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I actually doubt this. I don't think he got called up last September (at least he never appeared in a game). Lou was furious with him, and that will probably be one of the names Hendry mentions to Lou, Lou says he will never play him, and that's the end of that. I see Fuld as one of the names along with some of the others already mentioned in this thread. Angel Guzman as well.

Minor nitpick: Fontenot actually started 3 games at SS last year. He had a game against the Rockies, then started the Friday game of that Brewers series (the Aram homerun game). It was his 3rd start, the next day, when he was pulled after the first inning. He's definitely not anything more than an emergency option though there at this point.

any idea what the team record is in quality starts? I assume it's good, but has been dragged down recently It's broken down in the blog.

Me. But I'm probably only 70 percent on that.

Exactly vance. Really the only things you can add now are a reliever or a bench bat. Most relievers are going to be way too expensive, and the bench bat needs to wait for the waiver deadline because there isn't room for another position player on the roster. So there really isn't a good trade to be made unless someone is willing to give us a reliever for cheap. I also think that there will be another person from the minors who will help stabalize the relief core before the end of the year. I'm not sure if that will be Wuertz, Ceda, Ascanio, or somebody else, but that's not exactly rare for good relievers to appear as the season goes along.

Henry Blanco is a better hitter against left-handers than either Ward or Edmonds. He was the best hitter in that situation. Of course, if the Cubs were going to bunt, I would have put Z up in that situation. He's a little more used to bunting, and if the 3rd baseman came way in on him, then you could tell him that he could slap the ball past him.

I'm withholding judgment on this. It seems like Lou, at the very least, knows which starting pitchers he can usually ride a little bit and which ones to ease up on. Exactly..like this quote from Lou earlier: Remember that the Cubs are trying to give Harden an extra day whenever possible, and this time he had to pitch on regular rest. That's probably why they were trying to give him the short day.

He has a slider, splitter, and changeup. He probably was having a hard time deciding which pitches to stick with yesterday due to the new situation. I don't think he's quite that fastball heavy as a starter.

I think the 97-99 was just a result of A) coming out of the bullpen and B) being a little too excited. I think we'll be happier with his overall pitches if his fastball is in the 92-94 range. That was always the really confusing thing in Daytona though. That fastball should still be able to have a decent chance of blowing hitters away at that level, and it simply wasn't. That's why many people said the Cubs were forcing him to throw his offspeed stuff a good percentage of his pitches, and that's why his strikeout rate was so low. One thing I did notice was that Samardzija really didn't have any confidence in his breaking pitches in the first inning. There were several camera shots of him shaking off Soto multiple times, then throwing the fastball. He slowly started to incorporate it as he went along.

He had 110 pitches. It was time for him to go.

Ward does have an .829 OPS this year. And he's been unlucky considering 24.4% of his total balls in play have been line drives. He's still a very good hitter.

He's moved to and from the bullpen on multiple occasions over the past two years. I understand that. However, that should in no way provoke expectations that he'll magically improve by going to the pen for the big league club. He shouldn't be expected to do better at this level than he did at AAA just because he improved from AA to AAA (ignoring that he got worse from High A to AA). His AA numbers were better than his High A numbers. Less hits per 9, more strikeouts per 9, better ERA, better WHIP. His walk rate was quite a bit worse (due to one month this year where he walked the world) and his HR rate is rising, but overall he was a better pitcher in AA.

The question was never was if the Bears would pay Hester, the question is, what market do you use for him? You obviously CANNOT use the WR market to re-sign, cause Hester hasn't proven he is an NFL reciever, but offering him PR/KR is a severe insult. It wouldn't surprise me, if the two sides agree on a short extension (say 2 yrs), and if Hester shows he can be a WR, then they would renegotiate the contract to better suit the WR market. does/did PacMan Jones play WR or CB, or was he purely a returner? Pacman is a corner. He was turning into a very good one right in the last 8 games of his 2nd year, after the 1st year where his only real value was as a returner.

