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Pierre was 3 off the major league top 10 entering today-should get it in the next few days I bet.

Neifi's been confused by his bat a lot lately. Well, not this month. This is Neifi's I'm going to hit pretty well one month. He was hitting .333 this month starting today's play with a .500 slugging percentage.

Mabry has been exceptionally patient this month-27th PA, and that's his 8th BB of the month.

That's scary when I look at Neifi in the 2 spot and say that with this lineup, that's where he should be. Well, he also is hitting well this month-well, at least better than half the people in our lineup today. In short, I like the order-just not the people in the lineup today.

yes... thanks for summing up what I said.With the way this team is built 2007 is not going to be great either. I think they should blow this puppy up at all levels of management and make a real run at 2009. Most of us aren't willing to wait another 3 years. With the payroll the Tribune is supplying the team, there is absolutely no excuse to not be in contention every year. Yup-there is no reason this team cannot be good next year-we have a good core of players-we just need to build around them-another productive bat or 2 in the lineup, a #2 starter, and a better bench would do nicely into pushing us back into having a pretty good chance to contend next year.

I also think this is mostly true of the Cubs style of player in general. I think players who like to attack the first good pitch they see go into a slump they lose that confidence and start to take a few pitches. I'm guessing their strikeout rate will also go up, but thier walk rate does too as they get deeper into counts. Jacque Jones is a perfect example of this. When he is going right, he is hitting one of the first 3 pitches. When he goes deep into the count, he really begins to struggle. I think Jones might be one player who might be better under the Cubs philosophy. If you look at his career numbers, you notice that his walks go way up when his average goes down, especially in 2004 and 2005. Part of this might be attributed to pitchers pitching around him, but I think part of it is due to Jones taking more pitches early in the count. Finally, look at it this way when you have a player like Jones. If you are deep in the count, you are likely to throw him a pitch low and inside to try to get him to strike himself out. He usually will chase it, but he won't always and that will increase his walk total. When he is hitting well, he has already put a strike into play earlier in the count.

The reason is quite simple - we are the worst organization in professional sports. COUGHSNEWYORKKNICKSCOUGHS.... Cubs, in a landslide. Here's the difference why the Knicks are definitely worse. At least the Cubs have the chance to be better in the next couple of years. The Knicks can't for several reasons. 1) They easily have the highest payroll in the league, and yet it is filled with all of the same type of player-either shoot first point guards or too small forwards-these players are all signed for at least 3 or 4 years down the road. 2) They make the most ridiculous trades ever-they traded for Eddy Curry, and basically gave away the #2 pick in this draft for him, and probably a top 5 pick in next year's draft-so they can't even get better with their draft picks because they trade them away for too small forwards or shoot first point guards with bad contracts. 3) They just bought out Larry Brown for 40 million dollars-and they appointed Thomas as coach in his place. Even without the previous two, this point would make them a serious contender for worst franchise in sports.

Ramirez tripled? At home? Did somebody fall down or dive for the ball?

For those watching the game: is Marmol anywhere close on most of these pitches? Or is he missing badly?

Please no need to bring up Patterson. As was the case earlier, only relevant comparisons are allowed. :P See previous posts. Except that Patterson was traded to bring in Pierre. As TT pointed out, Hill and Marmol aren't competing for the same spot. They kind of are: next year it will likely be Z, Prior, FA Pitcher, Marshall, and the better of Hill/Marmol. What relevance that has I don't know, but I think they are both competing for the #5 slot.

I hope Cedeno can get it together quickly. His line for July before that at-bat- .138/.162/.154-for a .316 OPS-ouch. I just hope he isn't destroying any confidence he has.

Can someone describe what happened for those who can't see the game?

Marmol seems to have lost it..8 straight balls to the 8 and 9 hitter is not good. Let's hope he can get it back and salvage this inning.

Jones with a leadoff single, but a Pagan DP ends the inning. 0-0 heading to the third.

Double by Edmonds, but Marmol gets out of it striking out the side. 4 K's so far over 2 innings by Marmol.

For those who are actually looking at the game thread for their only updates, there is one out in the second. The Cardinals went down 1-2-3 in the first, the Cubs squandered a leadoff double by Pierre. Still scoreless.

