CubColtPacer

Bruce is at the Peoria game tonight, so he will be giving updates on Z on his blog. He also said he interviewed Jackson, LeMahieu, Brenly, and Huesby before the game. This would be such a wonderful game to go to..not only to see all the hitters (of course including Burke and Flaherty in addition to the names he said) but to get to see Z and Archer as well? That's pretty nice.

Perhaps, but its still garbage. Have you ever walked on it? It's pretty incredible stuff. I'm sure there will always be cold weather cities with grass fields, but I'm not surprised that increasingly cold weather cities with open air stadiums are converting to Fieldturf. It feels so much like grass but doesn't get completely ripped up with bad weather like grass tends to do. In a few years I would expect there to be only about 2-3 teams left with grass in the northern half of the country.

No. Since the Padres took the lead during the inning the game would be suspended and the rest of it would be completed at some later date.

92 wins (projected to have the best record in the NL), winning the division by 7 games over the Brewers.

Hate to tell you, but he didn't suck last year. he actually did suck last year minus 4 weeks of hot hitting. Ridiculous. what did he bat in the playoffs? 1-14....He really hits when it matters. Most of his home runs came when we were up or down by a bunch of runs. Let's see if the home run allegation is true. Here are Soriano's home runs from last year. The score reflected is at the time right before Soriano hit the home run, and I also have noted if the Cubs took the lead or tied the game with his home run: April 6th-tied 1-1 (took lead) April 11th-down 3-2 (tied game) May 2nd-down 3-1 (tied game) May 12th-down 2-1 (took lead) May 13th-tied 0-0 (took lead) May 14th-tied 0-0 (took lead) May 16th-tied 0-0 (took lead) May 16th-up 3-0 May 17th-up 3-2 May 17th-down 5-4 (tied game) May 25th-down 2-1 (took lead) May 31st-down 2-1 (took lead) June 1st-up 4-3 June 3rd-up 6-3 June 7th-up 1-0 July 27th-down 5-2 (tied game) July 28th-up 1-0 July 31st-up 5-1 August 3rd-up 7-5 August 5th-tied 7-7 (took lead) August 6th-up 6-4 August 14th-up 5-2 August 29th-tied 2-2 (took lead) September 2nd-tied 0-0 (took lead) September 6th-tied 0-0 (took lead) September 6th-up 2-1 September 6th-up 3-1 September 14th-tied 0-0 (took lead) September 16th-up 3-2 So 29 home runs. The largest deficit the Cubs ever had was 3 runs when Soriano hit 1 (and that home run was a 3 run shot to tie the game). They only had a 4 run lead once when he hit a home run. He took the lead with 12 of his 28 home runs. He tied the game up 4 times. The team had a: 3 run deficit- 1 time 2 run deficit- 1 time 1 run deficit- 5 times tied- 9 times 1 run lead- 6 times 2 run lead- 3 times 3 run lead- 3 times 4 run lead- 1 time There are a lot of criticisms that can be made of Soriano as a player, but hitting home runs only at inopportune times is not one of them. In fact, the case could be argued better the other way. The Cubs had quite a few potential blowout games to hit home runs in last year, and for Soriano to hit exactly 1 home run with a run differential of more than 3 runs at the time is pretty amazing. (and that 4 run lead was finishing off the sweep of Milwaukee, probably the biggest series of the regular season)

