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When he gets warmed up, they tend to not want to sit him. I don't know why, maybe someone with physiological background might explain what happens if you get a guy up and then don't use him. Wood with his starters background and arm injuries takes a little longer to warm up. So if they get him warmed up, he's already thrown enough pitches and put enough stress on the arm that even if they sit him down, they can't consider it an "off day" in their bullpen usage. So it makes more sense to go ahead and throw him in the game instead of also using up an off day of another reliever. even if you can't consider it an off day, you can still spare your second-best bullpen arm from throwing pitches in a game situation when the outcome is virtually decided. the cubs are going to need woody in october; best to keep the mileage off his arm if you can. True, but the Cubs don't have an off day for 10 games, and Wood was already the 4th bullpen pitcher to pitch tonight. They might need every guy they can get to be fresh in the short-term just in case a pitcher has to leave early. I might have thrown Eyre in that spot, but I wouldn't have thrown my long reliever. And of course, if you sit Wood down then I'm not sure you can get him back up and warming again if Eyre/Lieber aren't effective in the 9th. If he sits down, I think he's done for the day.

When he gets warmed up, they tend to not want to sit him. I don't know why, maybe someone with physiological background might explain what happens if you get a guy up and then don't use him. Wood with his starters background and arm injuries takes a little longer to warm up. So if they get him warmed up, he's already thrown enough pitches and put enough stress on the arm that even if they sit him down, they can't consider it an "off day" in their bullpen usage. So it makes more sense to go ahead and throw him in the game instead of also using up an off day of another reliever.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out. what does hoff's success have to do with jimmy's future? he cant cover CF. No, but the next plan if Pie isn't ready and Edmonds is cut is to play Fukudome in center and Hoffpauir in right. Hoffpauir's continued success convinces them to do that.

then what are they paying him for? does he sit all day in the corner and just masturbate? my whole point was if this guy was such a shrewd talent evaluator, maybe they'd have acquired a decent player or two during his tenure. i wasn't much blaming anybody, i just said that team's roster is awful. jesus, i don't even care that much about the guy either way. what's with this weird allegiance anyways? His tenure has been two months as an assistant to the GM. This is why blaming the current roster failure on DePo is silly. The allegiance stems from a management exec that is open about his decision making process on a blog, and takes SABR stats into account in the decision making process. His article today on why the Padres just made a trade is fascinating, really. Cro Magnon is right on the timeframe. It has been almost 2 years, not 2 months that DePodesta has been at his post. But Towers is a pretty strong G.M. We just don't know what has happened in that office over the last 2 years. Maybe the two of them have agreed on mostly everything, and Depodesta has whiffed on a lot of players. However, maybe DePodesta tried to suggest some good players that Towers wouldn't devote the money to. I'm not what you exactly call a supporter of Depodesta, but I have a hard time blaming him when you simply don't know which decisions he was heavily involved in and which ones he wasn't. The same thing goes if the Padres have success; credit cannot be given to him for that. Unless it specifically comes out that he was involved, it will be hard to attribute anything the Padres do to Depodesta. I know this is a little off topic, but why aren't you a supporter of DePo? Are you saying you think he'd make a bad GM? I can understand if you think he's overrated by some, he probably is. But I'm curious what you mean by that. I didn't mean that I think he would be bad. I'm rather neutral on him. I'm not jumping for joy if he was hired as the general manager of the Cubs, but I would be optimistic for the team's future. So essentially all I was saying was that I'm not one of the ones on here who would normally jump in to defend his GM record just because they like him and his philosophy.

