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The Cubs could use a BP arm after the year that they trust so they don't go out and sign any relievers to large contracts to fill their holes (Howry, Eyre, Wood, and Lieber are all free agents after this season currently pitching in the bullpen). I still would likely want him to begin as a starter, but if he is ticketed as a reliever, he could definitely fill a need for the major league team very quickly. I agree with you on Lou though. I'm worried about him accepting a reliever that struggles mightily with his control. Thankfully, most of his relievers on the major league level who have had control issues in the past (Marmol and Wood especially) have really toned that down in the bullpen.

With the Cubs drafting him last year, I have a feeling they thought and still think he can be a starter, and that's what they'll try to use him as. Then they know he has that value as a reliever just in case being a starter flames out.

What's this guy's ceiling? His numbers look really good so far, especially for only recently turning 19, but the Top 10 prospects thread is the first I've heard of him. There's been a lot of conflicting reports (as is often the case for young international players) but most seem to think his ceiling is pretty high. The Cubs gave him a 525,000 signing bonus last year when they signed him, which is a pretty big bonus.

Bailey is doing quite well so far in his first start, although he is trailing due to an error. 4 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K Philly up 1-0 after 4. Cardinals up 2-0 on a Glaus 2 run blast.

Maybe a little bit, but part of that is that he gives up so few ground balls, and fly balls turn into outs most of the time. Hill has also shown an ability in the majors to sustain a pretty low BABIP. It's the tradeoff for the fact that with so many fly balls hit, Hill's going to have more than an average number of homeruns hit against him.

My guess is that it will take at least 3 starts from now for Hill to come back to the majors. This start today will continue to build up his arm strength, along with hopefully show better control (if he gets hit somewhat hard, I think that's ok for this start as long as he's not wild). Then when his arm is conditioned, if he has two effective decent control starts after that, I think the Cubs will bring him up. 1 bad results start will push the timetable back 1 start. 1 really bad control night pushes the timetable back 2 starts in my mind.

Seriously? I doubt that's true. Everything Lou has done this season suggests that he wants to win today's game, and not think about tomorrow. I think it was a little bit of both, but mostly concentrating on possible scenarios that might happen today. Lou probably thought that if he brought in Eyre and 1 or 2 of the left-handers ended up reaching against Eyre, he would then have to pull him for Marmol anyway when the Kouzmanaff/Greene/Huber part of the lineup came in. He knows he didn't have a full crew down in the bullpen, and was looking at a possible extra inning game, and so he didn't really want to use 2 relievers in 1 inning. Starting the inning with Marmol is ok, but with looking at a possible extra inning game Marmol can only pitch to so many batters, and starting him with 2 tough left-handers when it's not necessary is not using Marmol at his best. So he left Lilly in for exactly 2 batters. I'm not even sure that if Lilly had gotten the first two batters out that Lou would have left him in for Kouzmanoff. Maybe, but I have a feeling that no matter what happened with Giles and Gonzalez, Marmol was pitching to Kouzmanoff. Lou ended up saving his pieces for deeper in the game, which is sort of uncharacteristic for him. Normally, he is criticized for burning his pieces too early and not preparing for extra innings. Today, he gambled a little bit so he could save some for extras, and the Cubs got burned. I don't think it was a terrible gamble though. Lou knew that the Cubs were unlikely to score off Bell/Hoffman, and that they would have to go 10/11/12 tonight to win. Lilly hadn't given up a hit in almost 2 innings. It just didn't work out tonight.

I think the best thing we got out of this game was a virtual off day for the bullpen. Marmol was the only one who pitched, and he only threw 8 pitches. That was something the bullpen sorely needed. Some nights you're just not going to hit. I'm not really upset at all. The Padres pitchers, especially Maddux and Hoffman, were really good tonight (Bell was good as well, but I thought he was more hittable than Maddux and Hoffman were...the Cubs just didn't take advantage).

Fontenot, Soriano, and Theriot are all 0-1 against Hoffman. Lee though is 5 of 12 with a HR and 2 2B's.

Fontenot is in the game as well.

