UMFan83

I've got butterflies in my stomach. I almost went to the game tonight, but I couldn't find any of my friends willing to go for $40 tickets.

Roberts just signed an extension with the O's...he's not going anywhere. Edit: Whoops, beaten

you won't last that long Is that a challenge? you know you're already losing it. you won't make it past the weekend. I've been really good actually. I feel like I have a zen like calm this year. My friends have all been pleasantly surprised. I will surprise you too IMB!

Fontenot has 39 PA's and has a .775 OPS with a .385 OBP(numbers rounded cause I closed the calculator window) Bradley has had 25 PA's. Soto has had 15 PA'S. We haven't even played 10 games yet. I agree. What I said was, people that came into the season worried about regressions for those players haven't seen anything so far to calm their fears. My whole post was based on a premise that its way too early to worry, but these are trends I'm seeing. If the Cubs played these 10 games in July, no one would make a big deal out of any of this.

you won't last that long Is that a challenge?

Take out Marmol and what is the ERA? 7.00? marmol's not on the team anymore????? He definitely is (and if we get to the 8th with a lead sometime we'll even see him at some point). Marmol is not the problem. It's the rest of the bullpen that people think are ineffective. So cubswin wants to see how the rest of the bullpen is throwing so he can get an idea of just how ineffective the pen sans Marmol is.

You can tell Lou is frustrated right now. 5 years ago, today would have been an explosion of Mount Lou.

I was in the LF bleachers and I could tell it was a ball.

Out of curiosity, what are those numbers without Marmol?

I posted this in the game thread, but if the majority of the discussion goes here, than I will put it here as well as it seems to be more postgamy anyways. I am not panicking at all yet,nor should I or anyone be yet after 9 games, but there are some things not to like: -Anyone who was worried about regressions from Soto, Fontenot and/or Bradley has had nothing to squash those thoughts. Fontenot especially is worrysome. If pitchers have figured out a way to get him out, and he can't make the adjustment, we have a major hole in 2B. Fontenot is useless if he's not hitting because he's not a good defender. We'd have to go shopping for a 2B at the deadline, and Hendry would have to take a pie in his face for gambling on the DeRosa trade. -The bullpen was my chief concern coming into the season, and again there is nothing that has been shown to calm my fears. Not one reliever has stepped up and shown that he deserves to be in this pen besides Marmol. It's hard to get to Marmol when the offense isn't producing runs, and the starters arent going deep, and the early part of the pen is blowing games. Until they improve, they shall only be known as the "blowpen" -Lou is really pissing me off with his hit and runs. It has been especially glaring this season because almost, if not everytime he's done this, its failed miserably. We can't keep running into stupid outs. We have a team that is build to walk, and hit for power. Why are we trying to take that extra base? It doesn't make sense. If we were some smallball team that lacked power I would be ok with it. -And the least of my concerns, but still an issue is the lack of situational hitting. I can remember 4 times this year where we had a runner on third and 0 outs and couldn't score. Every team has these issues, but its been quite a glaring problem so far. On the other side of the field, the Cardinals are starting to worry me. They seem to have even more hitters coming out of nowhere to be good this year, and their offense looks really really good overall. Their starters are meh, but at least put together quality starts often, and don't get blown up very often. Their bullpen is their biggest issue, but right now I'm not sure if they are worse than the Cubs pen. I will start to worry if we still look this lacksidasical after 30-40 games.

Well I left the game early because I have some stuff to do around the house that I wanted to get a jumpstart on mostly because the game was a bit depressing. I am not panicking at all yet,nor should I or anyone be yet after 9 games, but there are some things not to like: -Anyone who was worried about regressions from Soto, Fontenot and/or Bradley has had nothing to squash those thoughts. Fontenot especially is worrysome. If pitchers have figured out a way to get him out, and he can't make the adjustment, we have a major hole in 2B. Fontenot is useless if he's not hitting because he's not a good defender. We'd have to go shopping for a 2B at the deadline, and Hendry would have to take a pie in his face for gambling on the DeRosa trade. -The bullpen was my chief concern coming into the season, and again there is nothing that has been shown to calm my fears. Not one reliever has stepped up and shown that he deserves to be in this pen besides Marmol. It's hard to get to Marmol when the offense isn't producing runs, and the starters arent going deep, and the early part of the pen is blowing games. Until they improve, they shall only be known as the "blowpen" -Lou is really pissing me off with his hit and runs. It has been especially glaring this season because almost, if not everytime he's done this, its failed miserably. We can't keep running into stupid outs. We have a team that is build to walk, and hit for power. Why are we trying to take that extra base? It doesn't make sense. If we were some smallball team that lacked power I would be ok with it. -And the least of my concerns, but still an issue is the lack of situational hitting. I can remember 4 times this year where we had a runner on third and 0 outs and couldn't score. Every team has these issues, but its been quite a glaring problem so far. On the other side of the field, the Cardinals are starting to worry me. They seem to have even more hitters coming out of nowhere to be good this year, and their offense looks really really good overall. Their starters are meh, but at least put together quality starts often, and don't get blown up very often. Their bullpen is their biggest issue, but right now I'm not sure if they are worse than the Cubs pen. I will start to worry if we still look this lacksidasical after 30-40 games.

