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People keep talking about the 1 and 2 run losses, but the Cubs have lost by 3, 4 and 5 runs as well. When you are a bad team with a bad record, your record is going to be bad in just about every split. Actually, not really in this case 1 run/2 run/extra innings (i.e.-close games) Cubs 0-9 All other games Cubs 7-3 The Cubs haven't been getting blown out very much at all. In fact, the last time the Cubs lost a game by 3 or more that didn't go into extra innings (a blowout)-was the first Sunday of the season, game #6.

Obviously St. Louis found it an acceptable situation-they sent him up to the plate 9 times in 2005, and 10 in 2006 as a PH.

That #4 pick could be very, very interesting. Trouble is, Angelo has already alluded to the idea that getting a high 1st rounder might cost more in salary than the team is planning on, given they still will need to sign a few high-profile guys soon. Yeah, but you can then trade down from 4. :D Teams have had a ton of trouble trading out of the top 10. That's why I doubt this goes down. I don't see Angelo going for it. May really be tough in a draft like this too, with only 1 "can't miss" player in the draft. If the Raiders pick Johnson #1, it could get interesting. Does a team trade up when there are 2 QBs on the board? I can't see a team trading up too far to take either Russell or Quinn-they are too risky of picks to be worth trading up. BTW raw, it's actually your pick in the mock draft in case you haven't seen.

Why can't it be? If a pitcher hits well enough, they should be considered part of the bench. If you count this year, then 3 out of the last 4 years Marquis has hit .292, .310, and .273. Also between 2004-2006, he was 6-19 as a pinch hitter with 1 2B and 1 3B. With the Cubs roster right now, putting Marquis up there is just as effective as Izturis, Cedeno, Blanco, or Pie. ...which should tell you exactly how much trouble we're in. Marquis is a .225 lifetime hitter, according to the stats I saw last night on screen. That is true, but that's because he went 7 for 73 in his years with Atlanta. Somebody with St. Louis taught him how to hit. In the past 3 1/2 years, he has been a .262 hitter overall. Still not awesome, but pretty good for a back of the bench guy. For pretty much any team, when you get to your 3rd or 4th best bench option, that's about as much as you can hope for.

Why can't it be? If a pitcher hits well enough, they should be considered part of the bench. If you count this year, then 3 out of the last 4 years Marquis has hit .292, .310, and .273. Also between 2004-2006, he was 6-19 as a pinch hitter with 1 2B and 1 3B. With the Cubs roster right now, putting Marquis up there is just as effective as Izturis, Cedeno, Blanco, or Pie.

You don't get it to change-it just does. The majority of the time, it will even out for you-and if it doesn't, then you just become an exception to the rule (which would be terrible). There's no real way you can teach hitting in that situation-you just have to put your best people up there and hope for the best.

For the Cubs though, this hasn't been true a great deal. For example, here are some of the hitters who could have driven in the winning run last night from scoring position-some of them if they could have just hit a sac fly: Soriano Murton Lee Jones DeRosa Cedeno Barrett Marquis The only hitter the Cubs would want up there that didn't get a chance last night was Ramirez-everybody else simply didn't come through. Statistics claim that should even out over the season-so far that hasn't happened. Really? I would think most people feel when Marquis and Cedeno come up in a critical situation it's a letdown waiting to happen. I also feel Murton, DeRosa, and Jones are hitters I would rather not see in RBI situations. They aren't big RBI hitters. Good clubs seem to get guys like ARod, Ortiz, and Pujols up when they really need the dinger. We get Marquis. Does this not concern you? It concerns me only in that people like Cedeno and Marquis only got a chance because 1 of Soriano/Murton (these are two who had a runner on third with less than 2 outs), Lee, DeRosa, or Barrett had done their job. The Cubs only needed 1 of them to come through, and Cedeno and Marquis would never have come to the plate last night. Basically, the team had 6 of its 7 best hitters come up to the plate last night with a chance to win the game. I'm not sure how much more you can ask for then that when wanting the right person to come up in the right situation. Here are the situations 7th-2nd and 3rd, none out-Soriano/Murton/Lee all made outs 8th-1st and 2nd, 1 out-Derosa and Barrett made outs.

Why not! You might as well... Why not? Because they are likely to only have around 30-35 million to sign people next year. Z and Barrett have to be the two highest priorities, along with figuring out what to do about SS. Also, Floyd and Ward will need to be replaced (not big costs, but still). That extra 3 million that the team is paying Prior could make a difference in that. I'm not saying that they necessarily have to not sign Prior-but they simply can't pencil him in on the salary books for another season either without considering if it's worth it, and depending on the surgery Prior might not be worth it at that point.

the cubs are 4th in the nl in ba w/ risp. To be fair, that has mostly been in blowout games. They are dead last in BA in the close and late category with a .198 average, along with being third to last in OBP and dead last in SLG in that category (all of those are ranks in the whole major leagues- (131 AB's)). The team is simply hitting horribly at the end of close games-since we know that should even out, that gives quite a sense for optimism that some of those games will start going the Cubs way.

