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I figured this would be the likely lineup if Theriot was out. I don't think it's the fact that he's playing SS. It's just that for 3 years straight Lou has shown that the 2 spot is one of the least important in his lineup. It tends to go to a non-power hitter that is better than the non-power hitter in the 8 spot. If Soto had been in the lineup tonight, Miles would have been batting 8th (and probably Fontenot 2nd). With Hill in the 8th spot, Lou would rather have Fontenot's power in the 7th spot which leaves Miles for 2nd. I don't agree with it at all (IMO, the 2nd spot is a lot more important than the 6th/7th spots) but Lou has consistently shown that he cares more about the 6th and many times 7th spots. You could be right, but Lou has had the tendency to go CF-SS-1B-3B-RF-LF-2B-C-P ever since Soriano was moved to the 6 spot That's only been a pattern after the All-star break (specifically, the 2nd game after the break and past that). It's been a pretty good predictive pattern for 15-16 games now which will change on Friday as soon as Soto gets back. That makes sense when you never change catchers and most of your hitters are sort of the same (Ramirez and Fox are expected to do the same sorts of things, as are Johnson and Fukudome, as are Bradley and Hoffpauir, as are Fontenot and Baker). The only time where that hasn't been the case is at SS, which is where the two egregious examples have happened recently (Blanco 2nd and now Miles 2nd in the order). Plus Johnson hitting leadoff against a right-hander to push Fukudome into the middle of the order, which was the same sort of issue as I said before (not enough power in the middle that night with Soto gone and to Lou the middle of the order being right is more important than the top or the bottom) Lou hasn't stuck all the time to that even lately though. When Lee missed a game Fox replaced him and hit 4th.

I figured this would be the likely lineup if Theriot was out. I don't think it's the fact that he's playing SS. It's just that for 3 years straight Lou has shown that the 2 spot is one of the least important in his lineup. It tends to go to a non-power hitter that is better than the non-power hitter in the 8 spot. If Soto had been in the lineup tonight, Miles would have been batting 8th (and probably Fontenot 2nd). With Hill in the 8th spot, Lou would rather have Fontenot's power in the 7th spot which leaves Miles for 2nd. I don't agree with it at all (IMO, the 2nd spot is a lot more important than the 6th/7th spots) but Lou has consistently shown that he cares more about the 6th and many times 7th spots.

True, but that doesn't mean a second small sample is going to follow what the first small sample did. The whole point of small samples is that they are going to fluctuate wildly, which is why partial year bench numbers are often misleading. I'm not sure 131 PA of Aaron Miles when he was hurt tells you much about what he's going to do in the future. Then you add in that he has the exact same LD percentage he had in 2008 with the Cardinals (21.0%) with a huge difference in his actual results (.343 BABIP in 2008, .236 this year). Don't get me wrong here. Miles as what he actually is (a .675 OPS guy or so with decent defense at second and poor defense at SS) is not a good option for a ballclub. But he almost certainly is a better hitter than Blanco, who is more of a .610-.615 type of guy. Whether Blanco's defense makes up for his hitting depends on how much you are going to use them at SS and how much at 2B. For the Cubs, it's mostly been at 2B, which makes Miles the slightly better option. If Theriot went down to an injury, Blanco would be the better option to replace him everyday. They are both fringe major leaguers for different reasons. Jersey does bring up one good point though. I think Miles LD percentage is going to have a hard time being in line with his BABIP because teams can cheat in and pick off line drives that would fall in for hits for other hitters (Blanco is the same way). But there's no way it should be that far off.

Castro is 7 months younger than Vitters is and spent most of the year a level higher than Vitters playing the hardest position on the field. He was one of the youngest players in Daytona and now is in AA at the age of 19. He also has good tools on both offense and defense. He has significant problems (power, consistency on defense, walks) but for him to show both the tools and be able to hit .300 with so few strikeouts at Daytona at his age is impressive.

