Fro

I trust Schwarber more to make contact against Miller then Soler.

Considering Sosa went on the DL for sneezing and hurting his back I'm sure they could get some semi-legit excuse to put Schwarber on the DL if they had to.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/206224706/todays-arizona-fall-league-starting-lineups-october-24/?topicid=151437456 Schwarbs hitting 2nd & DHing today, 100% confirmed.

I suspect they made an exception in this case since this is basically a rehab assignment for Schwarber if there's any sort of rule that taxi squad folks can't play on Mondays.

Yeah, you shouldn't need that bench spot for the games in Cleveland with the DH. If he looks lost you could always throw him back on the DL. I do trust him to give you good at-bats, work the count, and make contact even if he isn't locked in. Hopefully he's hitting real pitching again today, tomorrow, and tuesday so he can get as sharp as he can.

Agreed, he'd be in Chicago tonight with the team if there was 0% chance of him coming back. I'm sure he's been hitting against real pitching before they made this move. If he gets some hits tonight (and the Cubs win obviously), this might happen.

Security concerns would be part of it. Doubt they want thousands of people standing in the streets outside the ballpark loitering in one spot. The games at Wrigley are on the weekend, so a lot of folks are going to be at the bars drinking (which presumably have expanded some since 2003). Wrigley also has a couple thousand more seats/thousand. Can't drink in the street. I think there's also probably a few less diehard national fans wanting to travel in just to stand near the park since there's no WGN America games anymore (and that network has greatly declined in popularity since the 90s).

mentions of it by the national media is more annoying than anything else. Yeah, I just mentioned it since the Fox Sports narrative of that game that they created is as BS as their cable news division.

Right?! As soon as some noob spouts off about Bartman like they know some history, I quickly school them about Agony being the goat. You pay a guy $5.5 M and he gets handcuffed by a routine DP ball at a crucial moment?! And that bastard NEVER apologized for it, either. Second place goes to Dusty and Rothschild, who apparently had their bums superglued to the bench while Prior imploded. The thing about that team, is that I don't recall it having a lot of leaders. Sammy was always pretty much for Sammy, Alou showed his prima donna tendencies, and poor Kerry had to take it all on his shoulders. I mean, if Mark Grace had still been playing and a Cub, he would have called the IF in, told a crass joke, and Prior would have gotten out of the inning. And then once they all got into the dugout, Grace would have threatened Alou and Agony within an inch of their lives against behaving like such jerks again. The front office deserves more blame than they got as well. Lack of leadership to handle the head-case players. I know it was a different era, but bullpen should have been deeper than what it was. I remember it was basically just Dusty using Remlinger as a LOOGY, Farnsworth either being unhittable or can't throw a strike, then Borowski gets into trouble and hope he can get out of it. Some of that's the front office and some of that's Dusty's pitching management. I rewatched it a few years ago finally and I was also struck by Dusty/Rothschild not doing anything to calm anyone down after Alou freaked out after that foul ball, or any of the other many events that they watched happen.

Lester's going to do a perfect pickoff move at some point tonight and do the Mutombo finger wag at the Dodger's dugout.

Yeah, Buck & Smoltz screwed up on that one. It looked like his hand was just over the plate, but not touching it until he was getting tagged. It's only 100% clear he's touching home plate a couple frames after the tag was applied. Really close though (and I think if they called him safe initially he would have been safe on review).

Its amazing how the emotions/perceptions swing. I went from feelings of desperation to elation and utmost confidence. Yep, and it could swing back and forth a few times in the 2-3 games that are left.

National anthem singer not as good as last night.

Montero Juan Pierred that one. Joe Buck getting annoying.

lol, it looks like an early season Reds game right now from the overhead shots (I know that's still probably 40k people since Dodger Stadium is big).

Okay, Kershaw's on... now throw over to first about 50 times in a row.

Which is the bad strategy, watching strikes go by or attacking early? You don't get to say both. Well, the good strategy would be to cheat to get Kershaw out of the game, but props to us for playing clean.

Just missed that one.

I think these Dodgers bullpen folks probably won't take the wind into account.

He's running his mouth enough so that Smoltz isn't talking about how he'd strike out the hitter at the plate if you just made him your pitching coach, so that's an improvement.

Maddon cued up the Rocky music

John Smoltz going for Joe Morgan/Steve Stone levels of "annoying know-it-all-ism".

I went to bed after the Top of the 5th, but I'm in EST and had to get up early on Sunday/Monday so I was pretty wiped by that point.

A lot of the glaring weaknesses from last year's team have been fixed. Great D, excellent bullpen, our team doesn't strike out a massive amount anymore, excellent starting pitching depth etc. We're not invincible or anything but you can't point to anything besides "the pressure of the moment" as a big negative, and Maddon does a great job keeping everyone loose. I feel pretty good since I think we can win any type of game we have to play, but obviously they play the games for a reason.

He walked off so that's good. Obviously going to have a nasty bruise where he got hit by the line drive.