The question becomes-if he is out all of 2007, is he worth 3-4 million dollars? At some point, you have to treat it as if you were signing a reclamation project as a FA-would you give Prior that much to sign him as a free agent? Before 2007, it was pretty clear-cut-there were enough reasons for optimism for the high reward to clearly be worth the risk. Has the chance for a reward gotten too low for it to be worth it though? That's an interesting question for the Cubs, and I think they will seriously think about non-tendering him this offseason.

For the Cubs though, this hasn't been true a great deal. For example, here are some of the hitters who could have driven in the winning run last night from scoring position-some of them if they could have just hit a sac fly: Soriano Murton Lee Jones DeRosa Cedeno Barrett Marquis The only hitter the Cubs would want up there that didn't get a chance last night was Ramirez-everybody else simply didn't come through. Statistics claim that should even out over the season-so far that hasn't happened.

Hendry is responsible for each and every reason why they suck. He's the GM. He puts together the team. You don't diregard the poor record because a couple of the guys he got are doing well. So I guess whichever team wins the world title, no credit should be given to the players or manager, but just to the GM for "putting the team together." Hendry is not totally to blame. Yes, this is a flawed roster, and for that he incurs blame. Lou incurs blame for a few questionable decisions (none of them last night IMO) and the fact that he told Hendry repeatedly to not bring anyone else in. The players get blame for under performing what people like Hendry or everybody else would expect of them. There's too much blame here to put it on one person.

I've seen about 10 mock drafts, and only in 2 of them was he picked in the first 3 rounds. I was planning to take him with my next pick though as he's absolutely perfect for the Colt's system being so short.

If I remember right, that's why the Cubs are on CSN+ anyway, because the Bulls bumped them there-the Cubs were originally supposed to be on the channel the Bulls are going to be on tonight. the Cubs were supposed to be on TNT? I believe now that the Bulls game is also being shown on CSN. That pushes the Cubs back to CSN+, and the White Sox back to CSN plus 2.

If I remember right, that's why the Cubs are on CSN+ anyway, because the Bulls bumped them there-the Cubs were originally supposed to be on the channel the Bulls are going to be on tonight.

Our ace is a basket case who still can't meltdown even when he's leading by 3 or more runs. That's not even close to being very good. I know everyone loves heaping on the bullpen right now, but it's not like it's a disaster. The main weakness is our sleepy offense. Some guys are eventually going to break out because of their history (Soriano in a big way, Jacque in a less big way), but Lee's lack of power is worrisome given his injury last year. I know he's got a bunch of double so far, but he hasn't had anything slapped down by the wind moreso than a guy like DeRosa. Maybe this is just the current variation of his old slow starts...I hope so. Even if it is, Zambrano needs to be traded to pump up the offense ASAP before he flakes out even more. Our offense has been just fine though lately-here are the scores from the last 8 games: 12, 3, 6, 3, 1, 6, 9, 4-avg-5.5 runs per game. The offense has been fine-not great, but just fine. The problem is that when the offense is good, the pitching fails-and when the pitching is good, the offense is terrible. It's just a matter of putting it together in the same games. A team that is 0-10 when the lead is 2 or 1 runs does not have an offense that's doing fine. That's pathetic. It's 0-8 actually, and that includes games like an 8-6 loss and a 6-5 loss, along with last night's loss 5-4, not to mention the extra inning loss the other day 12-9. The first 3 games had Z on the mound-the team's offense is not responsible for at least 3 of those games, and possibly all 4.

Our ace is a basket case who still can't meltdown even when he's leading by 3 or more runs. That's not even close to being very good. I know everyone loves heaping on the bullpen right now, but it's not like it's a disaster. The main weakness is our sleepy offense. Some guys are eventually going to break out because of their history (Soriano in a big way, Jacque in a less big way), but Lee's lack of power is worrisome given his injury last year. I know he's got a bunch of double so far, but he hasn't had anything slapped down by the wind moreso than a guy like DeRosa. Maybe this is just the current variation of his old slow starts...I hope so. Even if it is, Zambrano needs to be traded to pump up the offense ASAP before he flakes out even more. Our offense has been just fine though lately-here are the scores from the last 8 games: 12, 3, 6, 3, 1, 6, 9, 4-avg-5.5 runs per game. The offense has been fine-not great, but just fine. The problem is that when the offense is good, the pitching fails-and when the pitching is good, the offense is terrible. It's just a matter of putting it together in the same games. What you've just described is a losing baseball team. Every team in the league that sucks will tell you "we just can't get both going at the same time." We've gone through this many other years, too. It's the same old story. If we don't rectify this by May, then we are finished. We're already in an ever-deepening hole that will be difficult to climb out of. Yes, but most of the teams who would say that aren't in the top half of the league in both pitching and offense like the Cubs are.