I don't think Miles will be taking much PT from the Fontenot/Baker platoon. Now he might be in at SS tonight with Theriot's bruise on his arm. Yeah, I'd have to guess Theriot is going to get a day off. Miles at SS is pretty disappointing though. He may not hit any worse than Blanco, but he can't really play the position. I wish that thought about sending down the redundant Fuld before magically DLing Blanco, when he's the only legit backup SS on the roster. Fuld is the only legit backup CF on the roster. He's not completely redundant. I tend to agree about Blanco/Miles. At 2B, Miles's offensive advantage wins out because he's decent defensively there. At SS, Blanco has such a huge advantage defensively (from good to very good in his case to horrible for Miles) that Blanco is a better SS option. And if they weren't going to get rid of Blanco, then they were going to have to find another person to go besides Fuld+ the pitcher that will be leaving. Are we sure Miles is better than Blanco offensively? Almost completely certain. It sometimes doesn't show over small numbers of at-bats (and remember that according to BABIP and LD percentage Miles has been incredibly unlucky this season) but unless Miles has suddenly gotten a whole lot worse than he has been over the last 5 years or Blanco has gotten a whole lot better, Miles is the better overall hitter by a decent margin. Miles career numbers: .284/.324/.359 Blanco's career numbers: .248/.292/.317

Is it falling? Yes, I would say it's falling a little bit. The struggles so far in Daytona aren't that concerning. The hand injury coming back though really causes some questions about him. But I would say that if Vitters is no longer the consensus #1 product it's more because the two people below him are raising their value than it is the value for Vitters falling, although both are true to an extent.

I don't think Miles will be taking much PT from the Fontenot/Baker platoon. Now he might be in at SS tonight with Theriot's bruise on his arm. Yeah, I'd have to guess Theriot is going to get a day off. Miles at SS is pretty disappointing though. He may not hit any worse than Blanco, but he can't really play the position. I wish that thought about sending down the redundant Fuld before magically DLing Blanco, when he's the only legit backup SS on the roster. Fuld is the only legit backup CF on the roster. He's not completely redundant. I tend to agree about Blanco/Miles. At 2B, Miles's offensive advantage wins out because he's decent defensively there. At SS, Blanco has such a huge advantage defensively (from good to very good in his case to horrible for Miles) that Blanco is a better SS option. And if they weren't going to get rid of Blanco, then they were going to have to find another person to go besides Fuld+ the pitcher that will be leaving.

I don't think Miles will be taking much PT from the Fontenot/Baker platoon. Now he might be in at SS tonight with Theriot's bruise on his arm.

Assuming Lou won't part with Heilman, we run into a bad situation in which Stevens probably goes back to Iowa. That's what I'd think, anyway. Either way, I'd imagine Gorz would stay up, right? I would assume Gorz would go down. It will only be 11-16 days until September 1st and Gorz would be unavailable for the first 3-4 of those. It will probably depend on how the bullpen has been used the previous few days though and how much the Cubs need fresh arms. Either way I don't think it's a bad situation because the timeframe will be so short before the Cubs will get everybody back from Iowa.

It should actually be clearing out in the next 30 minutes or so. The question becomes how bad the OF is. 6-8 inches of rain in a matter of hours could potentially overwhelm even the best of drainage systems. Officially, Cincinnati has only received about 1.10" of rainfall today. I don't know how they missed it all then. It was one of the worst storms I have ever seen up here (usually that bad of rain is not accompanied with that violent of a storm as well), and it was equally as bad or worse in Louisville. I know SE Indiana also got hit especially hard so I'm shocked that Cincy would have received that little of a rainfall total.

From Bruce's blog on Vitters:

This will be his 2nd start in RF this season.

It should actually be clearing out in the next 30 minutes or so. The question becomes how bad the OF is. 6-8 inches of rain in a matter of hours could potentially overwhelm even the best of drainage systems.

I'll throw in my prediction of Hoffpauir going down for Geo just because Fuld is the backup CF and that will probably tip the scales in his favor. It might be the best thing for Hoffpauir right now. He's in a absolutely massive slump and from his quotes sounds like he might be pressing because of it. Go get him 2-3 weeks of at-bats at Iowa and see if he can relax and work through it with regular at-bats. Does Hoff have options? I thought there was talk in the spring that if he didn't make the team they'd risk losing him. According to TCR's 40 man roster he has 2 (it's usually pretty reliable). That would seem to be consistent with what I remember as well (he first played in the major leagues last year and I don't think he was on the 40 man at all before that).

I'll throw in my prediction of Hoffpauir going down for Geo just because Fuld is the backup CF and that will probably tip the scales in his favor. It might be the best thing for Hoffpauir right now. He's in a absolutely massive slump and from his quotes sounds like he might be pressing because of it. Go get him 2-3 weeks of at-bats at Iowa and see if he can relax and work through it with regular at-bats.

