bukie

The debate started in the game thread, and although I made a poll about it a couple months ago, that was more of a "best of". Where does this year's team rank comparatively to the other teams of the past 10 years? For me: 1. 2004 Cubs - Had the pitching and the hitting to be a 95 win team. Had the management to turn it into an 89 win team. Lineup of Sosa, Lee, Ramirez, Garciaparra, Alou, Barrett, Walker, Patterson, rotation of Prior, Wood, Zambrano, Clement and Maddux. Seriously, this team was stacked. Only weak spot was Hawkins closing when he shouldn't have been. 2. 2003 Cubs - Stacked pitching, decent hitting, one win away from a World Series. 3. 2001 Cubs - Sosa had a monster year, and was surrounded on offense by decent years from Matt Stairs, Rondell White, Ricky Gutierrez, and Eric Young. Actually in the top half of the NL offensively. Rotation was Wood, Lieber, Tapani, Tavarez, and Jason Bere, with Juan Cruz taking over admirably at the end of the year. Pen was fantastic except for Baylor's penchant to use Felix Heredia all too often. 4. 2007 Cubs - Pitching is really fantastic all-around, and is actually being helped by management instead of sabotaged as it was in the previous 3 entries. Offense is average, weak in HRs and BBs. Could be an 85 win team managed into a 90 win team before all is said and done. 5. 1998 Cubs - No idea how this team made the playoffs. They were somehow fantastic offensively with a squad of Sosa and Grace, surrounded by the corpses of Mickey Morandini, Gary Gaetti, Orlando Merced, Glenallen Hill, Lance Johnson, and Jeff Blauser. Their rotation was really bad, with just Kerry Wood being a bright spot, with Tapani, Trachsel, Mark Clark, and Jeremi Gonzalez somehow winning 70-odd games among them. Rod Beck closed with his 80-mph heater, and Terry Mulholland was the ace out of the bullpen.

Hey, a soft-tossing lefty that gives up a lot of HRs. That sounds like a recipe for disaster for this Cub team.

Bah, gotta go, Howry just made my son cry. They'd better win anyway.

Usually when the Cubs can trade outs for runs, I feel comfortable...but this is Howry and Rollins and Howard are lurking.

I'm rooting for the Mets? Against the Brewers? Never going to feel comfortable with that.

I can research Baseball Reference myself, I suppose. :) Including tonight, Kendall's OBP is at .314. Still bad, but not pathetic anymore.

Hey Fred, you have stats on Kendall since he joined the Cubs? I'm curious if his OBP is over .300 yet.

If Marmol can get a hit, it's simply the Cubs' day.

Kendall is patient, and hit it about as far as he could.

wtg Jones, 3 walks to the previous 4 hitters, and you swing at 3 straight pitches out of the zone.

Every team has factors that limit their ability to perform their best. Hopefully the Cubs can push through this limit to make the playoffs anyway. ...sorry, that's the best I can do for a silver lining.

My wife and I just had this exchange during the stretch: Me: I didn't know Barry Williams could sing. Her: Don't you remember, they sang on the Brady Bunch variety hour show. Me: Exactly my point.

One very odd thing that I noticed is that since the ASB, the Brewers and Cubs play almost the exact same schedule from that point to the end of August. Giants/D'backs, Cards/Reds, Phillies/Mets, Astros/Rockies, Giants/D'backs, then each other.

Cubs are 2-0 since my son was born. He knows not the agony of defeat. I don't think he's ready for it yet, either.

He's doing the right thing, though, trying to unload it quickly. It's at its peak value right now.

I still can't believe the Cubs don't have any more road games against contenders, outside of Arizona.

Hopefully the Cubs can get through this inning without seeing Bonds again.

Second stipulation: The returning PTBNL must not be Izturis.

Winning does wonders to demeanor... No matter how one feels about JJ, I agree it is good to see him playing like a kid & enjoying the game. He isn't a bad guy, I think, so I hope he continues playing w/ some joy. maybe we'll get lucky in the process & he'll start producing on a semi-regular basis... I would love to see JJ catch fire for 2 weeks, hit 4-5 HRs or so, and then be rolled out to the Yankees with additional assets for A-Rod.

Wow, Atlanta has had 22 baserunners, and only 4 have scored.

According to the official rules: I'm not sure when they removed "pitches effectively" from the rule, but I think it's now just automatically regarded as a save.

:-s 3+ innings of relief to end the game is a save, no matter the lead.

12 runs on 10 walks today. No home runs.

Whew, I was worried the Cubs wouldn't make it to 10 runs today.

What does our offensive production have anything to do with QS's? The only reason Z came out after 5 IP was because of the 9-0 score. A pitcher has to go 6 innings with 3 or fewer runs to get a quality start. I guess next time Lou should tell his players to stop scoring so that Z can chase a meaningless statistic. Didn't seem as if he was disapointed about it, just pointing it out, since Z had thrown 8 consecutive QS's.