CubColtPacer

Yes, we did. 6 runs in a little under 6 innings. Before that, he had mystified us twice. This should hopefully be Cedeno's first start. Not only because of the normal reasons, but he's one of the 4 Cubs who's hit Gorzelanny well. But nobody on the Cubs has more than 12 at-bats against him, so there really isn't much data. Oh, btw, the Cubs aren't prepared to have Wood go 3 days in a row yet, so he is unavailable for this game. Marmol is the closer if the Cubs need one.

What IMO leads further credence to the injury theory is that he didn't play at all yesterday. I fully expected Lou to bring Pie in when the Cubs took the lead as a defensive replacement. When he didn't, that was one of the reasons that I speculated why that would be.

no kidding. he wasn't doing terrible either. He was hitting better than lee up until today. Or ramirez. Or Soriano. Soriano's the only regular that has been worse than Pie has so far. Pie has a .200/.250/.200 line on the season so far. That's pretty terrible. At the same time, that doesn't mean I support him getting replaced, so hopefully this is just a couple day thing to try to get the offense kickstarted while Soriano and Ramirez are ice cold, and Pie will be back in there soon. Okay, you're right. I forgot he went o-fer the last game he played. Before that he was batting like .300 Regardless - averages, which are already moderately pointless, are even more so for the first month of the season. Hell, lee went from barely above .100 to batting in the mid three's today. Oh, that's definitely true, which is why I don't want to do anything with him. Just because he's been terrible for the first 4 games (3 singles, and 1 of them should really be an error on Fielder rather than a single), doesn't mean much of anything. As you pointed out, Lee is a good example of that. He was batting .222 going into today and is now at .364. I don't think Lou is looking ahead well though. Johnson is going to get plenty of chances for PT next week when the Cubs potentially face 4 left-handers on the 6 game road trip. Tomorrow should be Pie's chance before he sits most of the week. It's too bad that it won't be, and I doubt that you'll see Pie penciled into the starting lineup until Thursday.

no kidding. he wasn't doing terrible either. He was hitting better than lee up until today. Or ramirez. Or Soriano. Soriano's the only regular that has been worse than Pie has so far. Pie has a .200/.250/.200 line on the season so far. That's pretty terrible. At the same time, that doesn't mean I support him getting replaced, so hopefully this is just a couple day thing to try to get the offense kickstarted while Soriano and Ramirez are ice cold, and Pie will be back in there soon.

Definitely agreed on the too many flyouts, but I am a little more encouraged to see that out of the 9 flyouts, 4 of them were actually popups to the infielders. Add to that no extra base hits and I'm pretty happy with the first outing. But I definitely agree with you that I'm worried about his sustained success with few ground balls and few strikeouts. There are very few pitchers that can be successful from year to year doing that.

It's at the end of one of the stories on Cubs.com that both Johnson and Blanco would start tomorrow. One of the posters heard Lou say it and mentioned it at the end of today's game thread as well.

I wonder if Lou will think Theriot or Blanco is his 8th place hitter. My guess is Blanco and the Cubs will go like this: Soriano Johnson Lee Ramirez Fukduome DeRosa Theriot Blanco Zambrano

Why? He's given up 7 baserunners in 5 innings, and has had only 1 hit that went for extra bases. That sounds about in the 2-3 run range normally.

Today's lineup: Soriano Johnson Lee Ramirez Fukudome DeRosa Soto Theriot Marquis Pie gets the day off today. My guess is that it will be Soto's turn to get the day off tomorrow (Lou said it would be either tomorrow or Monday).

Not Mark De Rosa? DeRosa does show that it does happen at least occasionally. Here is his minor league line with over 2000 AB's: .274/.345/.374. UBlink already posted his major league numbers through age 29 earlier on this page, and it wasn't pretty. I don't know if Theriot's body type gives him the same potential as DeRosa, but it's not completely hopeless. More middle infielders figure it out for the first time at age 28-30 than any other position, probably because they are so needed that they get the most chances. I think Theriot could improve even now, but I doubt he could get to DeRosa's level. Maybe to what Eckstein does would be a better projection at what Theriot's improvement could get to.

His last 2 appearances Marshall threw 2 innings, and then he threw to 2 batters in his last appearance of the spring. It's probable that his arm needs to be stretched back out.