Apparently not. Cubs lineup Soriano Theriot Lee Ramirez Fukudome Soto Fontenot Johnson Dempster And for the Marlins Ramirez Gonzalez Cantu Jacobs Uggla Willingham Ross Hoover Johnson Nice to see DeRosa get a day off. He has bounced around enough lately that it's easy to forget that he's started a bunch of games in a row.

He was starting when he struggled though. His path in the minors has been start for a couple months, then get sent down to the bullpen for a couple weeks, then start for a couple weeks, then get promoted. Rinse and repeat. Most of his struggles at Daytona and Tennessee were when he was starting. Thank you for that quote Raisin putting me in my place :D I really thought that he had mostly abandoned the slider because it wasn't coming along like he hoped it would. But apparently that's not the case, and it's a pretty good pitch for him. It's nice to hear that velocity at Iowa as well. I'm less interested in his results this time up, but I really want to see which of his pitches are plus pitches right now against major leaguers.

Congrats to Samardzija. He's taken a lot of heat over the last year and a half (and I don't blame most of the people who did-high expectations were placed on him, and most of the information coming out didn't seem to be good). It's obvious though that he's put in a ton of work to continue to develop his secondary pitches, and that has paid off in this promotion. While I don't expect a lot from him right now, this will hopefully be just a nice little taste of the big leagues that he can use to further refine his stuff and become a good starter up here in a year or year and a half. I'm definitely excited to see his debut.

To be honest, I still don't understand why a split would be the best thing. I've been rooting for a sweep the whole time, and while I preferred a Cardinals sweep, a Brewers sweep isn't too bad either. Brewers sweep is bad because they're much better than the Cardinals. In some ways that means it's bad. In other ways you kind of want the inferior team to get swept. If the Cardinals keep playing badly, the Cubs shot of being in the playoffs just keep going up and up. If the Brewers had gotten swept, there would still be a worry that they would go on a run and make it a true 3 team race. If it were just a division race, I definitely would hate a Brewers sweep. But in this situation, it really isn't that bad.

I'm one who thinks Z can go this long on pitches once in a while without worrying too much. But why here in this game? You should save those for the biggest of situations. His other game where he did this at least had really good reasons why he stayed in. This one really didn't. It was pretty pointless, and that bothers me more than the pitch count itself.

It's more of a logic exercise than an argument. And we still have an hour until game time. I think it boils down to risk. I don't like risk. If the Cubs win the division they are in. If they're fighting for a wildcard there is risk. However, in CCP's scenario they're in either way so it doesn't matter. I think things are going to get very tight down the stretch. The Mets and Phillies are playing much better baseball as of late. The Mets are playing good baseball. The Phillies are not. The Phillies have been treading water as long as the Cubs have. They hit their high water mark on June 8th, 13 games over .500. At the end of June, they were 5 games over. Today, they're 6 games over. There's plenty of risk either way. I also am looking to minimize the Cubs risk, and am even willing to throw away homefield to do it. If the Cubs play well (say, get to 94 wins or so) the only way they don't make the playoffs is if Milwaukee and St Louis both play really well and pass them. There's a statistically insignificant chance that 2 of the 3 of Philly, New York, and Florida can win 40 of their next 60 games. That's too good of a pace for too long for two teams in a division to do. If the Cubs play ok and win about 89 games (1 game under .500 the rest of the way), then the East could catch them. But Milwaukee and St Louis both have great chances to pass them as well. I think the Cubs would squeak out the WC in this scenario and probably lose the division by 3-4 games. If the Cubs collapse to 85 wins (9 games under .500 the rest of the way) they aren't winning either the division or WC. They have a better chance of winning the WC in this scenario, but they're likely staying home for the playoffs. Part of this logic is also what you think of Milwaukee and St. Louis. If you think Milwaukee is really good, you'd rather them sweep St. Louis. If you think the Brewers and/or the Cardinals are going to collapse in September no matter what, then a split would be good. The later it gets the more I believe that the former is closer to the truth then the latter, although the latter still has a pretty good chance of happening. I don't want the Brewers or the Cardinals in the playoffs. I want the Cubs in the playoffs. The only sure way that happens is to win the division. The surest way for that to happen is for the two teams behind them to beat each other up as much as possible so even when the Cubs lose one of the two isn't gaining ground on them. The closer the Brewers and/or the Cardinals are to the Cubs the less likely it is that the Cubs make the playoffs. When you win your division it doesn't matter what your record is compared to the rest of the league. That's not the case with the WC. I really wish we had access to BP's playoff odds simulator so we could run both scenarios out and see the actual percentages. It would be fascinating. The only sure way for the Cubs to be in the playoffs is to win a playoff spot. That can happen one of two ways. Sometimes the WC takes more wins then your particular division. In the Cubs case, that is statistically incredibly unlikely. In fact, mathematically, the Central has an 85 percent chance to win the WC this year. In the other 15 percent, the chances that the division winner has also collapsed behind the WC winner from another division is not good. When the division will take more wins then the WC, which will happen this year, the only difference between the races is the number of teams involved. For every extra team comes extra risk with more teams that could get hot and possibly catch you. In the case this year, there is at most 2 extra teams involved in the WC race than are also involved in the division race, and they're not all that likely to get in the race at this point of the season. The chances of adding extra teams to the race is low, so each game of lead is statistically more important. The easiest way still for the Cubs to miss the playoffs is to be behind Milwaukee and St. Louis, so it's better to push one of them back as far as possible. Focusing on winning the division at the possible expense of the WC brings increased reward (homefield throughout) but it also brings increased risk of the Brewers and Cardinals being the 2 central representatives.