I wouldn't bet on it. How many players in the Hendry era have received 5 year contracts (or longer)? He was willing to go five years to get Furcal. Luckily the Dodgers saved us on that one. Furcal would have been a huge upgrade over Cedeno. There is absolutely NO WAY that Furcal is worth the $13M the Dodgers are paying him. The only substantial upside to him versus Cedeno is the additional 20 stolen bases. Plus Furcal has a bad glove. Even with Cedeno's inexperience, he has less errors than Furcal (16 vs. 20). So his ability to get on base frequently is of no value? I would take a .346 OBP out of the SS position any day of the week. Nobody said he was worth the $13M he is getting paid, but he would have been a lot better option over Cedeno. Quite franklyI don't understand why anyone would be so concerned over the payroll, when Hendry had more money to spend this year, he just chose not to spend it. Would you rather have $10-15 M going to the Tribune company's pocketbook or a Major League SS? To me its a no brainer. Now he has the money to spend this next offseason though. If we signed Furcal, we'd have substantially less money to upgrade other positions. Sure, I'd rather have had Furcal over Cedeno-this year. I still would have had to have Furcal next year though, and then it would be hard to get both a big bat in the outfield and a starting pitcher. The Cubs have the money, and Hendry has a payroll number, but it's not unlimited-and giving Furcal 13 million really hurts us in future years.

Interesting indeed! Well as other poster said we needed give Hill the lead so he can relax. Well the cubs did and the next inning Hill gave it back. So much for that theory... What a mornic post. But one of many unfortunately. I so wish NSBB was around when Maddux or Grace were breaking in the bigs. Not everyone is Lirano. That's true, but I think these people realize that. They are not complaining about Marshall even though his ERA is right around 5 for the year, which is close to where Maddux was his first year (5.61 to be exact). The problem is not only Hill's stats, but how he looks on the mound. He is walking everyone, and people are hitting the ball hard most of the time when he gets it in the zone. He will have to have a great start next time out just to get his WHIP down to 2. I want him to start for the rest of the year, because seeing what he has is still the best thing for his team. He may surprise us-I am willing to wait until then to make a more definitive evaulation, but he's going to have to show more then he is right now-some more innings like the 1st inning last night would go a long way towards that. Hopefully we get a chance to see what he does in August and September.

The problem with that is both Choi and Hill were given time with their next franchises, and they didn't develop with them. Would they have done so in Chicago? It's impossible to tell-but a good indicator is if they developed at their new franchise, and they didn't. I do understand the point of your argument though that we have been really bad at playing young players-but as you said you want Choi and Hill-would you rather have them somewhat productive or not over Ramirez and Lee? Basically, we got value out of those two-just in a different way. This is actually what happens a great deal with the big market teams. Most of their farm system is used up in trades. The problem is, our farm system is getting weaker, and it may get to the point where we can't even use them in trades for productive players anymore.

Can anyone tell me if they see a small difference in JP's swing from the beginning of the year? He couldn't hit the ball 3 feet in the air for a while, and now he is actually getting the ball up-I'm just wondering if he might have changed anything to make that happen.

Can you give me an idea about what young talent has slipped out during Dusty's tenure? Yes, we haven't had any youngsters develop, that's for sure. The only ones I can really remember losing are guys like Bobby Hill, Hee Sop Choi, Francis Beltran, Brendan Harris, and others-and none of them have really developed into anything. So I think it has simply been that the farm system was simply not nearly as good as advertised.

I think the Rolen at bat was huge then, and in fact during the at bat I was thinking that this is the difference between the two leagues. When Hill gets ahead of Triple A hitters, he can throw the curve, and they strike out. Rolen fouled off some nice pitches from Hill (a couple bad pitches too)-and Hill couldn't keep throwing strikes and walked him. The good thing is, something like this might get better as Hill learns what pitches can get major leaguers out without having to strike everyone out.

What the hell was that? Either he got the worst jump ever or he gave up on that way too soon. Get out of the inning, Rich. Coupled with the fact that Murton completely misjudged Luna's ball. That was bad too, but I don't think it cost the Cubs anything since Edmonds would have scored no matter how Murton fielded the ball. True, but neither did Pierre's..even if he had run full tilt he would still have been 8-10 feet short of that ball.

The scary thing is, I was looking at this lineup and realize that this is what we are reduced to. This lineup is actually our best chance to win tonight, and that's scary. I don't want Neifi playing a bunch over the last two months (because we don't need to win this season-I want to see Theriot and Cedeno in the middle infield) but Cedeno does need to sit down for a couple days and clear his head. Let's just hope that it's only a couple of days and then he can get back in the lineup consistently.

The question is-what is our goal for him the rest of the year? Let's say they get smart and pitch him every 5 days the rest of the season. What numbers does he need to get to in order for us to want to count on him as a starter or reliever next season? The thing I'm worried about is that he pitches, has around a 5 ERA the rest of the season, and then we have the same trouble next season. So for the rest of the season-I hope first that he can either perform really well, and then if he can't do that, at least do us the favor of completely flaming out. I just want it to be clear one way or the other, and then it is a big bonus if he gets it at the major league level.