UMFan83

To his credit though, Soriano has put up a line of .218 .271 .309 (.580 OPS) in 165 postseason ABs lifetime.

Every 'analyst' that also happens to be a former pitcher has said the same thing. Soriano is not a threat against a good pitcher. They throw him breaking pitches until he stops swinging - and everyone knows he isn't going to stop swinging. I've never heard any former pitchers analysts say that Soriano cant hit good pitching. Soriano is just an extremely streaky hitter. When he's going good, he lays off just enough breaking pitches to force a pitcher to throw something in his hitting zone, and Soriano hammers it. Even when Soriano isn't going well, the pitcher will occasionally throw something in the zone to keep him honest. It's just that when he's not hitting well, he either watches it, rolls over it and hit a grounder, or doesn't get full extension and pops it up.

If we don't win tonight, who here thinks we can still win the series? I guess anything is possible when you are starting an above average pitcher every night.

This thread was about postgame comments...did anyone hear any comments? I didn't turn on my TV after I came home from the game. I normally love to watch any baseball, but I couldn't even turn on the Red Sox/Angels game.

If you were a great regular season team, you are a great postseason team. Same rules, same field, same players, same ball. But you are right, being a great team doesn't mean that we aren't probably going home soon. Disagree. Regular season we played 18 vs. Pittsburgh, 18 vs. Cinci, 7 vs. Washington, 7 vs. SD, etc. also plenty of games against a teams 4th and 5th starters, who we likely won't see in this series.

Technically, Z can pitch game 5 on regular rest if needed.

No offense to anyone that posted this but... I'm sick and tired of everyone saying "its ok we have the best team in the NL, we'll come back" You know what having the best record in the NL got us? And extra home game in the playoffs. And we just lost it. It doesn't matter that we scored a lot of runs against mediocre pitching in the regular season, or that Ryan Dempster was able to dominate the Nationals. Right now we have 4 more games against the Dodgers, and we have to go 3-1 in those 4 games or we are going home, and all those other games we played were meaningless. We were a great regular season team, but are we a good postseason team? The jury is still out.

I want both teams to lose tonight in order to make me feel better. Is that possible?

Douchebag Packer homerism? (only kidding)

I refuse to put negative thoughts into this thread even though thats all I'm feeling. WIN. And please crowd, do a little better job of not acting like the season is over than you did today.

Alright guys, I'm leaving for Wrigley. Hope I can bring home a winner!! GO CUBS!!

The Brewers offense hasn't been the least bit intimidating since late August. I'm serious.

I've been nervous for over 2 days. Now with 1:45 before the game, I'm getting strangely confident.

It's been 1795 days since the Cubs have won a playoff game. Let's not make it 1796.

Last year, NSBB was on page 29 when the actual game started. We have a lot of work to do.

This is how the game is going to go. I just played it on MLB 08 the show LAD 011 000 000 2 8 1 CHC 203 000 00X 5 9 1 WP - Dempster (1-0) LP - Lowe (0-1) DODGERS PLAYER AB R H BI BB SO Furcal,SS 4 1 1 0 0 1 Martin,C 4 0 0 0 0 0 Ramirez,LF 3 0 1 0 0 2 Ethier,RF 4 0 3 1 0 0 Loney,1B 4 1 0 0 0 2 Kemp,CF 4 0 1 0 0 0 De Witt,2B 4 0 1 1 0 0 Blake,3B 4 0 1 0 0 0 Lowe,P 2 0 0 0 0 0 Proctor,P 0 0 0 0 0 0 -Kent,PH 1 0 0 0 0 0 Wade,P 0 0 0 0 0 0 2B: Ethier, De Witt HBP: Ramirez GIDP: De Witt E: De Witt PITCHING IP H R ER BB SO Lowe (L, 0-1) 5.0 8 5 5 0 3 Proctor 1.0 0 0 0 0 1 Wade 2.0 1 0 0 0 1 CUBS PLAYER AB R H BI BB SO Soriano,LF 4 1 2 0 0 2 Theriot,SS 4 1 1 1 0 0 Lee,1B 4 1 3 1 0 0 Ramirez,3B 4 1 1 2 0 0 Edmonds,CF 4 0 1 1 0 1 Soto,C 3 0 0 0 0 0 DeRosa,RF 3 0 0 0 0 1 Fontenot,2B 3 0 0 0 0 0 Dempster,P 2 1 1 0 0 0 -Ward,PH 1 0 0 0 0 1 Marmol,P 0 0 0 0 0 0 Wood, P 0 0 0 0 0 0 HR: Ramirez GIDP: Fontenot E: Fontenot PITCHING IP H R ER BB SO Dempster (1-0) 7.0 6 2 2 0 5 Marmol (H) 1.0 1 0 0 0 1 Wood (S) 1.0 1 0 0 0 0

Any word on when he will be leaving injured again?

This thread is full of errors.

I was reading on RealGM that he had the 3rd lowest defensive win shares in the league. But then again, since all he can do is score, he'll be our 6th man, which means he comes in when we need a scoring boost.

Pairs are going to be much tougher to reserve than a single, which is hard enough. It looks like the opportunity may have passed for now, though. UMFan, are you sure? I thought it was email Thursday and on-sale on Friday. I'm an idiot, I thought today WAS Thursday :oops: You're right, Thursday we will be notified

I should probably bring up the fact that NLCS lottery winners will be notified some time today, and the NLCS ticket sale is tomorrow

Why in the world does everyone think Zambrano is starting game 3? Upon reading that article, anyone who picks the Dodgers bench over ours is an idiot. Look at the EQA and VORPs for the respective teams: Dodgers: Pierre .246/1.0 Ardoin .202/-1.2 Kent .259/12.4 Nomar .272/7.3 Berroa .218/-3.7 Ozuna .214/NA Cubs: Fukudome .261/5.6 Johnson .264/12.4 Cedeno .237/2.0 Ward .247/0.1 Blanco .244/3.0 Pie .231/-0.7

What would be the chances that we could sign him in the offseason? Money should be no object. We could move Fukudome if we had to and move Soriano to right. Money will be an object. He'll be 37, and is going to want a 4 year deal for $20 million. He's a butcher in the field, and has been known to play hard only when he feels like it (look at his last full season on Boston). I'm not really in favor of a 41 year old Manny roaming LF, making $20 a year as he apathetically plays out the string in Chicago. But hey, maybe him and Fonzie could be good buddies, they'd have a lot in common being declining overpaid Dominican OFs. I'm probably being too hard on Manny, but I just don't feel like he'd be a good fit here. Maybe 3 years ago when everyone wanted him, but not at this point.

I've been pouring through Manny's game logs to find some sort of stretch where he's been less than awesome since joining the Dodgers. I found a 7 game stretch in late August where he hit .208 .345 .208 .553. So I guess that's positive. But then he immediately follow that up with a line of 636 .652 1.227 1.879 the next 5 games. Folks, Manny is scary.

Yes, this is the first time I'm a nervous wreck for the playoffs. Years past I was just happy to be there... Me too...I was no where near this nervous. I wasn't even nervous like this for the Super Bowl. I think the last time I was this nervous was before Game 7 of the 2003 NLCS. Your right though. Last year, I felt like, being a team that won only 85 games, we were playing with house money, so anything we did was awesome. With the Bears, my expectations were for the Bears to make the Super Bowl, and if they won it, thats awesome. But I had never seen a Bears Super Bowl team in my life (that I could remember, still pretty young in 85), so I was just excited to see the Bears go through Super Bowl week and all that fun stuff.