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Cubs Fukudome Theriot Lee Ramirez Soto DeRosa Edmonds Blanco Cedeno White Sox Cabrera Pierzynski Quentin Dye Thome Crede Swisher Ramirez Anderson

Yup. Eastern Washington, at Nevada, SMU, UMass. So a 6-7 team from a minor conference, a 1-11 team from a minor conference, and two teams with good records in 1-AA.

Samardzija has had horrible control today, and normally that's a huge problem, especially against the very dangerous Alberquerque offense. He has managed to wriggle out time after time today because he has kept the ball on the ground, gotten some key double plays, gotten a key strikeout or two, and his catcher has caught two guys stealing. He's at 101 pitches through 6. Samardzija: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 6 BB's, 4 K's.

Theriot has a swollen hand near his thumb. He will probably be back today.

If your team throws an 8 inning no hitter, does that need to be set aside from a regular no-hitter? What about if it's combined? Those are the questions we could be asking of the Angels possible accomplishment. Weaver got lifted for a pinch-hitter after 6. The no-hitter is still alive through 7. Unfortunately, the Angels are still losing, and would only pitch 8 frames tonight if they can't find a way to tie this game up.

Interesting pitcher's duel in LA. Jered Weaver has a no-hitter through 6, but his team is losing the game 1-0. Billingsley for the Dodgers has only allowed 2 hits through 6.

According to Piniella, Soto will DH and Blanco will catch. I'm guessing the lineup will be very close to what Aramis Fan guessed. The 2 biggest things that might change it are if Fukudome is ready to handle CF yet after his injury (if he isn't, Murton gets kicked out of the lineup for Edmonds, but I really hope Edmonds and his bad foot can get a day off) and if Theriot will play or not.

It's Ward, Ramirez, then Edmonds. And you wouldn't pinch-hit for Ward or Edmonds here either. They'll be needed later in the game when the Sox have run out of these matchup left-handers.

I personally would extend that to Ward as well considering the matchup. He's as good of a hitter as pretty much anybody else in our lineup against right-handed pitching. He just doesn't have a starting job because he cannot hit left-handers, cannot field his position, is very slow, and is injury prone. 3 of those 4 qualities aren't present today, and his speed is the least of those concerns. Plus he's been hitting line drive after line drive the last couple days. His hits haven't been cheap at all. And I'm fine with Fontenot getting more starts. He's been playing well lately and has pretty good stats for a second baseman, even though he has still been unlucky on his BABIP on the season. Overall, not a bad lineup at all. A lot of either traditionally good or hot right now hitters in that lineup. It's hard to decide which is more important when making out the actual order. The main thing I would have wanted would be to have Ramirez at 3.

Let's throw contract out of the equation for a second (although it's an absolutely killer deterrant). Let's just look at Zito the pitcher. If you look at the pitcher, how is Zito supposed to help us? Last year, he would have been not really better then any player in the Cubs rotation. This year, he's been significantly worse than anybody in the rotation. How is he better than any pitcher the Cubs have right now? When you're adding a pitcher who is a question mark on if he's even an upgrade to your worst starter, that's a bad deal. When that pitcher has a 100 million dollars still left on his contract, it would be one of the worst deals in the history of the league. This is not even a Mike Hampton goes to Colorado situation. Zito would be coming from pitching mostly in pitching parks to mostly either neutral or hitters parks in the Central.

It's cause it's at their crappy ballpark. coupled with their overall "meh" effort against the O's It might be selective memory as well. Most people were pretty down after the sweep against the Rays last week, especially with the huge bullpen collapse Thursday night. Then, when they were down 3-1 in the 7th on Friday, it didn't make it any better. I'll take a guess at the Cubs lineup: Fukudome (hopefully) Patterson Lee Ramirez Edmonds Ward Soto Fontenot Theriot You must have been listening to Murph, otherwise you wouldn't have left DeRo out of the lineup. Not exactly sure what you mean..have never listened to Murphy. But Lou started Fontenot against Contreras last Saturday, and he responded by hitting a home run. Lou doesn't often go away from a guy the next time they face the same pitcher if they have success the first time.

It's cause it's at their crappy ballpark. coupled with their overall "meh" effort against the O's It might be selective memory as well. Most people were pretty down after the sweep against the Rays last week, especially with the huge bullpen collapse Thursday night. Then, when they were down 3-1 in the 7th on Friday, it didn't make it any better. I'll take a guess at the Cubs lineup: Fukudome (hopefully) Patterson Lee Ramirez Edmonds Ward Soto Fontenot Theriot