It's more of a logic exercise than an argument. And we still have an hour until game time. I think it boils down to risk. I don't like risk. If the Cubs win the division they are in. If they're fighting for a wildcard there is risk. However, in CCP's scenario they're in either way so it doesn't matter. I think things are going to get very tight down the stretch. The Mets and Phillies are playing much better baseball as of late. The Mets are playing good baseball. The Phillies are not. The Phillies have been treading water as long as the Cubs have. They hit their high water mark on June 8th, 13 games over .500. At the end of June, they were 5 games over. Today, they're 6 games over. There's plenty of risk either way. I also am looking to minimize the Cubs risk, and am even willing to throw away homefield to do it. If the Cubs play well (say, get to 94 wins or so) the only way they don't make the playoffs is if Milwaukee and St Louis both play really well and pass them. There's a statistically insignificant chance that 2 of the 3 of Philly, New York, and Florida can win 40 of their next 60 games. That's too good of a pace for too long for two teams in a division to do. If the Cubs play ok and win about 89 games (1 game under .500 the rest of the way), then the East could catch them. But Milwaukee and St Louis both have great chances to pass them as well. I think the Cubs would squeak out the WC in this scenario and probably lose the division by 3-4 games. If the Cubs collapse to 85 wins (9 games under .500 the rest of the way) they aren't winning either the division or WC. They have a better chance of winning the WC in this scenario, but they're likely staying home for the playoffs. Part of this logic is also what you think of Milwaukee and St. Louis. If you think Milwaukee is really good, you'd rather them sweep St. Louis. If you think the Brewers and/or the Cardinals are going to collapse in September no matter what, then a split would be good. The later it gets the more I believe that the former is closer to the truth then the latter, although the latter still has a pretty good chance of happening.

Well, he does have better numbers against left-handers than the 3 hitters behind him this season. He should be batting either 5th or 6th tonight.

Lets see the Cubbies are going to try this again and bring a starting pitcher up and throw him in the relief role. Look folks he will become a "two pitch" pitcher as in the bullpen he will throw a FB/SL combination. Does success in AAA automatically mean you will do well in the Majors? Hell no, as while Shark throws hard he throws a flat FB. I've said this before that pitchers have better success with a mid 90's FB with late movement than someone that throws High 90's with a straight FB. Then you throw him in the middle of a playoff race with the Brew crew coming and I can't wait to watch this. I think Samardizja is primarily a 2 pitch pitcher anyway. He mixes in a couple other pitches, but it's mostly the fastball/splitter combo that he's used the last couple months. Those 2 pitches are a great combination for a relief pitcher. I would actually rather have Ceda. Samardzija could use the extra development. Ascanio and Wuertz haven't been lighting the world on fire. If Samardzija does come up though, it will be good experience for possible help in September from him. Samardzija still uses his change quite a bit, from all the quotes he's made. Thanks for the clarification. I forgot about the change. He better have kept it after all the rumors of the Cubs making him throw it constantly last year.

