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Braun didn't jam his wrist. They double switched to avoid pulling a reliever for a PH. Hunter Pence slammed the wall last night harder than anyone I've ever seen, and he didn't come out of the game. And Houston isn't playing for anything. There is no excuse for what Yost did last night, but I'm not complaining. Were they winning or was it tied? They were up 2-1 in the 7th. This wasn't a move made for double switch purposes (they substituted Jenkins in for Dillon at the same time). They take Braun every time they are leading late for defensive purposes, and that's what they did here.

Guys, he's replacing Lance Cormier. You remember, the same pitcher who got the Cubs rolling by giving up 8 runs in Wrigley and then the next week giving up 5 runs in less than 4 innings, along with 3 home runs to Soriano? This guy is an improvement. At least he has a chance of putting together a decent outing. Cormier had a 7.09 ERA on the year.

Their last 2 games against the Phillies were without Pujols, and somehow they got both games into extra innings and won 1 of them. Here are the two lineups: Tuesday Taguchi Ryan Cairo Spezio Ankiel Molina Scumaker Wellemeyer Barden Wednesday Eckstein Taguchi Ankiel Spiezio Cairo Schumaker Molina Wainwright Miles Yeah, those are pretty bad. I think we have to hope that the Cardinals take 1 from Milwaukee.

Cubs lineup Soriano Theriot Lee Floyd Ramirez DeRosa Jones Soto Lilly Reds Hopper Keppinger Griffey Phillips Dunn Encarnacion Votto Ross Shearn

Kendall has been awesome for 1 month. The other 2 months his OPS is in the 5's thats not good. Couple that with his terrible defense and inability to throw out King Kong Bundy trying to steal, and his performance with the Cubs has been subpar. There is plenty of reason to believe Soto could have put up better numbers on the average then Jason Kendall. Additionally, regardless of Soto's production, we would have a much better idea of what to do for Catcher next year. Ya, that is exactly what I am thinking about these last 2 months. And by the way, I still think Kendall has been awesome for this team Then you have very low standards His offense has been just fine. There have been 36 catchers with at least 200 plate appearances this year, and Kendall would rank 12th in OPS and tied for 3rd in OBP among them with his time in the Cubs. So his offense has been well above average for the catcher position. Then it just depends on how much you think catcher's defense is normally, how much the fact that these pitchers cannot hold anybody on plays in, and how you value each part of the defense. His throws have been beyond horrible. His blocking has been ok but nothing great. All the pitchers say they love throwing to him. You have to put all those components together, and then figure out how much that devalues his offense. How can you say his offense has been fine? His Aug 900 OPS was great but July and Sept are sub 600, to go along with the rest of his year only having 1 month above 600. I think its a pretty safe assumption that Aug was a hot streak, and he has now cooled back down to the normal Jason Kendall. And to say he would rank 12th in OPS for catchers is basically a knock on how terrible the catching position is offensively around the league. 1 900 OPS 2 800 OPS hitting catchers and then everything else is 790 or below. My point in all this goes back to the original post saying we are all naive if we think Soto could pan out. I dont think its a large assumption to think Soto could have put up a better OPS then Kendall this year. And even if he was right at Kendalls(which I dont think he would be worse) his defense is heads and shoulders above Kendalls. We were asking the minor league experts on the board what Soto would likely be in the majors as a starter if he came up at the time of the Kendall trade. Raisin said he thought he would put up a .300 OBP and a .400 SLG. So there certainly was doubt that he would outproduce Kendall's numbers right now. And yes, I am taking Kendall's offense into account by how other catchers are. I think you have to-it's unfair to compare him to right fielders and first basemen and say that his offense has been below average. Having Kendall costs us the opportunity cost of having another catcher, and so far he's been above average offensively as a catcher. I do think Soto should get most of the time in the final 12 games because he's playing better than Kendall right now, but Kendall was valuable for us in the time he played.

