UMFan83

Yeah...you could amend that to "Who's playing? I'm just here for the beer." Or how about just "What's the score?"

Honestly, as much of a draw the Cubs are, the Boston-Los Angeles matchup has to be a better priority for the networks to get on prime time TV. One of the biggest fan bases against a team that plays in the vicinity of the second largest market in the US. The Cubs are a great draw, but a DBacks team with limited star power and limited fan appeal will not be quite the demand that many are expecting. I wouldn't be surprised to be the 4PM game on Wednesday (2 PM in Arizona)

Awesome, a team full of young players ready to bust out for Dusty to stifle. I propose a Loney for Craig Monroe swap this offseason.

Actually, it would be hard to top that one, if only for proclaiming his pure awesomeness, plus giving a secret shoutout to nsbb.

I am ok with his numbers this year, except the fact that they will never get much better than this, and will probably be worse the majority of his tenure with the Cubs. He is a good guy to have around as long as he isn't the focal point of the offense.

I don't mean to put bad mojo on us, I've just always enjoyed witty humor and witty signs at games. OK, I change my requirements to anything witty.

Imagine if his first MLB hit was in the playoffs LOL

Stephen Drew. Already hate the guy for some reason, and he certainly has breakout superstar potential, so yeah him.

With the Cubs in the playoffs and our best rivals (Cardinals, White Sox, Mets) sitting at home, this is the perfect time to bring some trash talking signs to the game. I just wanted to get your suggestions for best signs to bring to the game, preferably onces that take shots at a rival. I think for now my favorite idea is to reverse a sign that really irked me in 2004. "How is the reception in St. Louis, Cardinals fans?" But to turn around a witty idea in the face of a Cardinals WS Championship and the Cubs futility would not seem as witty. So I am looking for suggestions.

Couple of interesting things in this article: http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/cs-070930cubsgamer,1,4930373.story?coll=cs-home-headlines Are you serious? Theriot sucks at 2nd in the order

Lets do this. The NL is wide open, so lets take it

We just don't think highly of him because he could barely crack our lineup for 3 seasons, and he was cast off by at least one other team before finding a spot in your lineup. Chris24Young, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about this series. Obviously we are all mentally thinking the Cubs are better. I'm sure you are thinking the opposite. On DBacks boards, they are probably saying stuff like 'they only won 85 games...they barely won the central...they had a shot to lock things up really early and got swept by the marlins....their closer is awful....other than the big 3, they have an over the hill former slugger, a of that was benched for 2 months and almost traded, a catcher who cant throw out runners and hits .240, another catcher that was in AAA 3 weeks ago, a SS with a .670 OPS....etc,etc.etc.

These position by position comparisons mean nothing, but I think they are fun to make anyways. 1B: Lee over Jackson 2B: DeRosa over Ojeda SS: Drew over Theriot 3B: Ramirez over Reynolds LF: Soriano over Byrnes CF: Young over Jones RF: Floyd/Murton over Upton C: Soto push Snyder (I know I know, but with such a small sample size its really hard to judge) SP: Webb over Zambrano SP: Lilly over Davis SP: Hill over Hernandez SP: Owings over Marquis 7th inning guy: Marmol over Pena 8th inning guy: Lyon over Howry 9th inning guy: Valverde over Dempster Bench: Ward Kendall Fontenot Murton/Floyd Cedeno Pie over Montero Clark Quentin Cirillo Salazar ???? My prediction: Cubs in 4

How many months of premium are you willing to bet on that? None. I'm not really interested in making bets this postseason, I just want to enjoy the ride. After looking at the Diamondbacks roster and the pitching matchups, how can you not see a sweep? The only game that we might not win is the first one, just because Webb is so good. But with the way Sori, Lee, and Ramirez are hitting, I think we'll take that one too. We should easily win game two with Lilly going against Davis. And Livan Hernandez just isn't a good pitcher at all, so if Rich has his curveball going on Saturday, that should be an easy victory. I could be wrong, maybe it will take four games to win the series, but I think we're going to sweep. The DBacks just aren't that good. Sori, Lee and Ramirez are going to ground out a lot against Webb. They can't really hurt him consistantly. The only way we win game 1 is if we see good Z and we can get a couple of timely grounders that find holes. We beat Webb this year at Wrigley (against Marquis no less!), but watching that game, he was dominating us. We had a lot of dinky hits, for instance Jacque Jones who blooped a opposite field hit on a pitch he was looking to hit to right. Then again, at this point of the season, Mike Fontenot was our third hitter as Ramirez was injured.

But if a team can play 162 games, win 90 of them and have a run differential of -30, why can't they pull off that same magic for 5 games in the playoffs? DBacks record by month: April: 16-11 May: 16-12 June: 14-13 July: 12-13 August: 16-12 September: 16-11 That's pretty consistant baseball. For awhile in June and July they had some big losing and winning streaks, but overall, this is not a team that started out strong and held on with .500 ball, nor is this a team that started off poorly and saved their best baseball until the end. This is a team that played good baseball every month of the season pretty much.

Owings would pitch game 4? Might just be me but he seems better than Davis and Hernandez I read on the DBacks website that is the order that they want to go in. http://arizona.diamondbacks.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070930&content_id=2240908&vkey=news_ari&fext=.jsp&c_id=ari

Just an idea. I guess we could put a gamethread up, but I would like to start discussing now. Just piecing this together, but this looks like their lineup that they have been trotting out: Chris Young, CF - .237 - 32 - 68 Stephen Drew, SS - .240 - 12 - 60 Eric Byrnes, LF - .286 - 21 - 83 Conor Jackson, 1B - .285 - 15 - 60 Mark Reynolds, 3B - .281 - 17 - 62 Chris Snyder, C - .252 - 13 - 47 Justin Upton, RF - .221 - 2 - 11 Augie Ojeda, 2B - .274 - 1 - 11 Yes Augie Ojeda. Cubs catch a huge break having both Orlando Hudson (who in theory makes Brandon Webb that much better) and Chad Tracy out for the series, forcing them to be replaced with Juston Upton (one of the top prospects in baseball but producing like Felix Pie right now) and Augie Ojeda. Pitching matchups: Game 1: Carlos Zambrano vs. Brandon Webb Game 2: Ted Lilly vs. Doug Davis Game 3: Rich Hill vs. Livan Hernandez Game 4: Jason Marquis/Carlos Zambrano (on 3 days) vs. Micah Owings Game 5: Ted Lilly vs. Brandon Webb DBacks pitching matchups confirmed on DBacks website

This is awesome. Playoff baseball tomorrow is looking very likely

What is the playoff order? I had a pretty good run, I am hoping to be on the list of playoff starters! Man I hope Z is on Wednesday

Steve Bartman Also Cardinals and White Sox fans all over

Because we got into the playoffs with Sori batting leadoff haha. 435 feet on that blast.

Nice to see Rich Hill and Z both get until 4 ERA in their last 2 starts. If you include Sean Marshall, 4 of the Cubs 5 starters have ERA's under 4, the exception of course being Jason Marquis

I never got that part of the movie. Why the hell does the Mets player just stand there. Try to dive or get back to the bag you moron. Don't look at the camera resigned to your fate. I guess it helped the fake Cubs, but still.

I wouldn't be surprised if players like Lee and DeRosa are in tomorrow for at least an AB or 2. They don't want to risk injury of course, but it couldn't hurt to get them a couple ABs so that they don't have 4 days off. We'll see though.

Dammit, I was hoping that they'd use Peavy for my fantasy team tomorrow.