Our ace is a basket case who still can't meltdown even when he's leading by 3 or more runs. That's not even close to being very good. I know everyone loves heaping on the bullpen right now, but it's not like it's a disaster. The main weakness is our sleepy offense. Some guys are eventually going to break out because of their history (Soriano in a big way, Jacque in a less big way), but Lee's lack of power is worrisome given his injury last year. I know he's got a bunch of double so far, but he hasn't had anything slapped down by the wind moreso than a guy like DeRosa. Maybe this is just the current variation of his old slow starts...I hope so. Even if it is, Zambrano needs to be traded to pump up the offense ASAP before he flakes out even more. Our offense has been just fine though lately-here are the scores from the last 8 games: 12, 3, 6, 3, 1, 6, 9, 4-avg-5.5 runs per game. The offense has been fine-not great, but just fine. The problem is that when the offense is good, the pitching fails-and when the pitching is good, the offense is terrible. It's just a matter of putting it together in the same games.

Yup, by ERA the team bullpen is 3rd out of 6th in the division, 7th out of 16 in the NL, and 13th out of 30 in the league. So it has been very average so far. If Howry can pitch like he did last night and Ohman continue to be used against left-handers like he was last night, I think the Cubs can bump those league rankings up more. The only question then is what to do with Eyre-I'd like to see him get those mop-up innings that Ohman was getting for a couple of weeks. I think Eyre can be pretty effective once he finds it, but right now he shouldn't be given any serious work until he does. I also think the bullpen will look better when they don't have to go for so long of a stretch in these ballgames. That's 3 extra inning games in a week, and if the Cubs don't have to use their bullpen as much in close games then their effective relievers right now don't have to be unavailable for half the games because they had to pitch multiple innings the previous day.

From looking over the matchups, it looks like the best outfield tonight would be Soriano/Pie/Jones.

Well, the Cubs had plenty of baserunners in this game-17 to be exact. Just about everyone failed to execute in a key situation late in the game. Soriano and Murton couldn't drive a run home from 3rd with less than 2 outs. Lee couldn't get a 2 out hit in that same inning. DeRosa and Barrett couldn't get it done in the 8th. Cedeno couldn't get it done in the 10th. Soriano and Marquis in the 11th. Jones and DeRosa in the 12th. Can't really blame the bullpen as a whole on this one-6 2/3 of 3 run ball. That may not be great, but it's certainly not terrible either. Eyre was bad again, as he has been since last August. Cherry had a first outing that he'd like to forget. Ohman did great getting his two outs, Wuertz had his customary flawless inning, Howry was good in his inning and a third, Dempster got through with little trouble in his 2. I'm not sure Lou really over-managed here. Pie pinch-hitting for the pitcher in the 7th was pretty obvious. At the time, Murton coming in for Floyd against a left-hander with runners on 2nd and 3rd and 1 out was a good move, as the team looked to put insurance runs on the board and ice the game. Similarly, Blanco had to be taken down for a pinch-hitter with 2 on and 1 out in a tie game in the 8th. Then it made sense to take Izturis down as well. Once Izturis was pinch hit for, Cedeno pinch-ran for Ward, and Cedeno would have had to come in for Izturis after the inning anyway. The only person he could have really saved was Theriot, and even that is a debatable situation.

I was thinking that too, but then I realized that they do not want to face Lee in this inning if they can help it.

Ronny has hit the ball hard, he's got to be due some time soon. I don't really care about him being due...I care about winning...Riot would have been nicer to have there...Hell...Marquis might have been better. Theriot was used in the 9th, and if you use Marquis and he gets an out-if DeRosa slides to SS, who plays second?

I guess I don't understand-the bench was used almost exactly as people have been calling for. Murton was put in when a left-hander faced Floyd with 2 runners in scoring position in the 7th. Two pinch-hitters hit for the pitcher, and two more did when there were 2 runners on in the 8th inning of a tie game and Blanco and Izturis were at the plate. So the only one that was even questionable was putting in Cedeno to pinch-run, and yet Lou is criticized for using too much of his bench. So which situation would you not have used a pinch-hitter?

The team doesn't even have 12 pitchers up. They do need 7 relievers if the game goes into extra innings. Besides, Marquis is just as good as many pinch-hitters on the benches of many teams anyway.