Yeah, Oswalt's wife could have easily induced Thursday or Friday instead. Considering they scheduled it a few days beforehand, it wasn't an emergency at all, and when they schedule those things can many times be somewhat random. It's not like it was a choice or not of Oswalt missing the birth-if he had wanted to, he could have easily pushed the birth back past this start with the Brewers. At the same time, the birth of a baby is such a family thing that I cannot really blame them whatever they decide. Maybe they did have a reason why they wanted to do it yesterday. I think we should probably leave the benefit of that doubt to a couple having a child.

He did not. They didn't play in the same league-Shearn was with Louisville in the International League.

Thanks for the correction. I forgot about the 2 games at the very beginning of the year in Wrigley. The Padres were kind of strange in hitters parks. They tended to have lots of low scoring games with a few double digit numbers added in that skewed the numbers for both their hitting and their pitching.

Kendall has been awesome for 1 month. The other 2 months his OPS is in the 5's thats not good. Couple that with his terrible defense and inability to throw out King Kong Bundy trying to steal, and his performance with the Cubs has been subpar. There is plenty of reason to believe Soto could have put up better numbers on the average then Jason Kendall. Additionally, regardless of Soto's production, we would have a much better idea of what to do for Catcher next year. Ya, that is exactly what I am thinking about these last 2 months. And by the way, I still think Kendall has been awesome for this team Then you have very low standards His offense has been just fine. There have been 36 catchers with at least 200 plate appearances this year, and Kendall would rank 12th in OPS and tied for 3rd in OBP among them with his time in the Cubs. So his offense has been well above average for the catcher position. Then it just depends on how much you think catcher's defense is normally, how much the fact that these pitchers cannot hold anybody on plays in, and how you value each part of the defense. His throws have been beyond horrible. His blocking has been ok but nothing great. All the pitchers say they love throwing to him. You have to put all those components together, and then figure out how much that devalues his offense.

Well, you should be, as the Padres are much much better than the Brewers. Not on the road vs the Brewers at home they aren't Padres ERA in hitters parks this season... 4.12 @Chi 4.50 @Cin 4.86 @Col 5.82 @Hou 6.92 @Phi 5.47 @Ari They are a team built around defense and pitchers who will thrive in big parks. Their team ERA at home is 2.99, its 4.35 on the road and its over 5.00 in hitters parks on the year, they simply are not the same team in that situation. If the games were @SD I'd assume we lose 3 out of 4, @Mil is another story and as I said there is still a decent chance the last game or two aren't meaningful so I can't be too worried about that series just yet. The Atlanta series could be a nightmare tough. First off, who is Chi? It can't be the Cubs, because the Padres only allowed 7 runs in 3 games to the Cubs. If you're putting their ERA in hitters parks, let's look at their runs per game in the same parks: Cin: 8.33 R/G Col: 4.55 R/G Hou: 7.25 R/G Phi: 6.67 R/G Ari: 4.67 R/G They may pitch worse in hitter parks, but they also hit a lot better. Milwaukee will still have the slight advantage in that series because they are so good at home.

Soto was already ready. He can replace an injured position player or an injured pitcher now on the postseason roster because of the new rule. Its not position for position anymore? That's correct. You can replace an injured player with any player that was in the organization on August 31st.

Soto was already ready. He can replace an injured position player or an injured pitcher now on the postseason roster because of the new rule.

I can't be too upset with Lou for that. Z had gotten 6 outs in a row (5 batters) and his pitches were looking better in the 5th. He had 2 hard hit outs out of those 5 batters. It's not a situation where Lou is suddenly going to pull him If I recall every out in the 5th was a hard hit ball. Nope, the first one was an easy groundout to first base.

I can't be too upset with Lou for that. Z had gotten 6 outs in a row (5 batters) and his pitches were looking better in the 5th. He had 2 hard hit outs out of those 5 batters. It's not a situation where Lou is suddenly going to pull him

Yeah, find me those numbers, please. He probably meant against right-handers (which is almost certainly the case, but I can't look it up right now). It probably should have been clarified though.