I think it might be better to cite those signed that same off-season -- or at least that makes it more fair to both Marquis and Hendry. I think includes Jeff Suppan, Gil Meche, Ted Lilly, Tomo Ohka, and others certainly. But on price, performance, and contract length, Marquis stacks up reasonably well against all those guys (thankfully Lilly has turned it around since Apri). I think when 2009 is added, the average is $9 million/year for Marquis, which is stunning. But Suppan is at $8 million + per year, and Meche is more than $11 million. At the very least, the Cubs $9 million mistake is an average #5 starter in the majors. It's better than having Carl Pavano. Those numbers are actually slightly off. Marquis is only at 7 million per year, and Suppan is at 10.5. Here's the years and average salary for every pitcher who signed multi-year deals that year. Zito. 7 years, 18 million per year Daisuke 6 years, 17.17 million per year (includes posting fee) Meche 5 years, 11 million per year Igawa 5 years, 9.2 million per year (includes posting fee) Suppan 4 years, 10.5 million per year Lilly 4 years, 10 million per year Schmidt 3 years, 15.67 million per year Padilla 3 years, 11.25 million per year Batista 3 years, 8.25 million per year Eaton 3 years, 8.17 million per year Marquis 3 years, 7 million per year Mussina 2 years, 11.5 million a year Mulder 2 years, 6.5 million per year Woody Williams 2 years, 6.25 million per year El Duque 2 years, 6 million per year Ouch. Marquis is probably 2nd or 3rd on production per dollar on that list. That's scary.

I guess with the DH, we can afford to be down a reliever, but the way a lot of them have been throwing lately, I dont know. Basically, Lou will be forced to go with Cotts as a loogy, and we might need to see more Wuertz than we'd like. I trust Demp for the most part, but I hope Gallagher and Marshall can step up. Having a DH means you can get by easier with one less bat on the bench, not with one less reliever in the pen. You're facing more hitters and less pitchers, so more relievers is better. You don't have any double switches due to pitching changes, so the bench doesn't get chewed as quickly. Not having Eyre for the Sox series is not good if we don't get another pitcher up. If you can get more innings out of your pitcher it can, as you dont have to worry about double switches or batting for the pitcher in general. The DH doesn't mean you can get more innings out of your starter. If anything, the guy would likely leave sooner, as he'd face a DH 3 times instead of a pitcher. If you have an effective pitching staff that gets deeper into games, you'll get more innings out of your starter in AL parks because you're not pinch-hitting for the pitcher in the 6th or 7th before he's quite ready to come out. There's a reason that as far as starter innings pitched, the top 5 teams in 2007 were in the AL. In 2006, the top 4 were AL teams. So far this year, the top 5 teams and 8 out of the top 11 are AL teams.

I don't understand why they decided to take away the extra rest for Dempster. He was still goinhg to pitch in the series. Every bit of rest will help him come September/October. Pitcing today gives him an extra start before the All-Star break than pitching tomorrow would. That's why they made the switch.

Ascanio just got back to AAA after almost a 2 week layoff. It's not the time for him to come up. Besides, Eyre really doesn't sound like he'll go on the DL, but he might miss the whole White Sox series.

Colvin is 3 for 4 tonight with a triple. Hopefully he can start adding some of the hits back in during the second half of the year.

McRoberts makes the salaries closer, but it still doesn't quite work in the trade machine (a little more than 100,000 off). I'm wondering how they will get that worked out.

He's a pretty good backup point guard. I guess Jack is now the insurance in case Ford goes down. He's certainly not a guy who I would expect to see as a target of a swap in draft picks like this.

Probably Lopez here. I hope not, but it's probably the case.

The NBA draft has only been 2 rounds since 1989.

Release him. I'm continually baffled as to why the Cubs can't seem to grasp that concept. Is there another case in the major leagues where someone has pitched to the level that Marquis with the Cubs and is released with another year on their deal? If there is, I certainly haven't seen it. No organization DFA's pitchers in that situation. They have to be either significantly worse in production, riddled with injuries, or both.

Marquis ERA+ 2005 102 2006 74 2007 101 2008 101 (not including todays game, which will surely push that below 100) I'd call that at or below league average. Calling that "consistently better than league average" is pretty misleading. Starting pitcher average is more like 90-95, not 100. But he's probably going to be worse than that this year after today's outing. He'll be close enough though that 1 good outing will push him back to average. His ERA will have to continue to go up to get pulled though. Except that average includes a significant amount of starts and innings thrown by guys who aren't regulars in a rotation bringing down the cruve, and making the concept of an average pitcher rather meaningless. Marquis is a guy who goes out into a rotation year after year and disappoints. And part of Marquis's value is that he takes the ball every 5th day and performs at that average level, which means those guys who aren't regulars in the rotation don't need to make as many starts. Considering you've arguing that people who only come up for a few starts are horrible and drag down the average number, not needing to use those guys in place of Marquis should then be a good part of his performance. And you disputed the use of the word consistent in the other post when someone tried to say he was consistently average or above average, and then you did the same thing in that last sentence. Marquis doesn't go out every year and disappoint. He has some years where he's an asset, and some years where he's terrible. Last year he was an asset. The jury's still out on this year. Right now it looks more like terrible, but 1 great start will send the pendulum swinging back once again. I can completely understand people who want to get off the roller coaster though. It's not a very fun ride.

Marquis ERA+ 2005 102 2006 74 2007 101 2008 101 (not including todays game, which will surely push that below 100) I'd call that at or below league average. Calling that "consistently better than league average" is pretty misleading. Starting pitcher average is more like 90-95, not 100. But he's probably going to be worse than that this year after today's outing. He'll be close enough though that 1 good outing will push him back to average. His ERA will have to continue to go up to get pulled though.

It's the 4th inning and Fukudome is questionable. This is not a big situation. Your few pinch-hitters are better served waiting for later.