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The Mets might still be a possibility to face as well. They have the same record as the Brewers (although they've played 2 less games) since they just lost in game 1 of their DH. They're only 2 games ahead of the Phillies, and they still have to face the Cubs 4 times.

This Maryland-Cal game is very, very surprising. Maryland beat Delaware by 7. They then lost to MTSU. So now they play Cal and are leading 28-6? The ACC is confusing.

The Pirates are actually only Ramirez's 3rd best numbers. He has killed the White Sox the most (1.105 OPS) and then Atlanta (1.008 OPS). Pittsburgh is next with a .966 OPS.

For one thing, Pujols doesn't dominate the Cubs. He has a .972 OPS against them in his career. Great numbers, but well below his career 1.049 OPS. The Cubs handle him better than most teams out there. Just taking a quick glance at one player, Alfonso Soriano has killed both the Braves and Pirates in his career. He has a 1.203 OPS against the Pirates and a 1.156 against the Braves. To compare, Carlos Lee has a career .979 OPS against the Cubs. Adam Dunn has a career 1.012 against the Cubs. So Soriano has killed 2 teams over a large number of at-bats much worse than these "cub killers" have killed the Cubs. If I were to continue to search, I bet I could find many more examples like this. Perception does not equal reality in this case.

His velocity was down tonight, but not as much as the above would imply. Looking at the Pitch FX data, in his starts with the Cubs most of the time his average fastball is around 92. Some slightly above, some slightly below. Tonight his average fastball was 89.91 miles per hour. So down about 2 miles in hour on average. His previous start btw was at 91.79, so this is a 1 start issue, not 2. There's plenty of reasons why your fastball could be down a couple miles an hour over the span of 1 start, especially when he's had that much time off. I see arm trouble as jumping the gun until he at least has a 2nd start that's like this. There's way too much variability in speed normally from start to start to be worrying about 2 miles an hour.

Very good and creative logic. The conclusion is close but not quite correct. If that happened, when the Brewers were eliminated the Cubs would clinch a WC spot. They would then clinch the division when they eliminated the Astros. It is a strange scenario to eliminate the 2nd place team in the standings before the 3rd place team, but it can happen in that scenario. But the WC spot has to be the one clinched first, and then the division is only clinched when the top team has eliminated all the teams below them. It's similar to in football when 3-4 teams are separated by a game depending on the tiebreaker scenarios. Sometimes the 3rd place team is the only one that can actually catch the 1st place team.

The Colts DT's got even lighter today. Ed Johnson was caught speeding and was charged with possessing a small amount of marijuana yesterday morning. He has started all 17 games that he has been with the Colts. In response, the Colts cut him. Last year, the Colts had 3 somewhat average size DT's. Those 3 have now been hurt (McFarland), retired unexpectedly in only his 2nd year in the league (Pitcock) and now cut (Johnson). Their 2 likely starting DT's this weekend are 274 and 254 pounds.

Just painful for Diamondback fans now. 2 straight games where they score 2 runs in the 9th to tie or to take the lead only to lose the game in the bottom of the 9th. This time..they had an 0-2 count with 2 outs before giving up the game winning triple. Ouch.

Looking over the stats again on Dempster, I realized that I probably was going to be wrong on how he stacks up with NL relievers. That was confirmed with the newest release: NL Relievers Cub free agents Ryan Dempster- Type A Kerry Wood- Type A Bob Howry-Type B (not listed as a free agent which is a mistake I believe). Jon Lieber-no compensation Chad Fox-no compensation Shouse, Torres, and Gagne are all B's at the moment for the Brewers. Mota is in the no compensation part. Eyre is in the no compensation list even if the Cubs had kept him. Marmol is the 2nd highest reliever ranked behind Brad Lidge. Interesting decision to be made on Howry. The Cubs will have to gauge the market for him before offering him arbitration. My guess is that there will be interest in him as there usually is with good older relievers having a really bad year. The only question is if that interest will manifest itself before the arbitration deadline or not.

