UMFan83

What's entertaining about today? We finally scored at least a few runs, and the pitching finally gave up a few today. Both were bound to happen eventually, but of course in typical Cub fashion they happened in the same game. I would have been more interested in seeing his comments if we lost another 2-1 extra innings game today.

I'm with you. I'm not all for booing players for poor performance. But poor effort and not even paying attention absolutely deserves it. You guys think Milton will support Hendry when he gets fired after the season? I mean, he's going to be a major reason in Jim getting fired. Hendry isn't nor does he deserved to be fired. I agree he isnt getting fired, but Id like to know why he doesnt deserve to be fired if this season keeps going the way it is. I think it has to do with the 4 guaranteed years after this one that Hendry is due based on the extension he signed last offseason more than anything. If you wanted Hendry to get fired your best chance was last year, and he ended up having the best year of his career at the GM position.

Loaded with 0 outs. Too bad the Cubs can't hit for the Twins here. Bob is ripping on the Cubs for being careless in the field.

The player they get doesn't have to match Hendry's salary. Given the state of the Trib and also of the Cubs team, I wouldn't be surprised if Hendry was encouraged to drop some payroll if at all possible. I can't really think of many more players that have both value and a tradable contract on the Cubs. you still haven't answered the question. where are we going to put a bat? 2B is the only place we can really upgrade, and like i said, i don't see any potentially avilable 2B that would be worth giving up our best starting pitcher (this season) for. people keep talking aobut wanting to get a bat, but they never say where he's going to play. we're locked in at every position but second base, shortstop, and catcher..... and we're not going to find upgrades at shortstop or catcher. Second base, third base, right field. It doesn't have to be a guaranteed starter. If you can find a player who can play 3B until Rammy is back and RF when Bradley is hurt, needs days off, or is ineffective, that's a player to look for. Also any player to avoid Miles or Freel to be in the lineup, or Font vs. Lefties is fine by me. I more than realize your point is that the Cubs are paying superstar money to fill every position but 2b, 3b and C. We need to give the offense a boost wherever we can get it. Taking Miles, Freel or Font vs. LHP and replacing with someone even mediocre to the team. Anything to avoid Fontenot, Hill, Miles and Blanco being the mainstays at 6-8 in the lineup everyday. Will it solve all of our offensive problems? No. Bottom line our big money hitters need to improve in order for this season to have any meaning. But that doesn't mean there aren't still other areas where we can approve.

lol That comment is a bit outlandish, but he's up there amongst the best pure hitters in baseball. When you factor power in there then it's a differnet story. Then again, in only 37 games this year he has taken his game to a new level. He already has 12 HRs, only 1 off his career high (in a year he played 140 games). He also has driven in more runs in 37 games (36) than any Cub has driven in this year over 57 games (27). He's been good...very good.

Those are depressing numbers... This team is so uninspiring. Not to bring up the DeRosa word, but I was just looking at his numbers. It's obviously stupid to compare his stats and assume that they would be the same on the Cubs, but for the sake of my drunken stat posting, humor me. If DeRosa was on the Cubs this year he would have... The 3rd highest BA on the team (min. 100 ABs) at .274 The most runs on the team with 40 The most RBIs on the team BY FAR with 42 (Soriano is the Cubs leader at 27!!) The 2nd most HRs on the team with 10 (leader is Soriano with 14...next most is Lee at 7) The 3rd highest OPS on the team (min. 100 ABs) at .797 The 3rd most doubles on the team with 11 The 3rd highest SLG% on the team (min. 100 ABs) with .452 The 3rd highest OBP on the team (min. 100 ABs) with .345 Blah blah blah. I know get over it DeRosa is gone. But its fun to see after a slow start he's putting up pretty good numbers while the majority of our team makes us want to cut ourselves.

The player they get doesn't have to match Hendry's salary. Given the state of the Trib and also of the Cubs team, I wouldn't be surprised if Hendry was encouraged to drop some payroll if at all possible. I can't really think of many more players that have both value and a tradable contract on the Cubs.

I'm just saying Ted Lilly seems to be a very likely player to be traded if you think about it: A) The only way the Cubs improve by trading for a guy that makes any sort of decent money is to include money back in the trade B) Ted Lilly is a free agent after 2010 and is making $12 million this year C) Ted Lilly is having a really fine year and will be very attractive to any team looking to upgrade their starting pitching D) Starting pitching is a position of strength for the Cubs this year. E) The Cubs have been scouting Pedro Martinez, likely meaning they are looking for a backup in case one of their starters is either traded or injured Most of the other decent sized contracts on the Cubs have no trade clauses involved. Lilly has no trade protection, which probably means he can specify teams he doesn't want to be traded to, but the Cubs can trade him elsewhere. I doubt Ted Lilly would list any contenders on teams he didn't want to be traded to.

