TruffleShuffle

be afraid, reds fans.

lee will be justified swinging at the super-low balls tonight.

What a buster. Meanwhile, the Phillies haven't gotten a hit off Brad Thompson. told you

haha the mlb.tv commercial for the all star game is terrible, there are yankee players reading the ad and they read about 10 words apiece, but it's so obvious that most of them are reading from a card.

why would you name your daughter Lacey, bob? trying to steer her toward a career in stripping?

nice job, bob brenlEy fan club.

disappointing AB for soto, only a double

.287/.425/.651/1.075 in his career at wrigley. yikes.

i was wondering when adam dunn was gonna hit his home run this series... there's absolutely no chance that the cubs can play a series with the reds and not have adam dunn homer.

pie hit a homer for iowa in their first game.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha won't be so funny when brad thompson and the cardinal bullpen polish off a no hitter.

mulder injured; bullpen in the game. i hope that rich harden is more post-trade tim hudson than mark mulder.

um...what the crap? where is fonz? alfonso soriano?!?!? probably on the disabled list. sarchasm :P odd timing for the joke, but okay. go cobs.

actually i don't have cap 1 exactly, i have this one... but they're really similar. cap 3 is awful.

um...what the crap? where is fonz? alfonso soriano?!?!? probably on the disabled list.

marquis really isn't as bad as everyone thinks he is - someone has made the point that he's not "Estes in 2003"-level bad, which is how everyone treats him. He's a somewhat worse than average, which is fine out of a 5th starter who's not going to see the field in the playoffs. The Cubs have a good enough offense to win during his average and good starts.

I have been critical of our portly general manager in the past, but I feel that now is a good time to give him some much-deserved credit. If you look at the Cubs' roster at the end of the Dusty Baker era, it was atrocious. Ronny Cedeno was playing every day as one of the worst regulars in baseball. The outfield was usually the punchless threesome of Murton, Pierre and Jock Jones. Regular playing time went to losers like John Mabry, Neifi Perez and Jerry Hairston. The rotation was a combination of young mediocre players and oft-injured vets. The pitching staff walked way too many guys, and the offense was allergic to the free pass. So now we stand less than two years later, and the Cubs have the top record in the national league, and not a team that has been fluky good - but rather a team that is as good on paper as it has been on the field. Granted, the payroll has grown markedly, and thank you to the Tribune for finally opening up the wallet and not just settling for millions of dollars of profit each year. But there are some very big-dollar teams in the league (Yankees, Mets, Tigers, Dodgers) which have underachieved. In most cases, those teams are not positioned as well as the Cubs for a deep run in the playoffs. Among the successes of Jim Hendry: -Removing the cancer of Dusty Baker, and bringing in a manager and hitting coach who clearly understand the value of getting on base. -Bringing in some high OBP players (Fukudome, DeRosa). -Greatly improving the depth on the team - backups like Reed Johnson, Daryle Ward, Matt Murton and Mike Fontenot are far superior to black holes like the ones in the lineup when regulars went down in 2005-06. -Overhauling the pitching staff. The reliance on fragile arms has been minimized, and the staff as a whole throws a lot more strikes now. Ted Lilly has been a very steady pitcher, and the move of Dempster to the rotation has been a big success. The Cubs also have a great deal more depth - having guys like Marshall, Gallagher (now Gaudin), Cotts and Ascanio is a luxury and avoids disaster when things (Rich Hill, Zambrano's injury, Eyre's injury) go wrong. -By and large, Hednry has avoided mistake signings like Jason Schmidt, Ray Durham and Julio Lugo. The DeRosa signing turned out to be excellent, Howry has produced at a good level for a middle reliever, and the big ticket guys (Soriano, Fukudome) have been productive - maybe not to the level of their contracts, but they haven't been Andruw Jones-bad. -He's done a good job of cutting bait at the right time with certain players - Todd Walker and Michael Barrett jump to mind right now. At the same time, he's given long-term deals to the right players (Zambrano, Ramirez, Lee). -He's rolled the dice on some guys who have turned out to be solid - Dempster, Edmonds, Reed Johnson. the busts (Wade Miller) have been relatively insignificant. There are still some flaws with this team - he overpaid for Marquis and Blanco, the Soriano signing will likely be ugly by its later years. But all in all, he's done a great job of overhauling a terrible roster in a very short time.

This. HAS to be skyballer

soto article in usa today

as harang found out, hanging breaking ball is a bad idea too.

jacque jones (or whoever j. jones is) is 3-5 with a double and is hitting .421 for arizona. cerda is catching and has gone 2-4 with a double, BB and K. he's also picked off a runner at first, apparently. Not Neifi Perez is 2-4 with 2 triples... the 11 XBHs in 13 games are sexy, though the zero walks are not. finally, some guy named hoorelbeke has doubled and homered, and is hitting .412. also, a J Pena pitched 4 shutout innings, striking out 4, and has a 0.54 ERA.

while we're talking about the world series, which chicago-area nsbb poster would like put put me up/drink with me if the cubs win it?

i have cap 1, it's awesome

The Great Cardinals @ Phillies, 7:05 EDT (M. Mulder, first start of the year, versus J.A. Happ, second start of the year) Rockies @ Brewers, 7:05 CDT (here's a bad matchup: Glendon Rusch vs Ben Sheets #-o ) in other interesting races (AL East), the devil rays and the yankees are tied at 1 in the 7th, while the red sox are up 6-4 on the twins.

we're playing dusty baker's reds, not cincinnati