Good catch Giles. DeRosa will likely be replaced by Fontenot now with Eyre coming in.

Yeah, I think Lilly has to go at least 3, probably 4 tonight at the mininum no matter what his performance is. The bullpen just doesn't have enough innings in it right now. Hart and Lilly could probably go between 2-3 innings each tonight. Those are probably our closest to long relief.

I just tried a few different games. Some of them I can open fine, and some of them will just go to the black outside white inside and then stop, and others will just stop at a black screen.

Corey Patterson is 0/3 tonight on a total of 5 pitches. Brett Myers has a no-hitter through 6, and Volquez is shutting out the Phillies through 5.

I take that phrase to mean someone like Pie. None of the others are on the level of "very good". Cedeno and Murton probably come closest, but they're not close enough.

I probably disagree with that ranking for a 5x5 league. Swisher's likely to have a big edge on Fukudome in HR's. That much is pretty much a given, especially when Swisher comes out of his slump. Fukudome though is likely to beat him in AVG. Swisher's best AVG year is .262. Regression to the mean will happen with his .202 BA so far, but I don't see him as likely sustaining a .290-.300 BA for the rest of the year like Fukudome likely will. Fukudome also will beat him in SB's by a little bit. Kosuke has 5 this year. Swisher has 5 for his career. As far as runs and RBI's, Swisher is probably the better run producer, but Kosuke is in the better lineup. I'd give runs to Kosuke, and RBI's is either a push or maybe a slight edge to Swisher. In a 5x5 league, I wouldn't take Swisher over Fukudome right now. On neutral teams they'd probably be very close by the end of the year, but when accounting for the difference in lineups, Kosuke has to be the pick. Plus Swisher is batting 7th and 8th right now and also getting days off more than normal. Who knows how long Guillen will take to move him up even if he starts hitting well.

That's the entire point though...the Cubs aren't going to do that. I'm just curious if this is a way to more closely simulate moving him down. Lou's on record stating that he wouldn't bat the pitcher 8th, so the Cubs aren't doing that, either. Studies have shown that it's a good idea, though. True. But it's one of those tiny insignificant ways to increase run production. I've seen people claim a 2-3 run difference over the course of the season. With that small of a difference in a big market like Chicago, it's really not worth the distraction to your team when you get called out on it everytime it doesn't work since it's unconventional. Plus the argument has been made that you'll get a very slight decrease in innings out of your starting pitchers using this format, and the Cubs need every inning out of their starters that they can get.

Monday. Thanks Soul. Now sit him Sunday as well and I'll bet he comes back refreshed until the All Star break. I'd anticipate the Cubs sitting several players on Sunday to give them two days off to rest, especially if they still have a comfortable margin and don't feel any urgency to win. Or perhaps rest a few players on Sunday and a few more on Tuesday. I admit I haven't been paying a lot of attention but I'd hope that Cedeno gets more starts to rest Theriot and DeRosa while having DeRosa give Ramirez a little rest as well. Losing Hoff hurts giving Sori a day off because having Johnson out there along with Edmonds isn't that productive of an OF imo. Hopefully Ward comes back healthy. Has Fukudome had a day off yet? Soriano will likely get a day off soon, and it will come by sending DeRosa out to the OF and getting either Cedeno or Fontenot a start (probably they'll pick Fontenot, since Soriano leaving will leave a gap at the top of the lineup). Lou's starting to rest players more. During this 9 game winning streak: Soto-1 day off Lee-1 Derosa-1 Theriot-2 Ramirez-1 Soriano hasn't had any (but 1 supposedly upcoming) Fukudome-1 Lou's been mixing and matching players quite a bit more lately. The main one I'd like to see get rest even a little more frequently than the last couple weeks is Soto.

The way Marquis's starts fall the next couple weeks, it will be hard to skip him. The off days need to fall right before his starts in order to skip him, and they end up falling right after his starts. They could probably skip his turn the week of the 23rd. And Marquis/Marshall piggybacking off of one another isn't a bad idea, but the Cubs need to get Marshall healthy again first.

