UMFan83

Toronto is beating Detroit by 20 in the 2nd half. Looks like the Raps are going to be the 8 seed unless the Bulls somehow beat Boston and Charlotte.

Wells is signed for a year less than Soriano I think. That alone would make it worthwhile.

By losing one of the last 2 games, most likely.

It's certainly not traditional "travel" from Milwaukee to Chicago, but Cubs have to have a slight advantage with the Brewers playing on Sunday night baseball and traveling to a day game tomorrow.

Heartbreak weekend for Chicago sports huh sulley? Cubs blow 2 leads in the 7th and 8th innings to lose 2 of 3 to Dusty Baker. Bulls choke multiple times against the worst team in the last 20 years and lose where a win would give them a great shot of making the playoffs (and will probably lose to Toronto in a few mins), and the Hawks lose the #1 seed because of a "skills competition" in San Jose and a OT loss to our arch rivals and hottest and possibly best team in hockey.

If the Hawks and Wings meet again this year, you gotta think the Wings have the huge mental edge having beaten the Hawks 2 times in Chicago since getting healthy and on a role. Hopefully, someone else knocks out the Wings because I don't see the result being any different than last year if we play them.

2 seed time to play Nashville. [expletive] the [expletive] stupid [expletive] wings, if you post here NUN in the next 10 minutes your a pos

I gotta think Phoenix is just about as close to Detroit as Vancouver is. Plus they are both 3 time zones away right now Foley.

So if we win we play Colorado, if we lose we play Nashville.

Well the Wings will have played their last 16 games only losing 1 time in regulation. That's pretty impressive. Wings still have to be the team to beat in this tournament.

1 point away lol

OMG it hit off the left post and crossbar before bouncing out. That is hard to do given how wide open the net was and how close Toews was to the goal.

OMG how did Toews no score there??? He had a wide open yet, and was such a big hole, I put my arms up celebrating a goal that didn't come.

C'mon lets take advantage of this PP and get a W before the end of regulation!

When the Hawks and Wings are both playing well its like poetry on ice.

SOB. 12:50 away from the 2 seed.

Jimmy Howard looks much more confident out there than I saw earlier in the year against the Hawks.

Stat of the first week: The Cubs had 32 hits in the first 6 games of the season. The Cubs opponents scored 30 runs in the first 6 games of the season.

I just can't believe that Soriano's contract isn't even half over yet. Yeesh. Honestly at this point....predict where Soriano is in 4 seasons. What team is he on? (if he is on a team), what position is he playing? What is his role on the team? I'm going to predict that the Cubs in the next 2 seasons find a way to trade him, for either another albatross contract or for a PTBNL while eating a majority (meaning 95-100%) of his contract to an AL team where they try him at DH. I imagine at some point he will fail miserably enough where that team cuts him, and he sits on his ass collecting money from the Cubs.

I could see them not winning more than 75. It wouldn't be a shock to see the offense regress from last year when they weren't that good and it wouldn' be suprising to see the pitching not hold up when you have guys like Gorz and Silva in the rotation. Yeah but I don't know but I feel strangely positive after this first week. The starting pitching was the thing I was worried about most coming into this season, and they've looked good so far. Obviously going by track records, I shouldn't expect Gorz and Silva's starts to be the norm but every time they pitch well the more confidence I get. Besides, the thing I was most excited to see as Wells' performance the other day. The offense has to be better than this. Half the lineup is hitting under .200 and I cannot remember a single extra base hit that wasn't a home run this season, other than Soriano's check swing double (although I'm sure there have been, just can't remember them). They will probably be a slightly below league average offense this season, but that's still better than how they played this week. Plus, if they can just be solid enough to get to July, there is always the possibility of an upgrade. The bullpen worries me, but you gotta hope by the middle of May, we'll have sorted out roles a little better, and hopefully someone in there can be a reliable 8th inning guy. If not, we have some other arms in the minors that could be worth a try. I don't know, after seeing how close we could easily be 5-1, it's hard to be too pessimistic about the team after the first week. It's definitely distressing to see us 2-4, but there will be weeks where we'll get lucky and have a better week than we've played too. If we can get 2 against Milwaukee, we should be able to at least get 2 against horrible Houston, and we'll be back to .500 a week from today.

Yay, Cubs fans just turning into this game just got a nice treat. Tied 1-1.

Cubs starting pitchers only gave up 4 ER this series and we lost 2 of 3 how flukey is that?

Looking at the positives from the first week, the starting pitching, save opening day, has been northing short of spectacular. The offense has underperformed. I expect it to still be below average but much better than what we've seen so far. We probably are going to win more than 75 games this year. How much more has yet to be decided. More likely closer to 80 wins than 90, but nothing is out of the realm of possibility yet.

The actual moral of that story is that if you truly have a pathetic offense the other two are pretty redundant. the great debate here is which one is worse ourr offense in late innings or our BP. Flip a coin I don't know but 18 runs in 6 games doesn't typically cut it. You're looking at a 486 run season if that continued, which it won't.

But c'mon he looked so good in 10 innings of meaningless baseball last September. Of course either him or the lefty that can't get lefties out with the 1.40 career WHIP should be the 8th inning guy.