I think the more speed was just a side benefit (and Pie's speed might have made a small bit of difference on both the bunt and coming around to the plate on a single, but the chances are not high that it would). I think Lou was putting in Pie for defensive purposes. If it did come around to Pie's spot in the batting order though, LaRussa would have played the percentages and gone with a left-hander. I doubt Pie would have seen an at-bat in that game no matter how long it went. He was in for defense for a couple of innings, and then Reed would have come into the game.

Bunting with runners at 1st and second is different than bunting with just a runner at 1st. On top of that, Pie was pinned to first because a) he can't get a good read on the pitcher (he's never been able to) and the reliever continuously threw over to first. On top of that, Soto is one of the hottest and best hitters and has never had a big league sac bunt (the guy bunting for the Cardinals doesn't fit that bill). Whether or not TLR is a good manager, that grounder to second wouldn't have won it for the Cards if Lou actually uses his brain to load the bases and cause a force at home. Who has a woody for the Angels? Lou should look at the mirror before he explodes. He has his hands all over yesterday's loss. I agree. With a runner only on first, the only force play is at 1st and 2nd. With runners on 1st and 2nd, it gives the defense one more option for an out at 3rd. Kinda like what Lee just did a night or two ago. The goal was to get Pie home. A successful sacrifice puts that runner in scoring position with 1 out. We still had some pretty nice bats sitting on the bench. I understand that people feel the bat was taken out of Soto's hand, but I'm not one of them. Too many things could have happened to leave Pie still sitting at 1st with 1 out. I like your thinking about loading the base, but at the same time, Marmol against Izturis? You can't blame Lou for giving that a go. Load the bases and you'd be looking at the leadoff hitter who went 2-4. Izturis is a contact hitter. With no runner at first, you're forced to get a quick throw and have Soto tag the runner (didn't work). If the bases are loaded, you can either get the double play or a much easier force at home plate. Forget Skip, I'd have walked the guy in front of Pujols in that situation. I'd probably have thrown him a heavy diet of high fastballs. Izturis either lays off of them and walks (which is a just fine result) or he tries to lift it in the air for the hopefully (for him) game winning fly ball. But we know from Izturis that he tends to hit a lot of short fly balls the other way. So the likely two results are either a walk, or a flyout to Soriano in shallow left field that the runner doesn't dare test him on. Instead, the pitch that Izturis hit was a fastball at the knees. Way too easy for him to get part of a bat on it and hit it on the ground with that location. You cannot pitch to him normally in that situation because Izturis is too much of a contact hitter and hits too many ground balls.

2 games is a slump? Not to mention in the first game of those 2 he walked twice and stole two bases. Last night he hit the ball hard at least once and I think twice. I don't really see a slump.

Would you take the scenario the Cubs were in at their peak? Or the scenario now? When they were at their peak, they had a hot Brewers team on their tail, and an incredibly dangerous playing well Diamondbacks team as their first round opponent. Now the Cubs aren't playing well. Neither are the Brewers anymore, who if they play badly against the Phillies/Cubs could make themselves vulnerable to missing the playoffs entirely. Plus, the Diamondbacks could fall 2.5 games back of the Dodgers if these games hold up tonight. One could argue that the Cubs are actually in better shape today to make the WS then they were a few games ago despite their slide and poor play.

I'm sure they said that in '69. And in '84. And I remember how there was no possible way we'd lose both Games 6 and 7 at home with Prior and Wood starting. It's the Cubs. If there's a way to screw it up, they'll find it. The Cubs don't screw up any more than any other team, for Christ's sake. This losing stuff sucks, but give me a break, every single team around for any length of time has epic choke jobs in their history. I hate the "It's the Cubs" crap and would die happy if I never heard it again. Name me one other team, just one, that has blown it as many times as the Cubs have since 1969. I count 4: 69, 84, 2003, 2004. Are you serious? Completely. Go on, prove your point. Prove to me that history doesn't prove me right. The Red Sox. 1978, 1986, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003. All had either a 90% chance of making the playoffs during the season and didn't, or had a big lead in the playoffs and blew it.

Pretty much how I feel. With about half the combinations of hitters up/hitters due up, I'm ok with bunting the winning run over to 2nd. When your hitter is a better hitter than he is a bunter, that's an automatic non-bunt situation though. If Soto was good at laying down bunts, I wouldn't like the call but at least I'd understand it. That just didn't make much sense.