Out of all the NL teams, Houston is probably 2nd on the list of teams I don't want Marquis to ever have to face (after the Phillies). Lance Berkman might as well take first base as soon as he gets up to the batters box with what he's done against him. I don't think Marquis will completely flame out, but I think the Cubs offense will have to score at least 5 to win this game. I'm not sure they have a high percentage of doing that.

Unfortunately, probably not. Sampson is not a wild pitcher at all. His highest walk total in the major leagues is 4, and his walk rate in his 150 major league innings is right around 2 per 9 innings. And that walk rate was really high for him compared to his 1.37 walks per 9 innings in the minors. So the Cubs should still be patient, but they are likely going to have to hit the ball well today. Sampson isn't going to give them much free, but thankfully he has shown himself around the league as somebody who is pretty easy to get a hit off of. I don't think the Cubs have had much success off of him though.

They have a GM with less incentive to play it safe than just about any other. Not from what Bruce was intimating during Spring Training that Hendry was very likely here to stay for at least 2009 and probably longer due to the ownership situation.

From Lou's quotes, in his mind it's all for Soriano's benefit why he's making the switch.

Kendall didn't catch Fukudome stealing. That may be what it went down in the book as, but that's not even close to what happened. Overall, I agree with your argument. Of course, I believed that a large part of the Cubs problems in throwing runners out was their pitchers, and I still believe that's the case. Kendall is still going to be one of the worst catchers in the league at throwing runners out, but he isn't an automatic extra base as it was at times last year.

From all I've heard about the proposal, I think there's still one exception that the defense can't catch the offensive player in the air to hold them up and then essentially carry them out of bounds. They can knock them out though in the air, and it definitely will change some offenses in the red zone. I don't think it will matter much between the 20's.

Good. It's a lot harder to get Theriot either down in the lineup or out of the lineup if he's batting leadoff, where Lou feels he doesn't have many options. Lou has plenty of guys he likes in the 2 spot, so if Theriot is bad for another couple of weeks (I realize he wasn't bad today, but his combined 2 games are) it will be much easier to move him to either the bottom of the lineup or the bench. I wonder if Soriano complained to make Lou do it this soon? I was wondering if he would after seeing his comments about needing to make a big adjustment to handle hitting with runners on base more often. At the rate Lou is going, Soriano and Fukudome will likely be the 1-2 hitters by the end of April. Of course, that all depends on one of the bottom of the order hitters proving to Lou that they can protect Ramirez.

The forceout rule was a Cardinals game? Isn't that a relatively frequent call? A friend of mine hates that one and will be happy. I think it's probably a good thing to overturn. It tended to get called once or twice a week, so frequent but not likely in any particular game. Most of the time it didn't generate much controversy, even if most fans didn't particularly like it. There was a game earlier in the year though where on the last play of the game under the rules a forceout should have been called in the end zone, but it wasn't. That caused the team to lose the game. It generated a lot of buzz, and I'm not surprised that the forceout rule came into question the year after that particular game. The NFL is a very reactionary league on many of their rules.

Does that mean an incidental facemask will be no penalty or will be a 15-yarder also? 15 yards. it's another blow against defenses across the league. i'm surprised they haven't made it only 5 yards to get a first down yet (with 7 downs to do it) That's not true. If a person grabs the face mask and lets go, there will be no penalty called anymore. The 15 yarder is still only reserved for the same things that it was before. It's interesting to see how many of the others were based off of one game. The direct snap from center thing was from that Bears game last year. The field goal was from the Browns game. The forceout rule was a Cardinals game? I know a lot of football fans who never even knew you couldn't defer in the NFL. I've always wondered why they didn't change that before now. There's no reason not to add just a little bit of extra strategy in the game with no real detriment.

I would love the hire of Tom Crean. I was one of those who doubted that he would be interested in the job. As for Summit, I think she'd be pretty good as Tennessee men's basketball coach. I doubt she'd do well at any other big school. And I'm pretty sure she's said that she'd never be interested in Tennessee's job, and if she's not interested in that one she's certainly not going to take any other men's job.

Interesting quote from Fukudome:

Agree, gives sheets his due. I was impressed by him. Lee with a one year exception is a poor starter. We looked like this at the beginning of last year. I am psyched about Fukudome. Once Lou gets the line-up fixed things will run smooth. Anxious to see Johnson at leadoff Lee has been great in April each of the last 3 years.

The Bears received 3 7th round compensatory picks today.

It sounds like he's fine and is supposed to make his next start. He says he knows that he needs to drink more water before starts, but he never seems to do it considering he leaves multiple games a year due to cramping.