TruffleShuffle

after a legitimate single for ludwick, molina gets jammed, breaks his bat, and dumps a pop up single into center. God i hate the cardinals.

terrific, two seeing eye pop ups to right field and cards lead 2-0.

this is maddening, pineiro throws the same pitch every time and phillies hitters keep trying to pull the low outside sinker. lay off it if it's low and go the other way if it's in the strike zone.

werth hit one about 700 feet but of course it hooked a few feet foul.

pineiro's ERA is about to fall below 3. this really pisses me off.

he hasn't retired the pitcher yet. he threw to second base too late to get the lead runner on a bunt attempt, and just walked the pitcher to walk in a run. he's having a terrible game. done after 2.2 innings... 5 H, 4 R, 3 ER (for now), 4 BB (1 intentional), 2 K, 1 HBP, 64 pitches/34 strikes.

happ, carrasco and halladay are all pitching.

bob howry

holliday with a cheap infield single and then immediately steals second base. i hate him already.

cards and phils both down in order in the first inning. unfortunately oakland was in new york so holliday was able to get to philly quickly, and he's batting 4th for the cards tonight. happ versus the dave duncan-created monster named joel pineiro. elsewhere, milwaukee (parra) hosts atlanta (vazquez), houston (hampton) hosts the hapless mets (santana) and who cares what the pirates are doing. san diego is also at washington in an extremely exciting matchup.

i've seen the names of michael taylor, jason donald, carlos carrasco and lou marson as well. i suspect that the phillies will give up drabek and carrasco but will not give up happ.

who do you see needing to be replaced in the minors? oneri fleita? tim wilken is pretty highly regarded, or at least was before coming here - do you like him? what would be the steps you'd take to upgrade the drafting/scouting/player development side of things?

eh it's possible, but baltimore is a middle-market team while the cubs can keep their payroll high. i can see them having a short down period but i don't see any reason that they should be in the toilet for 10 years. Balt. had one of the highest payrolls at the time. Unless they cont. to build up the farm, I can see them being medicore (78-85 wins) for the next 5 years or so. at the time they did, but when they got bad they stopped spending so much money. they cut their payroll big-time from the late 90s to the early 2000s, the team stopped being competitive within the division and camden yards was no longer the shiny new toy. so people stopped going (attendance last year was less than 2M; during the 90s they were regularly drawing around 3.5M). the cubs will draw because of wrigley, as long as the product they're putting on the field is competitive. i can see a down period for the cubs somewhere in the 2010-12 period, but once the financial commitments start to diminish, they'll be a major player in the free agent market again. things couldn't get much more dire than they were at the end of 2006, and the cubs turned it around very quickly by bringing in soriano, lilly, derosa, marquis (lol) and retaining the talent (lee, ramirez, zambrano) that was already there. they may not have a great system but i don't think it's any worse than it was in 2006, and guys like marmol, marshall, theriot, fontenot, soto, etc. have turned into significant contributors despite not being very highly-touted prospects. probably the biggest concern is that in 2006, ramirez, lee, zambrano all had several more years of good production down the road - they can't count on lee, soriano, ramirez, fukudome to carry the offense as they head into their mid 30s. if i were the cubs i'd let lee walk and either go hard after a big-time free agent 1B in winter 2010 (unless it appears that vitters will have a big-time bat, then i'd consider moving ARam to 1B) or try to do a trade/sign for an elite corner IF... maybe a guy like adrian gonzalez if we could pry him away from SD. they are going to need a big-time bat to build around and at this point it looks unlikely to come from in house.

well halladay is scheduled to start for toronto, happ for philly and carrasco for philly's AAA affiliate. so it will be interesting to see what happens in the next hour. i have to think that either happ or carrasco (probably carrasco) will be going to toronto with drabek in any potential deal. then again, because so many of the possibilities are scheduled to start, the teams may hold off to finalize.

cubs need to get in on this quick; baseball-playing robots may be just the thing to break our 100 year drought.

that's not really panic time, because DL for a pitcher means two missed starts (often it's just a matter of roster flexibility), but lilly has been rock solid and any injury that could reduce his effectiveness the rest of this year is concerning.

eh it's possible, but baltimore is a middle-market team while the cubs can keep their payroll high. i can see them having a short down period but i don't see any reason that they should be in the toilet for 10 years.

escobar i can understand, but gamel? he's either going to be awful defensively at 3B or be limited to corner OF and 1B, all of which are filled on the brewers. i'd think that they'd want to trade gamel. i don't think happ is that great; the phillies would be smart to sell now while his value is high.

i REALLY like the power - that's been kinda lacking lately. nice to see fontenot and aram hit homers, especially, since fontenot has sucked most of the year and aram is still hurting.

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: suck it shut up, your internet message board posts almost lost this game for the cubs.

they staged a rally with hits/walks from ryan harigan, jerry hairston jr, chris dickerson and willy taveras. all those guys suck.

what the crap

ughh do not want votto to come up as the tying run.

oh look another hit for a reds catcher.

i apologize to lee for suggesting earlier this season that hoffpauir could be almost as productive as him. i am not smart.