Ben Sheets may miss his next start,,,We are in fine shape. He may miss a lot more tha that, and dont forget that we face the Pirates this weekend and most likely miss Gorzelanny and Snell. UMFan83 has Zambrano facing Gorzelanny this weekend in his "Probable Starters" thread cubs.com also has Gorzelanny going on Sunday. Not only that but the unstoppable Zach Duke on Saturday. Career 4.20 ERA, but a 1.57 career ERA in 7 starts against the Cubs :?: cubs.com and espn.com both have John Van Benschoten starting Saturday's game for the Pirates. The Pirates have announced that they are going to start Duke on Saturday so they can have 3 left-handers going against the Cubs.

Cecil Cooper used to play for the Brewers....conspiracy theorists, anyone? It certainly seems suspicious. It's not like the Stros have been in this thing for the past 2 weeks (post Sept callups). They've had no chance for awhile, yet they pitch their good pitchers against us and wait for the Crew to unveil their tomato cans? Does the league even care about this or are they just going to let it slide? Can they do anything? I don't want to cry conspiracy without knowing the facts. I just want to know what valid reasons there are for the timing. Is it the new GM -- ? I'm not sure exactly why he did that. I do know that the Houston GM called both Hendry and the league before he did that to explain himself. You should read the Floyd rant on Cubs.com though-players don't usually respond to things like this, but he did and I think expressed the fans point perfectly. BTW, the Pirates have now changed their rotation this weekend specifically to try to beat the Cubs. which probably makes me more upset than the Astros thing. It's one thing to pitch your normal starters, but to mix up your rotation just to play spoiler?

Oh no, now the Pirates are purposely ordering their rotation in order to try to beat the Cubs:

I found this interesting. When Houston decided to pitch the two rookies instead of Williams and Oswalt: If you read later in the article, there's a great little rant from Floyd about it. http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070918&content_id=2216087&vkey=news_chc&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc

Is it? Do you see the scrub the Astros are throwing out tomorrow. Guys we aren't really tied for first. We are as good as in second the way the Brewers are playing. With the way the Brewers are playing? They've won 4 in a row against horrible pitchers. Before that they had lost 3 out of their previous 4. This weekend they will be going into Atlanta, and the Braves have to win that series for them to have any chance at the playoffs, so they'll be pulling out all the stops. The Brewers would be lucky to get 3 out of 4 down there, and they easily could only take 1. If you add in that Sheets might miss a start and suddenly Vargas is back in their rotation, that hurts them even more. Add in the Padres series at the end of the season, who are almost certainly going to be fighting for their playoff lives for somebody, and I certainly don't think we can assume that the Cubs are automatically 1 game down. For us...4 games left with Cincy...We're 6-8 against them 3 games with Pitt...we're 5-7 against them 3 games with Fla... we're 0-3 against them. If we go 5-5 in our last ten, I'd be surprised. I'm guessing 4-6 or 3-7 Well, the 0-3 against Florida you can pretty much throw out the window. That was the Cubs low point, and Florida was actually a decent ballclub at that point and they've fallen apart in the second half. That series in May means absolutely nothing on how the Cubs match up with the Marlins. As for Cincy and Pitt, it's hard to tell for sure. I'd be surprised if the Cubs go 4-6 or 3-7. My guess would be 6-4 (2-2 against the Reds, 2-1 against the Pirates, 2-1 against the Marlins) and then we'll just have to hope that's enough.