Game 1 - Sat April 18 Chicago at Boston 12:30PM ESPN Game 2 - Mon April 20 Chicago at Boston 7:00PM TNT Game 3 - Thu April 23 Boston at Chicago 8:00PM TNT Game 4 - Sun April 26 Boston at Chicago 1:00PM ABC Game 5 * Tue April 28 Chicago at Boston TBD TBD Game 6 * Thu April 30 Boston at Chicago TBD TBD Game 7 * Sat May 2 Chicago at Boston TBD TNT Wow this sucks... I have tickets to Game 3, and I am flying back to Chicago from the keys at 7:10PM. I am going to have to go straight from the airport to the UC, and if my flight is delayed I'm screwed.

Were still gonna lose without kg. Just in 5 games instead of 4. Celts are still a superior defensve team. Sucks for the celts title defense though. The celtics were 18-8 with out garnett this year with wins over teamsvlike Cleveland, San antonio, and Denver. In the bulls last 26 games, their best stretch of basketball this year, they went 16-10.

I do not feel the same way. Losing to an inferior team like NJ a few yrs ago sucked, but Toronto was a much better team then their record suggests. The fact that they took 3 of 4 from the Bulls this yr should tell you that they played the Bulls very tough this yr. That New Jersey team made the playoffs and even advanced to the second round. How are they worse than this years Toronto team. Oh BTW, the team NJ beat in the first round was none other than Toronto, with many of the same players.

Celtics in 4. The closest game will be Bulls lose by 9. The other 3 will be over before halftime.

You bastard... I would take this offer any day if I got some fore warning... wish I could call in sick tomorrow :( Damn...I think you are starting to get sick. Play along.

Awesome...someone feels the same way as me. I won't go as far as to say I hope they lose the games, but they certainly deserve to and I will probably derive some sort of weird pleasure from seeing them getting slaughtered.

Well, I bought 2 bleacher seats for the 4/16 game awhile back, and for the life of me cannot find someone to take off of work and go with me. So I am going to be looking to get rid of the extra and wanted to offer to NSBB first. Although I would love to give this away, I am currently (still) unemployed, so a token offer would be awesome. If you are interested, you can meet up with me before the game to get the ticket. I live in Lakeview (Southport and Belmont), so if you are coming from the burbs, you can swing by on the way to the park. If you want you can go to the game with me as I will be apparently going alone. But if you have friends that are sitting in the bleachers and want to meet up with them, no biggie I don't mind going solo. I can be fun though, as others on NSBB can vouch.

Yeah but I felt good about winning a game or less likely 2 against Orlando. The Celtics are a miserable matchup for the Bulls. Since the Celtics got KG and Allen, the Bulls have gone 1-6 against Boston. The one win was when KG was out of the lineup and the Bulls were playing their best basketball of the season. The average Bulls-Celtics score since the Big 3 arrived is 107-89 with an average margin of victory being 18 points. And that's regular season Celtics. Wait until we see the "playoff intensity" Celtics. Sure KG might not be 100%, but that might not matter.

Seriously I am so mad about this game. I'm not upset, I'm not sad. I don't get that gutwrenching pain in my stomach like I do after tough losses. I am just plain mad at the Chicago Bulls. They fooled me again with another colossal choke and now their season will be ending shortly.

Someone was saying that Chicago hadn't lost since Friday. Well that streak lasted until today where the Bulls choked away the 6th seed and the much easier playoff matchup, the Cubs got dominated by their ex-teammate while their best pitcher struggled, and the White Sox got 4 hit and lost 9-0 to Detroit. In Chicago sports, when it rains it pours.

Omg, I'm sure Fontenot realizes how dumb this is after the fact but wow...here are all the things he did wrong: -created the first out of the inning at 3rd base -tried to take 3rd base while representing one of the tying runs in the game, but still down by 3 Theres something else he did too but I'm too mad to remember.

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING FONTENOT??!!?

assuming no DPs, expect to see Ramirez hit 9th

Why do we create so many fake rallys in the 9th or does it just seem like that? I feel like this year and last year, we look lifeless and dead while trailing in the 6th, 7th and 8th innings. And then the 9th inning comes around and suddenly we perk up, start going the other way with pitches, working the count better and definitely not slow hit grounders to IFs.