The question becomes how the team would be helped by releasing some of the names on that list. For example, Fukudome. Why would you want to get absolutely nothing back for one of the best CF's in the league this year? Harden and Gregg are both free agents after this year and both might bring the Cubs back draft picks in free agency. Losing them for nothing could only hurt the Cubs at this point and not help them. Fontenot is at worst a cheap backup at 2B and still has 1 option left to be sent down to the minors. With both those options at the Cubs disposal, why should they lose him for nothing instead? Bradley and Z I can sort of see, although Bradley has been turning it around quite a bit and Z has been consistently good year after year and that's a hard thing to replace in a rotation. Injury risk does come into play here though. Heilman is also a free agent after the season and likely will not bring back anything in return. It doesn't really matter either way if the Cubs lose him through the waiver process or not. Soriano I would agree with that I would give up for nothing. He'll likely produce in the next couple years better than this year, but having his money available for other things would still be much better than having him for the next 5 years. And I don't think you'll get any argument on the benefit of losing Miles for nothing. Getting out from under his contract would help next year's club slightly. So there's a few names on your list that would be fine for waiving in that fashion, but there's also several names where it would be absolutely ridiculous for the Cubs to do that move. And the Cubs cannot force another team to put in a claim for their obvious bad contracts (Soriano, Miles). How would it help the 2010-2012 Cubs to let go of the rest?

The new owner might also not want to have to pay Hendry for not working for the next 3 years. Plus, that's assuming the sale goes through in the next 2 months. If the sale is completed in November or later, Hendry stays for sure in order to make sure that the 2009 offseason isn't a total wash.

Probably has nothing to do with George The Rose and J Happ being southpaws. ok, so why is he being platooned for ANOTHER LEFTY? Using a tough lefty as an opportunity to give Fukudome a rest is probably smart. Sitting him against damn near every lefty drives me crazy (how is he ever going to hit lefties if he never faces them). Doubly so when Reed Johnson is on the DL. Damn Lou is frustrating at times. If he can't hit left-handers in his 30's, he's not likely ever going to hit them. He probably wasn't platooned in Japan so he would have had plenty of chances to see left-handers. This isn't like a prospect coming up. It looks like Fuld and Fukudome are probably about the same player against a left-hander. Both are slap hitters with no power but still walking a lot (while there's a huge difference between them against right-handers thanks to Fukudome's power). I don't think Fuld should be playing against every left-hander, but it just doesn't really matter which one plays. They're so interchangeable offensively that if Lou wants to play Fuld against every left-hander for either his defense or to give Fukudome lots of rest, I don't really think it will hurt the Cubs at all.

Topic please. This is your warning. Stop talking about each other.

I'm not sure how that last inning is scored, but I have a feeling that he only has given up 1 ER so far.

Probably, yeah. Pretty much (at least for starting options). Iowa's rotation to start the year was Atkins, Ascanio, Caridad, Wells, and Samardzija. The Cubs have seen them all this year (along with Hart who was in Iowa's bullpen to start the year).

According to Cots, he's in the final year of his 3 year deal. This season paid him 8mm, so one would wager he's not owed much more than 2-3mm. And no one claimed him? What am I missing here? He's a 1B/DH that has a .725 OPS. He had a .540 OPS in July and a .683 so far in August. He's not exactly the clear upgrade for any team that they would want to risk a couple million dollars on. He was very good last year, but he hasn't exactly been consistent over his career, and with his lack of defense if he isn't hitting he's a huge liability.

Jay Jackson is finished for the night. 7 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K

I got the pitchers from ESPN. Guess we'll just have to wait and see. Well Cubs.com is prolly wrong. Pedro is going for sure on Wednesday. It's one of the leads at the bottom of the espn ticker. That means it bumped off Farve and Vick. It has to be correct. Cubs.com on its probable pitchers has Pedro on Wednesday and Lee on Thursday. That would seem to make the most sense to me. Lee pitched before Blanton the last time they were in the rotation, and I haven't heard anything that would make it likely they would flip them.

Apparently Cales has been promoted to Iowa. I would assume that's more of a Blake Parker type situation for an infusion of innings and that he'll be either sent to Tennessee or Daytona in a few days.

The lineup makes sense with Ramirez still out. Fox takes over for him. Baker is of course going to be in the lineup against the left-hander. And then Fuld is a good move tonight. It's a nice night to give Fukudome a day off with both the left-hander on the mound and the spacious dimensions in Colorado. Fuld isn't much worse against left-handers than right-handers, and so this is the perfect day out of the next 10 or 12 to get him in there. (I would like to see Fukudome face at least one of Philly's left-handers and possibly both).

