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He unfortunately probably will. If it makes you feel any better, Ramirez got the day off the last time Cain started against the Cubs and they still beat him up. Lee was also gone because of the suspension. Floyd, Jones, DeRosa, and Koyie Hill were the 4 big offensive bats that day.

Isn't DeRosa in RF? I don't understand why you wouldn't put Pie in CF and move Jacque to LF. Well you traditionally put your 2nd best range guy in RF, and that's definitely Jacque. Maybe Lou doesn't want to change the angle all 3 OFers see the ball. That or he's lazy and wants the least amount of changes possible. I'm really not sure if they think DeRosa is comfortable in left. They haven't put him there once this year, and there have been several times where it seemed like DeRosa was the most likely candidate to go out there and instead he was put in right and the right fielder switched to left. As for Jacque, I want no part of him in left field. The Cubs tried that for a couple games earlier this year, and he was having a terrible time reading the angles off of the bat, and he also let a couple balls bounce past him because of not positioning himself correctly to catch it on the bounce (the best example of this was in the 14th inning of the Padres game early this year where he let a ball bounce in front of him and then right past him). It was pretty obvious he has not seen much time in LF, as those were not usual mistakes that he made in RF. So my guess is that the Cubs feel that DeRosa can only play right, and Jacque can only play center or right, so that left Pie as strangely the only OF left to play left. In pretty much every other game, they have put Pie in center and switched Jacque over to right, so DeRosa being there was probably the reason why they changed that tonight.

My guess is it will be Dempster if they take the lead, and Marmol will pitch another inning if they are tied.

Pie is in a bit of quandry when it comes to PT. He would get some PT against right-handers, but the Cubs have a million guys to hit against RH's (Jones, Floyd, Ward, and Murton are all ahead of Pie). Against left-handers, the Cubs have a shortage of OF's, but Pie is the absolute worst Cubs OF against left-handed starters, so he's not likely to play there either. That's actually why Pie went down the first time and Pagan came up-there simply isn't that much room for Pie to play right now considering his skill set and the skill sets of those who he'd be replacing. Pagan at least was able to slightly fill the hole against left-handers. Pie will likely still be the starter next year, but he will continue to have a hard time finding time right now.

Well, Theriot has already clinched this with his 7 pitches at least :D

What an ignorant post. Murton has put up a .820 OPS the month of August, and you dont get that by just hitting 2 solo shots. Murton has actually been propped up bigtime with his 3 HR's in August 55 AB's, .273/.333/.473, 3 HR, 2 2B Now that's just fine-HR's are a great way to prop up numbers because there is less luck involved. Really though, with such a small sample of at-bats, 2-3 home runs can mean the difference between being good and being awful. For example, Murton without those 3 HR's: 52 AB's, .231/.298/.269 So yes, the only thing Murton has done this month is those 3 HR's, but HR's are such a big scoring play that those are enough to make him have a good month so far anyway. So taking out HRs makes a guy's numbers look bad??? Weird. I think it's his 3 outs that are dragging down his numbers. Let's magically transform his numbers to this instead. 288/351/500 Fun!! The way people talk about Cliff Floyd around here you'd think he was Jesus Christ. That was fun too! Did you read my full post? I said that while that the original poster said was technically correct (that all Murton had done was hit a few home runs and has done little else) that was still valuable with the number of at-bats he has had. I was defending Murton with that post, not bashing him.

What an ignorant post. Murton has put up a .820 OPS the month of August, and you dont get that by just hitting 2 solo shots. Everytime I see him he gets an an out. .820?? I find it hard to believe.. I think it's all the Murton love that has lead me to hate the guy You're probably remembering his recent slump and projecting it on to the earlier games. He is 4 for his last 29, but he was hot before that.

What an ignorant post. Murton has put up a .820 OPS the month of August, and you dont get that by just hitting 2 solo shots. Murton has actually been propped up bigtime with his 3 HR's in August 55 AB's, .273/.333/.473, 3 HR, 2 2B Now that's just fine-HR's are a great way to prop up numbers because there is less luck involved. Really though, with such a small sample of at-bats, 2-3 home runs can mean the difference between being good and being awful. For example, Murton without those 3 HR's: 52 AB's, .231/.298/.269 So yes, the only thing Murton has done this month is those 3 HR's, but HR's are such a big scoring play that those are enough to make him have a good month so far anyway.

