Aggressive versus Foolish By Keith Glab Sunday, May 25 2003   If the Cubs had lost on Saturday rather than defeating the Astros 3-2, Dusty Baker would have taken a lot of heat for leaving Shawn Estes in for so long.  Rightfully so.  However, Dusty made a more clear-cut mistake that could have cost the Cubs a win just as easily.   The Cubs had just taken a 1-0 lead in the 6th inning.  Moises Alou occupied third base with one out and Troy O’Leary stood at the plate.  The Astros responded to this situation by drawing their infield in.  Despite this, Dusty Baker called for Alou to run on any ground ball contact.   There is absolutely no advantage to running this contact play when the infield is drawn in at all four positions.  Either the ball will be hit right at an infielder, allowing for an easy play at the plate, or it will go for a single, in which case the runner on third would score regardless of how soon the runner starts.  The only times that a contact play makes sense are when some of the infield is playing back, or when there’s a runner on first base and you want to stay out of the double play.   In this case, O’Leary shot the ball at the drawn-in Adam Everett, and Alou was out before the ball touched him.   Although the Cubs wound up winning despite this, they cannot continue to make these kinds of mistakes.  We’re going to see a lot of one-run games from the Cubs this year, as they do not have a wait-for-the-three-run-homer type of offense.  So it makes sense for them to run aggressively on the basepaths.  But aggressiveness implies taking risks in order to obtain greater rewards.  Here, the contact play offered no rewards whatsoever.   I do not agree with Bakers decision to have Estes start the 7th inning with no one warming in the bullpen, but at least one could argue that such a decision was made in an effort to boost Estes’ confidence.  There is no justification for that contact play in the 5th inning, and the Cubs were lucky to have overcome such a terrible miscue.