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As several people have pointed out, there are other setup otions besides Eyre and Howry. There are 3 bloody lefties in the pen, along with 2 options in AAA. There are 2 perfectly acceptable RH setup options in Marmol and Wuertz that you can use before Howry, and a couple more in AAA and AA that you can use. There's no good reason to justify this lunacy. Maybe Piniella ought to learn from his own mistakes and not put those two gascans in a position to blow games until they fix their issues, instead of crippling his starting rotation. For the most part, Piniella has stopped using Eyre. Only 6 appearances since April 24th, and half of those were either blowouts (the 9th inning of a 7-1 win or a 10-1 win) or extra innings after most everybody else had pitched. So, then, why call up Marmol and then demote Guzman to the pen? All on account of Howry? That's stupid. You don't need to hurt two guys in order to hide one. If they plan on Marmol starting, they're stupid. If they demote him just so Marshall can pitch, they're equally stupid, because Marshall is not going to be better than Guzman, has a good chance to be worse, and Marmol would be better suited to relief than Guzman would be anyway. This move can't be justified any way you look at it. I truly believe that Lou thinks this is the best thing for Guzman's health. Do I agree with him? A little bit, but not really. I would have much rather seen Guzman stay in the rotation. However, Lou has been very frank about what he sees as a problem whenever he sees it, and if he was sending Guzman down to the bullpen just in order to strengthen it, I think he would say that-his quote does not say that though. So I think (at least for now) he's doing it for medical reasons-but if it's Lou who is misinformed or the training staff giving him really bad information, I'm not sure which, because it is most likely a mistake.

As several people have pointed out, there are other setup otions besides Eyre and Howry. There are 3 bloody lefties in the pen, along with 2 options in AAA. There are 2 perfectly acceptable RH setup options in Marmol and Wuertz that you can use before Howry, and a couple more in AAA and AA that you can use. There's no good reason to justify this lunacy. Maybe Piniella ought to learn from his own mistakes and not put those two gascans in a position to blow games until they fix their issues, instead of crippling his starting rotation. For the most part, Piniella has stopped using Eyre. Only 6 appearances since April 24th, and half of those were either blowouts (the 9th inning of a 7-1 win or a 10-1 win) or extra innings after most everybody else had pitched.

whaaa, for who? They don't know-here's the quote from Lou: He didn't say anything about who the 5th starter would be though.

I don't believe it. And I am pretty sure it was 2 starts - one for Iowa last season and the one on Thursday. Z has had to leave as many games over the past few years because of cramping. He had to leave the start on Sept 3 for the Cubs last year with cramping as well.

So my guess is that nobody believes Lou that he thinks the problems with cramping will continue if Guzman continues to start? I'm not sure I do either, but it has been at least 3 starts that he has had to leave in either the second half of last year or the first half of this year with cramps. I guess it is reasonable to consider that they may continue.

That at least sounds like they are doing that to keep Guzman healthy, and not because they think he'd be more valuable in the pen. My vote would be for Marshall in the rotation.

Why couldn't we have rode the hot hand for once and stuck with Ohman? I know that Dempster hasn't been getting regular work lately, but when Ohman has struck out 4/5 batters he's face and he typically struggles why not let him go on? The first batter of the 9th (Newhan) was a lefty anyways so it isn't like there was a bad matchup. Ohman could have possibly neutralized the threat of Beltran's LH bat lurking as well...the decision just doesn't make sense to me. Ohman is a guy who is used to throwing 1, maybe 2 batters at a time. He had already thrown 23 pitches yesterday-the chances of him starting to struggle with the high pitch count at the beginning of the 9th was higher than another reliever coming in and being completely ineffective.

You have got to be kidding me. Murton or any other right fielder had no shot at that runner. Watch the play over I think Soriano would have had a good shot at him, but he has an exceptional arm. I don't think any average RF arm gets him there.

A question about NTCs...do they prohibit the front office from trading the player to ANY club at all, or do they just limit the choices of teams that the player can be traded to? A full NTC means that the player has to approve any deal that is made in order for it to go through. Some players, like Scott Eyre, have limited NTC, where they can block trades to up to 10 teams.

Soriano and Lee are not in the prime of their careers. Well, if they are starting to go down from the prime of the careers that just makes it more likely that whatever group comes in will want to play for next year. Changes will have to be made though. I fear that they may not even be able to be made this offseason, because if the Cubs don't go up for sale until the season ends the sale might not be completed until it's too late to make changes for 2008.

They might want a fresh start, but what you're proposing is firing every coach in the system, plus a few assorted others. No ownership group could possibly hire a GM who could do that in a single season, and only maybe in 2-3 seasons. There's simply no way to have a good chance to find, interview and hire that many people while at the same time trying to get done the business of the ML offseason. Meh. I think it can be done, and I'm not sure what real business there is to have at this coming offseason. This team is beyond more than one or two offseasons worth of tweaks. With the players the Cubs have right now in the prime of their careers (Lee, Ramirez, Soriano are 3 examples) I'm not sure you're going to find an ownership group out there that will want that. They will either treat it as a business, which means they will cut costs and the team will suffer greatly, or they will want to take advantage and try to win now and throw more money at the problem. When you consider that those 3 have NTC and probably aren't going anywhere, a new ownership group that actually cares is not going to try to play for 2009 or 2010, even if it is the best long-term solution.