Take a look at the current Cubs team because it's likely similar to the one we'll be battling with all year, save maybe a few smaller moves. http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/cubs/1619388,CST-SPT-csep12.article Straight from the man in the know. I bet Ted Lilly's name gets floated around quite a bit in July as a piece the Cubs would be willing to trade to bring back a hitter of his salary.

I just read a fun stat....Soriano's average has gone down for 20 consecutive days, meaning that after every game his average was lower than when the day started. He has dropped 44 points to his average overall in those 20 games, and hasn't had a multi hit game. And another fun stat that shouldn't surprise anyone. The Cubs starters had a 0.98 ERA during the 8 game road trip, and the staff as a whole had a 1.58 ERA, yet the Cubs only managed to go 4-4. Wow.

Why? Can he hit? Will he accept a bullpen role? Starting pitcher is the least necessary position to spend our potentially limited resources on. This would make no sense.

Cards won. Well whatever the first place team lost so we don't lose ground today. Positive: starters were awesome this trip and despite the offense continuing to be bad we still had a .500 road trip.

Cards and Brewers lose so this is no big deal. As long as those teams keep losing while we figure out how to hit a baseball we will be fine. And if we never do come around offensively, it was never meant to be. Just wish we'd stop having walkoff losses.

Thank God that didn't burn us.

Did Blanco screw that up or was that just quick base running by Tejada?

With finite resources likely, I think getting a bat is much more important than a "closer". I mean Gregg has only had 12 save opps all year, good for 21st most in MLB. The offense screws us over almost every game.

Screw them, this isn't the AL. If they wanted to win they should have driven their own runs in.

It feels to me like the hitters aren't hitting well at all. If, by chance, somebody is good enough to get a hit, the guy responsible for driving him in is probably going to be less likely to get a hit, since he won't be a good hitter. This is like the 2005/2006 lineup, a couple decent bats, but a whole bunch of bad ones. When the good ones gets on, the bad ones aren't good enough to be counted on. When you run out Hoffpauir, Fontenot, Hill, Blanco and pitcher for 5/9 of your lineup, you are asking for trouble. When you have a not hitting in any situation Bradley in the middle of the order, he's going to leave people on. When you have Theriot, who has done very little against RHP throughout his career, followed by Fukudome against a LHP for like the 5th time this year, and DLee, who stopped being a dependable middle of the order hitting in May of last year, it shouldn't be a surprise if they leave people on base. I buy that except that no one hitter has been consistently good all season and our hitters have taken turns being good. It's just unlucky that we haven't been able to string anybod these hot streaks together at the same time.

The only good thing about this game is that crazy eyes wont be activated until tomorrow.

Most of our offense is pretty much sucking all the time. It doesn't really surprise me that they're sucking in key spots. As truffle pointed out with stats earlier, there is a sizable gap between our hitting stats with no one on base and runners on base. It's not like we are world beaters when there's no one on (somewhere like 15th in MLB) but it's better than 28th with RISP. Point being, they're not very good, so why would they be very good when the situation demands it? They are average when no one is on and anemic when runners are on. There is a sizable gap. If the Cubs were hitting as well with runners on we'd probably be in first place.

Most of our offense is pretty much sucking all the time. It doesn't really surprise me that they're sucking in key spots. As truffle pointed out with stats earlier, there is a sizable gap between our hitting stats with no one on base and runners on base. It's not like we are world beaters when there's no one on (somewhere like 15th in MLB) but it's better than 28th with RISP.

so most people would admit there is no such thing as clutch hitting. If so why are the Cubs so statistically inferior with RISP all season long? Is it just luck? Is Lou changing their approaches once they get runners on? It feels like the hitters are hitting well until a runner gets on third and then all the sudden they are taking strikes down the middle, swinging at balls, not squaring up on pitches, etc. How does this get better, or do we just have to sit back and hope that our luck will turn around?

just to make it worse....3 of the 4 runs the Astros have scored this series have come in innings where they've had runners on 1st and 3rd and 0 outs in the inning.

Haha how unlucky Is what I'd say if we didn't squander chances like this multiple times every game this year.

I feel like the only time I've been coming to game threads lately is when we have a runner on 3rd with less than 2 outs to see how everyone reacts when we blow it.