cub relievers collectively have an ERA of 4.90, 14th in the National League. Only the Phillies and Astros are worse. The bullpen was a strong suit for the Cubs last year. But aside from Joe Borowski‘s 2.08 ERA, the bullpen has been spottier than a leopard.

Alfonseca‘s been fine, but has only had four save opportunities. And as ballyhooed as closers are, they are not really the most important people in the bullpen. Much more important are the middle relievers who come in to keep the game close, hold the lead or match up with leftys or rightys.

The most spectacular failure thus far has been Jeff Fassero, continuing his disastrous second half of last year. Fassero pitched a scoreless inning today, but has an 8.49 ERA so far, and left-handed batters have an on-base average of .455 against him.

But he’s not the only one. Osborne, Zambrano and Sanchez have also fallen down on the job, and obviously the Farnsworth and Gordon injuries have hurt.

It’s a long, long season in baseball. It’s hard to extrapolate from one month how the rest of the season will go. The Cubs are now 9-17, eight games out of first place in the Central Division. This much is true. We will probably know before I leave for Washington, D.C., in the second week of June whether the Cubs will be contending throughout the summer or preparing for a rebuilding job.

There have been rumors that Baylor’s job is in jeopardy. While I think he’s a terrible manager and the wrong man to lead a roster of young players who will have the potential to make the Cubs a perennial winner, I don’t think firing him now will accomplish much. That said, I do think the Cubs should bring up Bobby Hill to lead off and play second base as soon as possible. DeShields is a giant black hole in the lineup, and has zero range defensively.