News outlets were reporting today that Soriano wants to come back now, but the Cubs will probably hold him back until Labor Day (September 3rd). I've also heard a September 1st timetable.

I think they were 4 out of 5 with RISP last night. Thanks. Also, what happened on that triple the Giants had to the RF corner later in the game? My view of the corner was blocked, but I saw some people over there, and the ump giving a safe signal made it seem like the Cubs were looking for a ground-rule double for some reason. What was the deal over there? From what I heard on the radio, the ball rolled under the bench in the bullpen, and the Cubs thought that was a ground rule double but it apparently was in play.

I think they were 4 out of 5 with RISP last night.

I think what Warren is trying to say is that Murton has already been decided as the OF against left-handers. The question becomes-who do you play against right-handers, Murton or Floyd? The best way to figure that out is to look against their splits against right-handers. How they hit against left-handers isn't really relevant to the discussion, so there's no reason to look at their total numbers when deciding who to play against RHP. They've been identical against right-handers the last two years combined, so putting Floyd in against right-handers is not going to give you any different results then Murton. At the same time, being that the results are identical, Murton is younger, faster, and every at-bat he goes up there gives the Cubs a better picture of what to do with him in the next few years. Therefore he should be given the at-bats even if the only expectation is that he'll continue to be about the same to what Floyd would do. So I understand Warren's point, but I believe that the Cubs should give the at-bats to Murton unless Floyd has proven to be significantly better against right-handers, and he has not done that this year.

The Cubs have some run producers in the middle. If Murton is significantly better without runners on than with, that doesn't mean he needs to be taken out of the lineup. He just needs to moved to a spot in the lineup that will allow him to thrive (1st, 2nd, or 8th would be the 3 best spots for that). Plus there simply isn't enough data to make a definitive conclusion for his career, although the split is large enough that it will be hard to make up anytime soon.

I'd be curious to see what those number look like over the course of his (brief) career. I think we all know that "clutch hitting" seems to fluctuate from year to year usually ending up about the same as the player's over all numbers. I can't give you his RBI percentage, but here goes: 2005 Overall: 140 AB's, .321/.386/.521 Nobody on: 85 AB's, .388/.447/.682 Runners on: 55 AB's, .218/.297/.273 RISP: 32 AB's, .188/.317/.250 2006 Overall: 455 AB's, .297/.365/.444 Nobody on: 264 AB's, .318/.371/.485 Runners on: 191 AB's, .267/.357/.387 RISP: 127 AB's, .299/.389/.417 2007 Overall: 178 AB's, .253/.328/.371 Nobody on: 107 AB's, .271/.339/.411 Runners on: 71 AB's, .225/.313/.310 RISP: 45 AB's, .200/.294/.289 Career Overall: 773 AB's, .291/.360/.441 Nobody on: 456 AB's, .320/.378/.504 Runners on: 317 AB's, .249/.337/.350 RISP: 204 AB's, .260/.357/.363 RISP/2 outs: 97 AB's, .247/.336/.320 I was a little surprised by these numbers. I expected to find that Murton went back and forth like most players. With only 773 AB's in his career, he still has time to do that. However, at this point in his career he has been significantly better with nobody on the base than with runners on base. It shows up every year, and that's why there is over a 150 point difference between his career numbers with nobody on and with RISP, and almost a 200 point difference between nobody on and runners on.

Actually, it wasn't. I'm pretty sure after Piggy's 1 pitch outing on Saturday Eyre said that he had an outing where he threw exactly 0 pitches. He came in, picked the guy off of second to end the inning, and then his team hit a home run to win the game the next inning.

Peyton's not the 2nd best fantasy value-Steven Jackson is. As much as I like Peyton, he really can't be considered that much until at least pick 5 or below.