Counsell will reach on a gritty infield single, Kendall will homer. For his 2nd HR of the year? No way. Actually 3rd if he did it. It would be his 2nd of the night.

Well, they definitely have options now. They can cut him and bring up another player with his 40 man spot. They can DL him, and then sneak another player onto the playoff roster using his spot. Or, they could decide they don't need either of those things and do nothing. That wording of that sentence is really strange though. He returned home and "informed" the general manager that he couldn't pitch anymore? That screams that something is going on behind the scenes.

Timeouts, drops, mass confusion. It's not the Colts team I've seen for the last few years. But the Bears team that was rumored to come out wouldn't have been able to take advantage of those mistakes. This Bears team is a lot better than advertised. And that's pretty cool. I wish their coming out party didn't come at the expense of the Colts, but that's how it goes at times. It's much better on here when the Bears are good though, so I'm glad that it looks like they'll be very competitive this year.

They were going to try to catch the Bears with 12 men on the field. But the Colts should go for it here. Possessions are scarce, and the Colts have a good chance of picking up a 4th and 1. If you don't get it, you don't get it. But you can't meekly punt the ball away down 2 scores. Sure go ahead. GO FOR IT. That's fine. The math says to go for it every single time in that situation. 1st quarter, 4th quarter, it doesn't matter. Stupid play call though. If your math includes the "Bears offense sucks" factor, then may I suggest you recalculate? The better the offense (either yours or theirs), the more likely it should be that you should go for it. At the rate the Bears have moving tonight, that makes it a very obvious decision that the Colts had to go for it. OK. Just checking. I'm pretty sure disrespect for the Bears offense had something to do with that call though. Nah..probably not. It's actually the ultimate sign of respect to the other team's offense. It says that the Colts didn't feel like they could get the ball back quickly if they punted so they had to take a risk in order to keep the ball. It's the same philosophy as an onside kick. You do it because you don't think that you can stop the other team and force a 3 and out, so you have to risk field position in order to maintain possession.

They were going to try to catch the Bears with 12 men on the field. But the Colts should go for it here. Possessions are scarce, and the Colts have a good chance of picking up a 4th and 1. If you don't get it, you don't get it. But you can't meekly punt the ball away down 2 scores. Sure go ahead. GO FOR IT. That's fine. The math says to go for it every single time in that situation. 1st quarter, 4th quarter, it doesn't matter. Stupid play call though. If your math includes the "Bears offense sucks" factor, then may I suggest you recalculate? The better the offense (either yours or theirs), the more likely it should be that you should go for it. At the rate the Bears have moving tonight, that makes it a very obvious decision that the Colts had to go for it.

They were going to try to catch the Bears with 12 men on the field. But the Colts should go for it here. Possessions are scarce, and the Colts have a good chance of picking up a 4th and 1. If you don't get it, you don't get it. But you can't meekly punt the ball away down 2 scores. Sure go ahead. GO FOR IT. That's fine. The math says to go for it every single time in that situation. 1st quarter, 4th quarter, it doesn't matter. Stupid play call though.

They were going to try to catch the Bears with 12 men on the field. But the Colts should go for it here. Possessions are scarce, and the Colts have a good chance of picking up a 4th and 1. If you don't get it, you don't get it. But you can't meekly punt the ball away down 2 scores.

Looks like a Bears TD to me. Of course, it seems like it takes 23 steps and a jump at times the way they've done replays the last couple years for it to be a catch, but according to the rules this should be a catch and fumble.

I can't really tell on that side of the ball. The Colts offense has definitely shot themselves in the foot several times tonight, but the Bears have also made some good defensive plays. On the other side of the ball, I can tell you a little more definitively. The Bears offense is definitely better than reported. They played really well in the first half. They will never be a juggernaut, but they have weapons and can move the ball. That wasn't a Colts defense issue. The key is obviously turnovers for that offense, but they looked really good. Forte's ability to burst changes everything.

Are the rules different in the pros than in college? Last week, in the UCLA-Tennessee game, all the ball had to do was break the first part of the line to be in the field of play. It definitely did that.