Player development? Yes. Scouting? No. Why should anyone be exempt for a massive, organization-wide failure to develop ML talent? Because Wilken and his scouts just came in last year. And Wilken has one of the best track records in the game. Okay, everyone who arrived with Wilken can stay. Everyone who was here pre Wilken (including Oneri Flieta) should be axed. I'd be fine with Wilken and his people staying and EVERYBODY else going. But I don't see it happening that cleanly. I just hope the Hendry/Hughes types are gone first and foremost. Why wouldn't new ownership want a fresh start? It's not like the guys here have any real positive track record to speak of. I want everyone gone. Everyone. This is a rudderless ship with no real plan to find direction. They might want a fresh start, but what you're proposing is firing every coach in the system, plus a few assorted others. No ownership group could possibly hire a GM who could do that in a single season, and only maybe in 2-3 seasons. There's simply no way to have a good chance to find, interview and hire that many people while at the same time trying to get done the business of the ML offseason.

Because they brought him in to face Shawn Green, who was 2 for 22 against Scott Eyre, then they threw in David Wright after they brought him in, who is David Wright Did Lou forget that Wright was on the bench? It pretty much came down to Eyre facing Wright/ Dempster facing Green....Wright is a good amount better than Green, Dempster is a decent amount better than Eyre. Green is 9 for 21 against Dempster Eyre is 1 for 3 against Wright Dempster couldn't get his pitches located at all-letting him stay in to face Green would have been worse. There were just no good options at that point.

Guzman 5 IP, 1 ER, left the game after straining his hamstring while stepping out of the batter's box on a foul ball, simply looked precautionary since he finished the at-bat Pagan 2 run HR Ramirez 2 run HR

It's pretty variable, but the Cubs lineups usually come in pretty late unless they are heard over the radio-about 40 to 55 minutes before gametime usually.

The NFL salary system is the best in sports, by an extremely wide margin. It's not very often that guys pull this with 3 years remaining on a deal. Occasionally you'll get a former superstar like Ray Lewis who is trying to negotiate one last signing bonus early. If you're an NFL owner yes. It's the easiest sport to make huge up front money as a rookie. No other sports allows you to make as much money as soon as they do. The best players get paid the most. It's the fairest system for all. Baseball requires 3 years of service at minimum wage before you even sniff arbitration, and 6 years before free agency. NBA has slotted contracts that don't stack up to NFL contracts, and then it's filled with a bunch of guys making a ton of guaranteed money who aren't any good. Every sports fan complains about athletes who get paid a lot when they aren't any good anymore, yet the NFL actually has a system that takes care of that problem and people pretend it's unfair to the player. Your first paragraph says most of it. The top of the draft NFL players make a ton of money, and most of them don't deserve it. These players at the top of the draft are making the same money or sometimes better money than the superstars of the league, and they haven't proven a thing. So instead of getting a bunch of veterans making money they don't deserve, you have a bunch of players in their first 3-4 years in the league making money that they often fail to live up to. The NBA rewards rookies fairly, and then lets the teams decide after a proper evaluation period (3-4 years) how much they want to pay them. They also can keep accurate salary cap info and don't have all this GM as accountant business where money is deferred everywhere and nobody ever knows for sure how much money their team has left. One more thing-productive players who are on the downside of their career and are fan favorites have to be cut for cap reasons-the NBA is much more fair on that by allowing you to keep your players above the cap, but simply not allowing you to sign any new players beyond certain exceptions. I like the NFL system, but I don't think it's the best, and it definitely has its issues.

I think it has to do with the Palace being occupied on Sunday. IIRC, there's a WNBA game scheduled. Gee, what should take priority?? EDIT - Concert Sunday, WNBA Saturday Yeah, that's not a big surprise. While the playoffs would take priority if scheduling all 3 of those together, the arena already scheduled the other two, and to cancel them or move them would be a big headache for them-so the arena isn't going to want to do that without a big fight. what doesn't make sense is the NBA not scheduling their entire playoff schedule into every arena ahead of time That wouldn't work. To beat events like this, the NBA would have had to block out time on every arena months ago. They wouldn't have known who had HCA or who would even be in the playoffs-so they would have to block out just about every day from an arena for a 1 1/2 month period (even if they know the dates the playoffs start, they have no idea if the team will host game 1/2 or games 3/4, and then the second round simply starts when the first round ends, so that is variable as well). The arenas would never allow that much of the year to be blocked out for only the NBA-they make too much money from too many other things.

I think it has to do with the Palace being occupied on Sunday. IIRC, there's a WNBA game scheduled. Gee, what should take priority?? EDIT - Concert Sunday, WNBA Saturday Yeah, that's not a big surprise. While the playoffs would take priority if scheduling all 3 of those together, the arena already scheduled the other two, and to cancel them or move them would be a big headache for them-so the arena isn't going to want to do that without a big fight.

Shouldn't it be 3 earned runs? I mean, the first error was Samardzija's.

Anybody listening to Pat and Ron? This has been quite a discussion this inning.

if number of games aren't equal, shouldn't we compare rate stats like walks per IP? You quoted the post I made a couple weeks ago-in my most recent one on the last page, I made it walks per game for both the batters and the pichters to try to compensate for the difference in games played.

I hear that not getting owned by a bottom tier starter is cool. Too bad the Cubs never seem to get the memo before game time. Somehow, Sosa is on a huge roll right now. This is his 3rd very good start (the first two were against the Diamondbacks and Brewers). At least they each scored 2 off of him though-this is ridiculous.

Actually, no. Kevin Kouzmanaff-.155/.211/.247 in 97 AB's.

It's very confusing-it's almost like the player who played for the Cubs in April got replaced. Around the start of May, both his offense and his defense started to get a lot better. You're right, overall so far he has been a middle of the road NL shortstop. I just have no idea if June's version is going to be closer to the April version or the May version, as I could easily see both happening.

That's ok-people can root for my 2 fantasy league pitchers tonight-Cole Hamels and Rich Hill :D