Actually nothing like Bo Hart. Bo Hart saw more than twice as many AB's in his fluke season - Theriot's #s last year could be attributed to a small sample size. Also, Bo Hart's #'s the following year were not even in the same ballpark as Theriot has been this year. To be fair, yes Bo Hart's at-bats were twice as much as Theriot's last year, but they weren't nearly as good. He had a .277/.317/.395 line for the season in 2003-he was good for a month or two, but then he was awful after that. Also, the next year, Hart only had 13 AB's in the major leagues. Now there is one thing to consider-getting lucky with Hart for a month or two was big for the Cardinals because it helped them remain in contention in 2003 until late September. For the Cubs, Theriot's huge first 130 at-bats came at a time when they were hopelessly out of the race.

It was a good day off for Murton. He had started 11 games in a row, was 4 for his last 28, and are facing a guy who has been very, very tough against right-handers. I would have probably given DeRosa the night off and put Ward in his place, but maybe Lou doesn't feel comfortable having Ward play defense in San Fran's park. I don't think this is indicative of any long-term trend either. If the Cubs wanted to keep Murton's bat out of the lineup, they could have played Ward and DeRosa in the OF and Fontenot at 2B everyday for the past 5. Since they didn't do that, it makes it much more likely that this is simply a day off for Murton, and Murton's PT won't go down until Soriano gets back at least (and hopefully not then unless Cliff comes back swinging the bat a lot different then he was when he left).

Not really. Patterson was called up during the minor league season, so he lost development time by sitting on the bench in Chicago. By the time Smardz is called up the minor league season will be over, so he won't be missing out on any development time. The Cubs are likely to call up all the guys that have already gotten the call this year: Ohman, Petrick, Gallagher, Cherry, Cotts and Rapada (in approx. that order) Soto, Fox and Patterson That's already a lot of players. If they do call him up I doubt he gets more than one appearance, maybe 2 if the race is over and its the last day of the season. That's probably not going to hurt him nor will it help him very much. Fox is on the major league roster already, but other then that I agree with you. I could also see them calling up Moore. I especially agree with the last sentence-no matter if they call him up or not, it's not going to end up mattering much at all.

Fox does have the 4:15 game that week. The matchups are: Bears at Chargers Lions at Raiders Tampa Bay at Seattle Since none of those teams are anywhere near you, I think you have a very good shot of getting the Bears/Chargers game (that should be the nationwide game besides the Oakland, Detroit, Tampa Bay, and Seattle areas). I pity the people who get to watch Detroit at Oakland :D

I don't think anybody, he would be a call up. Sorry, I mean in terms of reps. Only so many innings that can be pitched. Who would get fewer appearances in favor of Sam... My guess is that he would only get time in blowouts, so he would just keep the relievers that the Cubs might need for the playoffs from racking up innings.

425 plate appearances or 100 games started. He is already ineligible for 100 games started-I believe the most he can get is 97 now on the season. He's had 243 plate appearances, so he'd have to average 4.667 plate appearances per game through the rest of the year. That's not happening even if he started every game the rest of the year (which he won't), so Floyd will have no guaranteed money for next year. I wonder how far he is from reaching 2007 performance bonuses though: 2007: $4.5M for PAs & time on active 25-man roster That is as specific as I've seen. Presumably, that was about rewarding him for staying healthy, assuming he'd be good if he wasn't hurt. I don't know what the PA or time on active 25-man roster equals though. After 2 stints on bereavement and this restricted time, I think he's probably still on course to be on the 25 man roster for a good 150 games or so, which I would guess is enough to trigger a bonus. At this point, I don't think the 2007 bonus really matters. It's not like the Cubs need to add payroll for 2007 anymore. Floyd might reach them (which I kind of doubt, but maybe) but it's not a big deal either way.

425 plate appearances or 100 games started. He is already ineligible for 100 games started-I believe the most he can get is 97 now on the season. He's had 243 plate appearances, so he'd have to average 4.667 plate appearances per game through the rest of the year. That's not happening even if he started every game the rest of the year (which he won't), so Floyd will have no guaranteed money for next year.

Except if it gets called at this point it's a suspended game. With the Cubs losing the full inning would have to be completed for it to be a final. That's not true. The Cardinals had the lead at the end of 6, and the Cardinals have the lead now. If the game is called, the game is over with the Cardinals winning 5-4 in 6 innings.

Floyd I think is still supposed to be back tomorrow. He was placed on the restricted list yesterday so the club didn't have to activate him until he was ready to play again.