That wasn't possible based on when he started his rehab assignment. In fact, I think they waited as long as they possibly could before they brought him back. And I don't see why exposing Blanco would be a big concern. Everybody in the league knew he was very good defensively and was poor offensively. And yet nobody was willing to give him a major league deal when he was in free agency for two years in a row. It's possible somebody picks him up, but it's not altogether likely. As long as Miles is coming back as the 2nd backup MI, I'll be fine with him being on the team. He can get the very occasional start at SS until September (1-2 starts) plus pinch-hit appearances against a left-hander (although hopefully after Baker and after Reed when he returns).

He'd never make it there even if the Cubs wanted to try. The bullpen has sure been streaky. After 2 months of dominance, the last few days have been brutal.

Fontenot has been hitting some balls really hard recently. He hit 2 balls in Florida that in most other ballparks would have been HR's (a double and a good running catch).

It looks like 2 more seasons after this one through 2011. Seattle has been trying to buy out Felix's arbitration years and has been unsuccessful. I'm not surprised they are getting a little skittish about re-signing him when he becomes a free agent. It makes sense for them to be proactive and trade him in the offseason when he's still 2 years away when they can get max value for him.

That still wouldn't have been enough money to sign Wood in arbitration. You'd have to find another 4-5 million somewhere (plus another 400,000 for the minimum salary player you're using instead of Miles). And of course there's the problem that Wood has been worse than Gregg this year, and it hasn't been because of dribblers (the main two problems are a much higher HR rate and a much higher walk rate). What's the minimum amount we could have offered him in arbitration? I'm not saying it would have signed him, but according to him he wanted to stay here, so I'm assuming we would have gotten a hometown discount. Why would Wood give a hometown discount after he already accepted arbitration? If Wood had wanted to accept just anything (and the Cubs could have given him a lesser contract outside of the arbitration process) the Cubs probably would have signed him. If for example Wood was willing to accept a deal very similar to the one he got in 08, the Cubs would have probably been happy to bring him back after his successful season in 08. The fact that they didn't suggests that he wasn't quite that willing to do anything for the club.

That still wouldn't have been enough money to sign Wood in arbitration. You'd have to find another 4-5 million somewhere (plus another 400,000 for the minimum salary player you're using instead of Miles). And of course there's the problem that Wood has been worse than Gregg this year, and it hasn't been because of dribblers (the main two problems are a much higher HR rate and a much higher walk rate).

I think he had a little case of the being Kevin Gregg. He's jut doing what he does, which is being a run-of-the-mill reliever who can't consistently pitch well. It's hard to compare a "normal" year for him considering he spent the last two years in Miami compared to the more homer happy Wrigley. He was pretty unimpressive before he got to south Florida. Moving to Wrigley has not been the reason for the change in his HR rate. He's given up as many HR's in Florida this year as he has in Wrigley. And in the previous 2 years in Florida, he gave up 5 HR at home, 5 HR away.

He was traveling to Tennessee yesterday. He should be in their lineup tonight.

I wouldn't do anything just yet after just 2 outings. He very well may find it again. Remember that before the last two nights, Marmol had walked 1 man combined in his last 6 outings (spanning 6 1/3 innings) and hadn't walked more than 1 in an inning since June 26th. I'd make sure not to bring him in with runners on for a couple games, but other than that I'd wait him out in his regular role for his next streak of good control.

Because Baker needs to come up against a left-hander to be effective and the Cubs needed any base hit to take the lead in that situation. Baker is almost as good at picking up base hits against left-handers as Soriano is, so it made sense to save Soriano for the next pinch-hitting situation where a right-hander would likely be on the mound. If the Cubs had used Soriano in the 7th, that would have left either Baker or Blanco against a right-hander later on and those are two pretty ugly options. Soriano is still the best pinch-hitter the Cubs could have put up in the 7th, but not necessarily the best use of bench management. They would have been going for it all right there and making their bench useless for the rest of the game. The way Lou played it Baker was in a spot he's good at and then he could save Soriano for another spot that he would also be good at. Unfortunately the 3 run deficit kind of tied Lou's hands in the 9th (Soriano would have likely pinch-hit for Hill with a 1 or 2 run deficit IMO).