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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

This isn't the first time that this has happened in a big series-that's why I'm not sure the rule will be changed. I was trying to remember when this happened to the Pacers-when it did, I remember thinking it was absolutely ridiculous. I finally found it-in 1998, the Pacers were playing the Bulls in the ECF. It was game 4, and there was some shoving going on. Rose stood up, took 1 step, and immediately turned around and sat right back down. He was suspended for game 5, which the Pacers lost, and the Pacers lost the series in 7 games. The NBA didn't seem to care about changing their rules then, so I don't see any reason why they would know.

Any teams out there looking for a has-been/also-ran SS? I doubt they are trading Izturis. If he keeps up his current season numbers, they'll keep him. If he drops, he'll become untradable. BTW, SS's who Izturis has had a better offensive season then: Khalil Greene Jack Wilson Julio Lugo Bobby Crosby Yuniesky Betancourt Troy Tulowitski Jason Bartlett Tony Pena Jr. Michael Young Stephen Drew Felipe Lopez Omar Vizquel David Eckstein Adam Everett Royce Clayton John McDonald Alfredo Amezaga Alberto Callaspo All of these players are worse with 70 AB's or more. While the Cubs have a little bit of a black hole, so do a lot of other teams. I'm sure Izturis would have some value-I just don't think the Cubs are interested in trading him. The only way they make a deal is if they can get one of the top 5-6 SS's someway at the deadline.

PECOTA actually projected him as a more valuable second baseman this year than either Todd Walker or Jerry Hairston. PECOTA's credibility is falling if that is the case. Looks like PECOTA could be right on the money. That post was made last year. Patterson had a worse OPS in AA than Walker had in the majors-I think it's safe to say that PECOTA was well off on that prediction last year, even with Patterson's hot 61 at-bats at AAA at the end of the year.

thanks for the info Bruce. As always, it is much appreciated.

Bears get their second guy into the fold today-5th round pick Kevin Payne. 4 years, 1.815 million with possibility of incentives: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2872414

Actually, the Cubs are one of the best in the league with RISP-that's not the problem this year. Even if they are bad at making productive outs (which I don't doubt they are from watching this team) that still wouldn't take them any worse than middle of the league overall in getting runners home.

Why? Gerald Perry currently has us at 2nd in batting and, more importantly, 4th in OBP in the NL. This is a big improvement. Yeah-while I think Perry has a little more work to do still, to take the offense from last year and have them above average in runs, 4th in OBP, and on pace to draw their most walks since 2002-there's nothing to fire somebody in their 2nd month on the job with. Now-if he could just figure out how to increase the walk rate a little more, and get some of the home run hitters to hit a few more (Soriano/Lee/Jones especially are all well down on their home run totals) then this offense could really soar.

It is true-they are 4th in the NL right now.

Look at the number of games played-the Cubs are 6th in runs per game, which matches up with their 6th in OPS. They aren't all that far behind 3rd though-a good week and they could be there in runs/game.

Yes, I did actually-in fact, it was just last Saturday in Philadelphia. When, I was there, but don't recall. Could have been in the beer line. It was during the 6 run 7th. It was the last batter Ohman faced in Utley-he hit a double to the right field corner, and Rowand had stopped at 3rd but Murton's throw sailed over the cutoff man into no-man's land in the middle of the infield and Rowand scored. Murton was charged with an error on the play.

Thanks for the link-it reminds me of the grand slam hit by Aramis against Willis in the NLCS. I think it was the same type of hit anyway, but that was the first thing I thought of.

Yes, I did actually-in fact, it was just last Saturday in Philadelphia. Murton's arm is not that big of a deal in RF though-right now he's hurting us with his routes out there and his range. His routes should improve with more practice, and his defensive problems at the moment should not cut into his playing time, especially when the other option is at best average himself in Cliff Floyd.

And by getting rid of all the league minimum guys you'd do what? Go with a 28 man 40 man roster? He's taking the league minimum guys away from the total. Basically, he's saying that if you take Wood away (his number-4 million) and - his replacement Marmol's salary (400 K) you get 3.6 million to put towards a SS.