By looking at the game logs for Harden since early July, I kinda agree with that. Harden has gone 7 innings in a game 4 times since July, and three of the games were against a bad offensive teams in the Reds, D-backs and Nationals. When he faces teams with good/decent teams, like Phillies(even though he had a great start against them in June), Mets, Angels,White Sox,Red Sox and Brewers he's been mostly a 5-6 inning pitcher. Harden is hard to hit against anybody, but if he doesn't have his top notch stuff good teams are going to make him work hard to shut them down. Which causes him to not be in the game very long. Now there probably isn't a huge difference with Dempster, but if you had to say who do you think will go longer in a game, I think most would take Dempster. That doesn't mean Dempster should start game 1, but I don't have a big problem with it either. The only problem I have with it is the game 5 factor. In a must win game 5, I'd rather have Harden on the mound. But I guess Dempster isn't a bad option either, with the way he has pitched this year. Although, it should be noted that Lou was most definitely babying Harden (and rightfully so). Of the 12 games Harden's pitched as a Cub, he hasn't gone 7 innings 8 times. Of those 8 times hes only eclipsed the 100 pitch count 1 time. If I were Lou in the playoffs I wouldn't ride Harden to a Dusty-esque limit, but I'd take the kid gloves a bit and release the reigns. Don't be so concerned that Harden hasn't gone terribly deep into games in the regular season. Conversely, its interesting to note that in 2008, for pitches 91-105, Harden's OPSA is 921 due to an increase walk rate and HR rate...but we're only talking about 52 PAs so we can throw it out due to sample size.