Is it? Do you see the scrub the Astros are throwing out tomorrow. Guys we aren't really tied for first. We are as good as in second the way the Brewers are playing. The Astros suck and they're 12-4, soonto be 13-4 vs. theBrewers this season. The Brewers have 4 against Atlanta, 3 against St. Louis, and 4 against San Diego. This division is the Cubs for the taking. It all depends on how bad they want it. Look at the pitching matchups though. They do not favor us. Other than Hudson, Smoltz and Young, they face all really bad pitchers with over 5 ERAs. Hudson hasn't been good since May, Smoltz is negated by Gallardo (who has 21 straight scoreless innings) and Young has an over 4.00 ERA on the road. Meanwhile Lilly goes on 3 days rest tomorrow and Z's last 2 starts are negated by Gorzelanny and Harrang again They also face Maddux. Also, if the Brewers are playing that well and win 2 out of 3 say from the Padres in the last weekend before the Sunday game, there's almost no way the Padres would have clinched by then if the Brewers do that. So the Padres would be forced to throw Peavy in the final game. The only probable way the Padres will clinch before that last Sunday with the Phillies right on their heels is if they beat the Brewers at least 2 out of the first 3, which will be 2 losses that could allow the Cubs to catch and/or pass the Padres in the final weekend.

Is it? Do you see the scrub the Astros are throwing out tomorrow. Guys we aren't really tied for first. We are as good as in second the way the Brewers are playing. With the way the Brewers are playing? They've won 4 in a row against horrible pitchers. Before that they had lost 3 out of their previous 4. This weekend they will be going into Atlanta, and the Braves have to win that series for them to have any chance at the playoffs, so they'll be pulling out all the stops. The Brewers would be lucky to get 3 out of 4 down there, and they easily could only take 1. If you add in that Sheets might miss a start and suddenly Vargas is back in their rotation, that hurts them even more. Add in the Padres series at the end of the season, who are almost certainly going to be fighting for their playoff lives for somebody, and I certainly don't think we can assume that the Cubs are automatically 1 game down.

Just watched the 1st 3 innings. I'm not sure we can definitely say that Zambrano is bad because he's on short rest. That's going to be the easy explanation, sure. At the same time, this is the 5th time he's faced the Reds. He's given up 5, 6, 0, and 6 runs in the previous 4 games. So he's been terrible against the Reds 3 out of 4 games this season on regular rest. So if we put the blame on this outing as short rest, then what explains the other outings? The better argument is that the Reds have simply owned Zambrano. They have lots of left handed hitters that have hit Z hard. That's true no matter what kind of rest Z gets. You add in an infield hit, a couple bloops, and a runner on the move at the right time to avoid a double play to the hard hit balls, and suddenly you have a bad outing.

I was thinking about the reasons that Theriot might be overrated by many fans, and I was thinking about some of the misconceptions that have come up in this thread. I think Theriot is overrated less because he hustles, plays the right way, etc. and more because 1) he's young and 2)his spot in the batting order. Theriot bats behind Soriano and in front of Lee and Ramirez. Let's say the bottom of the order gets on and the top of the order doesn't drive them in. Who gets blamed, Theriot, or one of Soriano, Lee, or Ramirez? People are going to say Soriano, Lee, and Ramirez failed because those are the hitters who are supposed to come through in those situations. They are making the big money, they are the power hitters, and they are the veterans. By the same token, when Theriot does well, it's much more memorable because he came through. If Theriot has a hot streak, everybody knows about it, but cold streaks by a player like Theriot are usually ignored because people are concentrating on the faults of the bigger hitters. Over the course of the season, one can get a very distorted picture of what actually happened, and it's perfectly understandable why that's the case. I think Theriot is liked because of his hustle and willingness to do whatever it takes. I think Theriot is overrated because 1)many people love speed just as much as power, and 2) his spot in the batting order around so many big hitters obscures his failures and props up his successes.

Traschel again...he was good last time he pitched in a one game playoff. :D I'm just wondering with these 3 day rest decisions, if Lou is trying to manipulate the schedule in the event of a tie. No, Lou is really just trying to skip the 5th starter as much as possible because he's not comfortable with Marshall or Trachsel on the mound right now. Lou is trying to pitch his 4 best pitchers as much as possible these last two weeks. I'm not sure Lou has any idea what will happen with a 1 game playoff, and I think he's pulling out all the stops in order to try to win before that. BTW, from the other thread on pitching probables for the rest of the year, it looks like it will probably be Jason Marquis if it goes to a 1 game playoff.