I was waiting for Smoltz to come back and be one of my closers. Now that I am about to drop him, who do you think I should pick up to fit in his place? Ryan Franklin, or Rafael Soriano?

I'm certainly not defending him, but doesn't that make him the best 5th starter in baseball? Yeah, I threw that in there to say that while perception may make all of us think one of he's the worst we've ever seen, he's really not quite that bad. Right now his numbers are in that frustrating middle zone. He's not good enough to really be productive or to be able to trade him, but he isn't really bad enough to get cut either. That is just a horrible way to look at it. There may be 37 other starters with a worse ERA, but are they spread across all 30 teams? Are the just filling in temporarily. Are those ERA's park adjusted? And are they signed to the type of contract Marquis is signed to? I got news for you, Jason Marquis is not the Cubs 5th starter. He was signed to be more like a 3, and as far as guaranteed spots in the rotation he's a 4 right now. A 5th starter is in danger of losing his job at all times. Marquis has been handed his because of his ridiculous contract, and that ridiculous contract cannot be removed from the discussion. Yeah, I certainly wouldn't argue that Marquis is the best 5th starter in the league. Most of the names behind him are not temporary fill ins though, but many of them aren't usual 5th starters either. They're big money guys having bad years. Verlander, Buerhle, Meche, Penny, Oswalt, Myers, Lilly, Arroyo, Zito, Batista, Snell, Silva are just some of the guys. And no, those ERA's are not park adjusted, but if they were, that is a huge benefit to Marquis. The number grows closer to 50 pitchers if you look at ERA+ rather than ERA. And yes, I realize that Marquis was not signed to be the 5th starter. He certainly wasn't signed to be the 3rd though. In this market, you don't sign somebody for just 7 million dollars to be your 3rd starter. That's more like 4th starter money. 3rd starters have been getting 10-13 million per year. I'm not removing the contract from the discussion either. It's what makes the Cubs decision really hard right now. The decision making would be a lot easier one way or the other if he didn't have that crazy year 3 on there (which is the main thing that I have not liked about the contract...I'd rather have signed Marquis to 2/15 or even 2/16 than 3/21. His career with other coaches and tuning them out after a certain period of time made this type of situation very reasonable to happen after the decent first year that Marquis delivered).

Lou has tried to be careful with Wood, but they let Wood go 3 days in a row sometimes. An example is the last 3 days when he has picked up a 2 run, a 1 run, and a 3 run save. And 6 of Wood's last 7 saves have been 1 or 2 run saves (3 1 run, 3 2 run), with 5 of those coming in the win streak. And they haven't exactly had to find too many places for Wood to get work, which is why he has the most appearances on the entire team.

I'm certainly not defending him, but doesn't that make him the best 5th starter in baseball? Yeah, I threw that in there to say that while perception may make all of us think one of he's the worst we've ever seen, he's really not quite that bad. Right now his numbers are in that frustrating middle zone. He's not good enough to really be productive or to be able to trade him, but he isn't really bad enough to get cut either.

erik went to bed, so my guess is that the new game thread will be up in the morning or early afternoon. Wood will definitely be completely unavailable tomorrow, and Wuertz almost certainly will also be unavailable. Marmol has had 2 of the last 3 days off, but I still hope they only use him for 1 tomorrow. Lieber could possibly go 2. Howry should probably go only 1, but could go 2 if he's efficient. Hart could go 1 or 2 if he can get out of the inning this time (he threw 20 pitches tonight to get 1 out). Eyre and Cotts should be ready to take on the middle of the Padres lineup again. So they have barely enough, but they really could use a deep game by one of these starting pitchers. Hopefully Lilly can rebound from his terrible last start and go at least 6 in this game, and the Cubs can start to get some of their bullpen arms rested.

It's certainly a different time in the Cubs history when the starting rotation is 3rd in the NL in ERA and is labeled a "weakness". Not that I completely disagree..I understand the concern. But normally a ranking like that would be the crowning achievement of the team, and certainly not the weakness. It's nice to have to figure out how to make a well above average part even better rather than the alternative in recent years of struggling to maintain average production in every area.