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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.

nope, not at all. Agreed. Maybe if Z didn't come back for 4 more starts, and Marquis kept giving up 5-6 runs per start. But they're not going to replace Marquis unless his ERA is well above 5, and it's not even at 5 yet. Plus, Marshall would have to be dominant in those 4 starts in order to make up for his poor performance on Tuesdya.

No. He took strike one, then swung at what would have likely been strike 2. Too bad no runs there, but the Cubs did make Liz throw 31 pitches in that inning after just 10 in the first.

Theriot has come out of his little slump the past few days. It's nice to see him hitting line drives again.

Marquis just needs to keep his composure today. With the wind, he's probably going to give up a HR or two and probably 3-4 runs. He just needs to try not to be perfect, keep throwing strikes, and trust his offense to score more then that.

Garza is through 6. The Cardinals are having one of those rare types of days so far. They've had 8 baserunners in the first 4 innings and have 0 runs.

Garza has a no-hitter through 5.

No, Jones was better than Pie, and Sherill was better than Ceda. Not to mention the Orioles got 3 more pitchers with that deal, including 2 very intriguing ones. Sherill at the time was considered the 3rd player in that deal behind Jones and Tillman.

Cubs go the same way as yesterday: Patterson Theriot Lee Ramirez Edmonds Soto DeRosa Fontenot Marquis Baltimore has: Roberts Cintron Markakis Millar Huff Payton Jones Quiroz Liz

Anybody open Gameday today? What are the benefits of this new system? Sure, it looks kind of cool at first, but I have no idea how I'm supposed to use it to get any better of information then before.

There's a little blurb about how Lou doesn't expect him to be, but it really all depends on how he feels today. Fukudome also said having to play on the turf was a contributing factor in it.

good luck with that don't you like purdue? if so, enough out of you Yes I do. Why that matters I don't know. I just can't see West Virginia playing up to their talent level because they personnel that fits a unique very uncommon offensive system. BTW this is one of the main reasons I really hate ND. They win three games yet experts, and I'm using that loosely, have them ranked in pre-season polls. http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=3459463 They won't be ranked in the actual polls. If you look at the pre-season polls compared to their final ranking though, ND hasn't been consistently overranked. The years they've been ranked to start the season, they've been unranked to finish. When they've been unranked to start, they climbed into the rankings to finish. So they've been overrated in some years at the beginning of the season, and they equally have been underrated in some other years.

Gallagher goes Friday. It's a good way to keep his innings number slightly down to move him back a couple days in certain situations like this. He's still very young. It's not great to have him throwing too many innings, and the Cubs may need him to stay in the rotation the rest of the year. I'm hoping those two can keep it rolling the next two days. They really have been pitching well in June.

not realistic. if you're going to have a backup middle infielder, he's almost certain to be a lousy hitter. take a look around baseball and see how many teams have a solid hitter who can come off the bench and play shortstop. if the guy can hit and play SS/2B, he's already starting. When did we get rid of Cedeno? Teams rarely carry just one backup middle infielder. It leaves you too handcuffed in the people you can pinch-hit for, double switches, injuries, etc. Now the fact that Patterson is up and could switch to 2nd base if need be is a decent argument. It seems like the Cubs don't want to do that unless they absolutely need to through. But even if you said that Hoffpauir was definitely a better hitter than Fontenot, when is he going to play? They don't seem to trust him in the OF. He's not going to get many pinch-hitting appearances because he's both behind Ward on the depth chart for LH pinch-hitters, and the Cubs won't send him up there to bat against a left-hander. He'll come up, and he'll just sit on the bench and likely get burned in a 2 pinch-hitter move as often as he actually gets an at-bat. It's a bad use of resources. So you bring him up, stash Patterson or Murton in the minors and give as many opportunities as we can. Hopefully, he comes through, and can gain some trade value. Some opportunities where? Because the Cubs aren't going to start him in the OF on a regular basis. They made that pretty clear with how they made the lineups the last couple of weeks. And I really doubt that a 28 year old 1B who can play some OF is going to gain a lot of trade value just because he plays well for a couple of weeks. At best, if he does reasonably well, he'll bounce around the league as a poor man's Daryle Ward, who is a nice player to have but not one with a lot of trade value.