Soto is more deserving. It'd be a tough decision if only one could go... but if Marmol really is the best reliever in the NL, and Soto is even with McCann to be the best catcher in the NL... doesn't that indicate that Marmol should get the nod over Soto (again, with the understanding that only one could go)? Soto is more deserving than McCann. And the best C is more valuable than the best RP, in my opinion. I know this is a Cub website obviously. But you can't honestly say that Soto is more deserving than McCann. You could say they are equal but to just flat out say Soto is more deserving than McCann is wrong. Just like I won't say McCann is more deserving than Soto. It all depends on how much you value defense from your catcher. If one greatly values defense from the catcher, then yes, Soto is more deserving. The offensive numbers are close enough, that the defense from Soto could give him the edge. If you minimize the impact of catching defense, then they are likely equals. I didn't even realize that McCann was that bad on defense, my bad. He's not bad, as in Piazza bad, but he's probably in the lower half defensively. Soto is very good defensively. That's why I said it depends on how much you value defense behind the plate. McCann is not so bad that it's a slam dunk for Soto, unless you value small variations in defense with the same grade as small variations in offense. Well obviously he is not PIAZZA BAD lol. And has Soto gotten better? I remember when we played you guys we ran all over him and he seemed like a mess. Yeah, he made some mechanical adjustments after that first series. Just some early season jitters that caused his motion to go off a little bit. He's thrown out 32.3% of runners overall this year.

it was a fluke in that it was ridiculously high (on pace for like 950 walks or something absurd). the patience has not been bad in the past couple of weeks, just not quite as crazy as it was to start the year. Exactly. The Cubs are still on pace to beat the franchise record for walks by about 60 walks if I remember right. They were never going to keep the walk pace they had in the first couple weeks for any more than a short stretch.

Unfortunately, not tonight for Russell. 4 runs in the first on 2 home runs. Colvin 0-1 with a K.

It's strange with him. His OBP has remained high this month, but his power has dropped like a rock. Not too often you see a player over almost a hundred at-bats in a month have his OBP 59 points higher than his SLG.

Awesome to see Soto bat behind Ramirez finally. This is Soto's 6th game in the 5th spot, 5th time batting directly behind Ramirez. 3rd time in a row when Soto has started against a left-hander that he's been in that spot.

They mentioned something about that during the game last night. I would be awesome to face Glendon Rusch and Shawn Estes in a few days span. Yeah, but, um, didn't Shawn Estes already beat us this year? Yup, and in his 4 starts this year, the Cubs got the most baserunners off of him. I don't think Estes is great, but I'm not really looking forward to facing him again when he pitches on Monday like I normally would when hearing the name. He's pitched well so far this year.

Yep...and yet he still has a roster spot.... For how much longer? I mean, is there a set number of at bats that he's going to get before they decide the Edsperiment is a failure? At this point, my guess is that they're continuing with it a little longer until there's pressure on that roster spot. Either Pie continues his last couple days for a week or two, or Ward is ready to come back. I think Edmonds will be gone as soon as they're forced to make a roster decision.

then what are they paying him for? does he sit all day in the corner and just masturbate? my whole point was if this guy was such a shrewd talent evaluator, maybe they'd have acquired a decent player or two during his tenure. i wasn't much blaming anybody, i just said that team's roster is awful. jesus, i don't even care that much about the guy either way. what's with this weird allegiance anyways? His tenure has been two months as an assistant to the GM. This is why blaming the current roster failure on DePo is silly. The allegiance stems from a management exec that is open about his decision making process on a blog, and takes SABR stats into account in the decision making process. His article today on why the Padres just made a trade is fascinating, really. Cro Magnon is right on the timeframe. It has been almost 2 years, not 2 months that DePodesta has been at his post. But Towers is a pretty strong G.M. We just don't know what has happened in that office over the last 2 years. Maybe the two of them have agreed on mostly everything, and Depodesta has whiffed on a lot of players. However, maybe DePodesta tried to suggest some good players that Towers wouldn't devote the money to. I'm not what you exactly call a supporter of Depodesta, but I have a hard time blaming him when you simply don't know which decisions he was heavily involved in and which ones he wasn't. The same thing goes if the Padres have success; credit cannot be given to him for that. Unless it specifically comes out that he was involved, it will be hard to attribute anything the Padres do to Depodesta.