To be honest, I still don't understand why a split would be the best thing. I've been rooting for a sweep the whole time, and while I preferred a Cardinals sweep, a Brewers sweep isn't too bad either. The Cubs could lose sole possession of 1st place tonight with a Brewers win and Cubs loss. If the Brewers and Cards split the 4 games the worse the Cubs could do with a loss tonight is be 2 games up. a tie for first is worse than being 2 games up. Yes, but if they had split the Cubs would be 2 games from missing the playoffs entirely with a loss tonight. A sweep and the worst the Cubs can be back is 3. And the Cardinals would have only been 1 back in your scenario of a split and the Cubs losing tonight, not 2. I'd rather the Cubs be closer to not winning the division then closer to the Cubs not making the playoffs. Again, you have to think about the NL East. You're not. The Cubs win the division is what is important. The closer they are to not winning the division and the less likely it is that they make the playoffs. The division is what matters. If they win the division they could have a .500 record for all I care, they still get into the playoffs. I'd rather see the other two teams fighting for the Wild Card. I am looking at the East. But if the Cubs let 2 teams from the East pass them at this point, they aren't winning the Central anyway. 1 of the 2 teams of the Brewers or Cardinals may also play that badly. Certainly not both. So the NL East point really becomes irrelevant for the purposes of this question or at most an incredibly tiny factor. If the Cubs have enough wins to win the division this year, 99.9 percent of the time they'll have more wins than the WC winner. Your way increases the chance of the Cubs to win the division, but I still believe that it decreases the Cubs overall chance of making it into the playoffs. If the standings were tighter between the Central and other divisions, it might be different. But with a situation of the 3 teams in the Central having the 3 best records in the NL, I'd rather increase my chances of making the playoffs in anyway possible, and the best way to do that is to push the 3rd best record as far back as possible.

Lets see the Cubbies are going to try this again and bring a starting pitcher up and throw him in the relief role. Look folks he will become a "two pitch" pitcher as in the bullpen he will throw a FB/SL combination. Does success in AAA automatically mean you will do well in the Majors? Hell no, as while Shark throws hard he throws a flat FB. I've said this before that pitchers have better success with a mid 90's FB with late movement than someone that throws High 90's with a straight FB. Then you throw him in the middle of a playoff race with the Brew crew coming and I can't wait to watch this. I think Samardizja is primarily a 2 pitch pitcher anyway. He mixes in a couple other pitches, but it's mostly the fastball/splitter combo that he's used the last couple months. Those 2 pitches are a great combination for a relief pitcher. I would actually rather have Ceda. Samardzija could use the extra development. Ascanio and Wuertz haven't been lighting the world on fire. If Samardzija does come up though, it will be good experience for possible help in September from him.

To be honest, I still don't understand why a split would be the best thing. I've been rooting for a sweep the whole time, and while I preferred a Cardinals sweep, a Brewers sweep isn't too bad either. The Cubs could lose sole possession of 1st place tonight with a Brewers win and Cubs loss. If the Brewers and Cards split the 4 games the worse the Cubs could do with a loss tonight is be 2 games up. a tie for first is worse than being 2 games up. Yes, but if they had split the Cubs would be 2 games from missing the playoffs entirely with a loss tonight. A sweep and the worst the Cubs can be back is 3. And the Cardinals would have only been 1 back in your scenario of a split and the Cubs losing tonight, not 2. I'd rather the Cubs be closer to not winning the division then closer to the Cubs not making the playoffs.