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It was no secret that DeRosa was attributing his new found success at the time to the toe tap maneuver that the Rangers hitting coach taught him. There was just a lot of disagreement out there if that was the reason for his hitting to get a lot better, or if it was mostly just a career year. The Cubs thought it was the former, and in this instance, they turned out to be right. I remember the questioning here during that winter wondering if the statistical projections on DeRosa were flawed due to them not being able to properly take into account his mechanical change at the plate, and if they were flawed, exactly how flawed. I think DeRosa has exceeded the expectations of even his supporters, who mostly thought he'd be a .750-.770 OPS player who can play several positions.

Does PECOTA's contract value have any monetary value added for versatility? I'm honestly not sure, but a productive player who is also versatile is worth an extra 1-2 million IMO because whenever there's an off day or an injury, it allows the hottest player on the bench to get starts, rather than just whoever plays that position. Plus it allows the bench to much more easily have a player with little defensive value on it like Ward, even with only a 5 man bench. I would agree that DeRosa is probably somewhere around 13 million dollars in value overall already, and it's a great job if a free agent even lives up to their contract, let alone possibly double the value of it.

This actually hurt us. I'm not sure about that. Have you seen Jones's numbers against Marquis? He could have won Sunday's game by himself.

Z actually had some help blowing the game yesterday--or I should say lack of help in the field. But you're correct about Marquis, very nice job tonight. Could he be turning the corner? I doubt he's turning the corner. He'll spray a few of these here and there throughout the season. Now if he can keep throwing strikes, he can be an average starter once again this season like he was last year (he should be very close to that average starter mark after this game). He'll still have plenty of his 5 2/3, 3-4 run starts where he looks pretty bad, but I really thought that the one thing ESPN got right (probably because they got it straight from Lou) is that the key to Marquis is for him to be aggressive. He's been trying to nibble all season, and it's caused him to get behind in counts, which has forced him to come in and throw easy pitches to kill. If we can get a 4.75 ERA or better out of him this season (he has a 4.54 right now), I'll be satisfied with him. To do that, he needs to continue to go right at hitters for at least a majority of the starts, because that disaster start that he hasn't really had yet is going to come at some point. So he needs to have more good starts to counterbalance that.

Probably. From what I've seen, Lou has taken him out when the pitcher and Soriano both bat in the 8th inning. If they don't, he stays in. Good winning road trip by the Cubs. Now let's go take 2 out of 3 from the Braves before the interleague games.

That was certainly a little bit of a strange inning. 26 pitches for 4 batters. 1 batter hits the hardest ball of the inning on the 1st pitch of the at-bat, and it turns into an out. The other 3 have 25 pitches in between them, but manage one baserunner out of it.

It doesn't appear good for that. I think the only way Marmol leaves this game without pitching the 8th is if the Cubs find a way to get down to his spot this inning.

Seriously? Dead serious. Was his pitch count even at 85? 89. I doubt Marquis would have gone past the 7th even if had pitched the rest of the inning.

Marquis got squeezed on two of those pitches on that walk. With that being said, now is a good time to pull him. Don't let him groove one over to make sure he throws a strike to Kemp. He had a good outing..let him hopefully build on that before that's all forgotten with 2-3 bad batters.

.877 OPS this season. I'll happily take that from my second baseman. Yup. That's 3rd in the major leagues so far this year (and 2nd overall in OBP). Too bad for DeRosa that the 2 in front of him are both in the National League.

This is a completely different Marquis then we've seen even in his good outings so far this year. This is more like Marquis last year on one of his good days. How many balls have the Dodgers gotten solid contact on? 1? 2? Somewhere around that. His pitches are in the zone and have better movement then we've seen out of him at any point this year.

Soriano hit in the 2nd spot this year? I don't remember this. It was the first two games of the year.

DeRosa makes it up to the 2 spot for the first time this season as Theriot gets a day off: Lineups Cubs Soriano DeRosa Lee Ramirez Fukudome Soto Edmonds Cedeno Marquis Dodgers Pierre Ethier Kent Martin Loney Kemp DeWitt Berroa Penny

Hoffpauir is not eligible to come up until Friday.

Ceda just came out of the bullpen in the Daytona game.