I wonder what roles they're going to assign them. Is Cotts the LOOGY now and Eyre a full inning guy? Is it the other way around? Are they going to be interchanged? Personally, I'd make Cotts the LOOGY and let Eyre come in at the beginning of innings. I can perfectly understand why Lou is not comfortable bringing in Eyre in tight situations with runners on. Even though he has gotten it done the last couple of weeks, he's too wild to do it consistently. Let him start an inning, and then if he walks a batter it's not as big of a deal and he can work out of the trouble. Of course, Cotts is only slightly better in the walks department. And I agree about Ascanio. He pitched well, but he wasn't that good. 3 of his 4 hits given up were doubles. He didn't have a single 1-2-3 inning, and only had 1 inning where he didn't allow a person to reach 2nd base. It was an effective but rocky 5 innings.

If Theriot was still producing by the time the deadline comes around, I'd be in favor of considering such a move. But, his numbers have begun to decline of late, and this offense may not be able to withstand the same non-existent production they got from CF and SS last season, especially if Soto falls back at all. Plus, you will have traded the guy in the organization most capable of filling the SS spot for 2009, while acquiring a late 30's pitcher who will be a free agent, and who hasn't been all that special either. I'd rather see if they'd have interest in Murton or some other position player who is redundent to the Cubs, like Patterson. I would agree. Trading Cedeno doesn't seem like a very good idea. He's a quality backup who has a pretty good amount of at-bats off the bench, and then you add in the fact that he still has a good shot to become a starter in the next year and a half. I don't think the Dodgers would want him anyway though, considering they have both Furcal and Hu.

I never think it's terribly pessimistic to expect a split out of a 4 game series. It's a lot harder to take 3 games out of 4 then 2 out of 3, just because you have to send at least one and often both of your worst 2 starters to the mound. I think it's about 50/50 right now between a split and the Cubs taking 3. The only game that seems favorable to either side right now is Saturday's. The other 3 are up in the air.

He hasn't been good since 2005 (average in 2006) and while he is supposed to sign with a team in June/July, he isn't supposed to be ready for the big leagues until September. I don't see how he would be likely to help this team. And I absolutely see Lou giving Hill another chance. Hendry is going down personally to watch Hill pitch tomorrow night, and as soon as Hill doesn't have severe control issues for 2-3 consecutive starts, he'll likely be up. When Pie, Murton, or Marshall went down, Lou didn't say they were essential to the team winning this season. But he did do that with Hill.

It wasn't an exceptional play, but it was a very good play. Soriano was running pretty hard, caught the ball (evading two fans leaning over the railing trying to catch it) and slammed up against the side wall.

Let's see. Marquis gets into trouble early, some on board declare game over :D He goes 6, giving up between 2 and 4 runs. He gets a no decision. No prediction on the winner.

Sosa was overpaid at the end of his deal, but he was also way, way underpaid from 1998-2002. It evened out.

Now he's gotten a bit lucky this month with allowing baserunners and getting out of it, but Howry's May ERA is now: 1.81 in 14 2/3 innings.

I was actually thinking quite the opposite. Howry looks like he is hitting his spots quite well so far tonight.

Even when Saito is really off in his location, his pitches are still nasty. Nobody could get a good swing off of him even sitting on the fastball. I'm glad that he will very, very likely not be out for another inning.

Not very many at-bats for the Cubs against Saito..what they have isn't great. Theriot 0-1 Lee 0-1 Ramirez 0-3 In fact, the Cubs team doesn't have a single hit against Saito in 8 AB's. Hopefully that will change tonight.

That's not necessarily true. Z has been effective when throwing close to as many pitches before. For example, last June he had 3 consecutive starts. 8 innings, 0 runs, 128 pitches Next start- 9 innings, 1 run, 123 pitches start after that-8 innings, 1 run, 113 pitches He also had a 3 start stretch in 2006 that was very similar to that, where he threw 126 pitches in consecutive outings and still had 3 straight effective outings. Yes, he has had his ineffective outings after a long day as well. I thought that was a bit much as well, albeit by only 6-8 pitches. I don't think it will be a problem for Z, but I hope they can get him out early the next start.

Samardzija ended up going 6 6 IP, 2 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 4 K Colvin is 0/4 tonight.