(670 The Score) The criticism was so loud and clear amid the Cubs' poor start that president of baseball operations Theo Epstein came out publicly a week into the season and largely shouldered the blame for his team's abysmal play.
In those comments, Epstein absolved first-year pitching coach Tommy Hottovy of any blame as the rotation and bullpen struggled mightily. Epstein also expressed his belief that it would turn around.
The Cubs have taken steps toward that recently, improving to 7-9 with a 4-0 win against the Marlins on Tuesday evening after a 2-7 start. Their better play has been led by quality pitching, as the Cubs have held their opponent to two runs or fewer in five of their past seven games.
That has been a relief to Hottovy, who understands why the scrutiny was so fierce early.
"The one thing we love about our fans, about our city, about the Cubs fans in general is they expect us to win," Hottovy said on the Mully & Haugh Show on Wednesday morning. "They expect us to perform. When that doesn't happen, you're going to be upset. That's why we love our fans. They support us and they want us to do better and be better.
"We all felt responsible for the start of the season. Theo came out and said what he said, but we all wanted to do better.
"We really grind hard every day to help these guys get better. There are going to be rough patches. It just happened to be the first six or seven games of the year. But we've really been encouraged by the way guys have worked the last two weeks. We're going to continue to build off it and move forward."
The Cubs' quality pitching continued as left-hander Jose Quintana threw seven shutout innings in his team's win Tuesday. It followed a previous outing for Quintana in which he fired seven innings of one-run ball.
"He's in a great place," Hottovy said. "That's also trickling down. A lot of the other pitchers are feeling a lot of the same things Quintana is. You have guys who are starting to get on a roll and gaining that confidence every time out."