No, they're not. The SEC is probably worse, but pretty much every other major conference is better in that area. The Big 12 is not usually that great either. BTW, here's how one computer ranking had the 6 BCS conferences non-conference schedules last year: Pac 10 .550 ACC .473 Big East .452 Big 10 .449 Big 12 .446 SEC .440 The Pac 10 has clearly been way over everybody the last few years in scheduling (not to mention that they only have 3 non-conference games). The Big 10 has really suffered the last couple years with the MAC not being quite what it was earlier in the decade and ND not being there either. That's a large part of their scheduling base, and as the mid-major talent has increasingly moved west it has really benefited the Pac 10's schedules.

It looks like they wanted a new long reliever with Samardzija moving into the rotation. IMO, they sent Stevens down because they wanted a fresh arm, and they wanted a long man so that made their decision to call up a starter at Iowa instead of a reliever there. Caridad was the freshest (as he was supposed to pitch tonight) so he was the one called up. It's a bit interesting to see him be put on the 40 man roster at this point of the season. I wonder if that means that they think he has a future with the club and would have been put on next year regardless, or if they just think that he's a random pitcher who they don't really care about and if they have to trade him for little or deroster him after the season that they aren't really concerned about it.

Nope, they have to be on the 25 man roster at midnight the last day of August (or the major league DL) to be eligible. The only other way people can make it on the roster is as part of an exemption for a DL'd player (the Cubs could sneak somebody else onto the playoff roster that doesn't come back up until September as a replacement for the loss of Chad Fox). Isn't that how K-Rod got onto the Angels playoff team back in '02 despite only being a September call-up? Yes. For the Cubs, Kevin Hart made the postseason roster that way a couple of years ago, and I believe a player or two made it the same way last year.

Still surprised Lou did that, but it does make some sense compared to his prior moves. He probably has been wanting to do that for a little while now, but he needed Bradley in the middle. Now that Soto fills that spot, that frees up Bradley to move and Theriot can move to Hill's vacated spot in the lineup. Plus now he avoids the left-handers being at both the 8 and 1 spots in the lineup. I'd be fine with the other normal lineup as well, but I also like this one.

Nope, they have to be on the 25 man roster at midnight the last day of August (or the major league DL) to be eligible. The only other way people can make it on the roster is as part of an exemption for a DL'd player (the Cubs could sneak somebody else onto the playoff roster that doesn't come back up until September as a replacement for the loss of Chad Fox).

From Bruce's blog: Good move IMO. Bring Hoffpauir back up a couple days before September 1st to make sure he's eligible for the playoff roster and hopefully he's hitting by then. http://blogs.dailyherald.com/node/2398

There's no way I don't pitch Rich Harden game 1 if he keeps pitching like he has his last 5 starts. If Harden is healthy and rested he's the best pitcher we have, and one of the best in baseball. I'd probably pitch him game 2. I don't want him in Game 1 because I don't want him pitching in Game 5 unless there's extra rest built in. Extra rest is built in to at least 3 of 4 if not all series. Yeah, so you don't need a 5th starter, but not really so your game 1 starter can have 5 days rest, right? The game 1 starter would have 5 days rest before game 5. There is an off day both times the teams have to travel (after game 2 and after game 4) except for the one AL series where there are 3 off days instead of 2.

Theriot was supposed to come back tonight, so I really doubt it.

I'd rather see a manager micromanage ala Larussa and burn a lefty for Fontenot (9) and Fukudome (1). Plus, batting Theriot in front of the pitcher allows him to be more aggressive on the bases w/out costing them much and takes the bat out of the pitcher's hands more. I think micromanaging by the other team would hurt the Cubs more often than it helped the Cubs in that case. It would cause the other team to run out of relievers sooner, but that's the only detriment, and it hurts the Cubs chances of scoring in that particular inning considerably. I think the loss of an inning would be more harmful than getting a benefit for extra inning games.