At least if we were going to blow it, we did it in the 7th before the best bullpen pitchers had to pitch more. That's the only silver lining in an otherwise pretty terrible game. Marmol's pace dropped below 100 with the game today (although he's a good bet to go over again with 2 straight games he'll be rested in with the off day in between).

one is better than none. Sinker baller that had given up only 1 hit, double play was very predictable. Agreed. Don't mind the bunt there because you have two ground ball hitters up there against a ground ball pitcher. Add to that Fontenot has been struggling lately and Johnson is batting against a right-hander. All of those make playing for 1-2 and staying out of the double play a pretty good option. I believe that's also the one situation where sac bunting increases your run expectancy even in an average situation, and that was a much better than average situation for bunting.

Today, neither do I. We've reverted back to Dustyball... swing at everything, and watch the entire offense completely shut down. The Cubs are hardly swinging at everything, which is the reason Lowe is falling behind a good percentage of the hitters. They just haven't gotten good swings when they have had a pitch to hit, and they probably are swinging at too many pitcher's strikes when they're up 1-0 and 2-0 in the count.

If you're a manager closely looking at Z's pitch count today, do you sort of discount the 4 from the intentional walk?

Burnett would be too huge of a gamble in my mind. He has an ERA near 5 this year. He has lots of arm troubles. He has a decent chance of exercising his option now, which means the Cubs would be on the hook for 2 more years after this one and 24 million dollars. How does he help us enough now or in the future to make all the prospects we're going to trade for him and all the money we're going to pay for him worth it?

I happen to think that it's more physical than mental too, but it didn't happen suddenly. Hill could have developed this problem at any point this winter. From the first day he showed up at spring training, he's been wild. 7 walks looks like a gaudy number, but he could have gotten there several times before. He walked 6 in 2 innings during a spring training game. He very well could have gotten to 7 walks in 2 regular season games if they had thrown him out there for 5 innings. From the time he left at the end of the year last year to the time he showed up this year, something has changed. I just wish we knew what that was. I think Hill developed the "problem" when Lou and Larry started monkeying around with him in ST. In some ways, I would like to believe that (because that's the easiest explanation to fix) but Hill claims that he has been having problems since the very first day of spring training, which is weeks before they starting messing with his delivery. So I'm not sure what to believe.

I happen to think that it's more physical than mental too, but it didn't happen suddenly. Hill could have developed this problem at any point this winter. From the first day he showed up at spring training, he's been wild. 7 walks looks like a gaudy number, but he could have gotten there several times before. He walked 6 in 2 innings during a spring training game. He very well could have gotten to 7 walks in 2 regular season games if they had thrown him out there for 5 innings. From the time he left at the end of the year last year to the time he showed up this year, something has changed. I just wish we knew what that was.

BTW, this story was published yesterday. Last night, another 3-6 inches of rain was dumped on Bloomington. That's not a typo either..some areas in Central Indiana received 10 inches of rain since midnight. 4 counties are under a state of emergency and the roads are designated emergency vehicles only. So I can't imagine what the field looks like now.

That's an interesting point about high schoolers. I do know that the draft overall was more heavily weighted towards college players than in any year in its history. I see some teams being similar to the Cubs in their approach without even looking at any other drafts. For comparison, the Cubs took 5 high schoolers in the first 30 rounds. Round 4, Round 21, Round 22, Round 27, Round 29 San Diego took a high schooler with their sandwich pick. Their next high schooler was a 15th round pick that will likely not even sign with them. After that, it's down to the 22nd round for their 3rd high schooler. Those were the only 3 taken in the first 30 rounds. The Giants didn't take a high schooler until round 10, and then waited until round 22 to take their 2nd high schooler. Those were their only 2 high schoolers in the first 30 rounds. Seattle took 4 high schoolers in that time period. Round 6, Round 11, Round 17, and round 23. Those are the only high schoolers they took in the first 30 rounds. The Cardinals also took 4 in the first 30 rounds. Round 3, Round 7, Round 12, and Round 20. The White Sox also took 4 in the first 30. Round 12, Round 17, Round 23, and Round 29. Colorado took 2 in the first 30 rounds. Round 14, and Round 25. Detroit took 5 in the first 30. Round 7, Round 12, Round 18, Round 22, and Round 27. So the Cubs were hardly groundbreaking in how college heavy they were. They weren't even the most extreme this year. Colorado and the Giants were both markedly more college heavy then the Cubs were, and then the Cubs fall somewhere in that next group of teams.

Asciano's struggling? Uh oh. If we demote Hart and decide to bring a pitcher, though, it's gotta be Jose, just because he's better than Hart as an innings eater. Ascanio has had 3 outings since he's been in AAA. 2 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 4 BB, 3 K 2 IP, 2 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 2 K 1 IP, 1 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 1 K Whoever ends up being up will be gone on Friday.