Tuesday Morning Headlines

Let’s start winning again!

get wins and Brewers losses to get that magic number dropping fast. I am very anxious to see how Z pitches tonight.

Rich Harden is here to serve as shutdown ace when it counts the most. With a several game lead in the standings and the fallback option of the NL wildcard clearly being handed to a NL Central team?? Yeah, it makes sense to get Harden (and Zambrano) in the best possible physical shape for a lengthy October baseball run.

I want a refreshed Harden when he goes up against Brendan Webb in game 1 of the playoffs. I want a rested and at peace Zambrano when he faces the Big Unit. I want a continuance of the Ryan Dempster we have seen all season when he faces Danny Haren. And for good measure I want Ted Lilly to be the dagger to the heart of the Arizona D’Backs in the event it is too soon for Harden to go again.

It’s nice to still to be up by 4.5 games after losing three in a row. It’s better to have a three-game skid now than in the playoffs.

Man I’m surprised I haven’t seen the old jumping off the Sears Tower post yet

“I haven’t felt too much strain or anything from throwing the ball.” Someone will over analyze.

I am also excited to see Z pitch tonight, he needs to have a good first inning to ensure he doesn’t have an early anger attack.

Lou Piniella said he expects the club to bring up at least outfielder Felix Pie and pitcher Kevin Hart from Iowa once they’re done with the AAA playoffs.

I’ve heard different. We’ll see.

but i’m ready to see us jump out to a 5-0 lead within the first three innings

what do people think about a six man rotation for the month of Sept. to get our guys a little extra rest?

The Cubs want to be cautious with Harden, and it would probably help Z’s tired arm a little too. Throw marshal out there every sixth day and give all of our starters a little extra rest.

Scoring is so subjective and fielding percentages so closely grouped that errors don’t tell much at all. They should get rid of the official designation of “errors”.

If Sabathia had fielded the ball and threw the runner out he wouldn’t be crying today. Maybe he deliberately fumbled the the ball thinking the scorer will bail him out?

To me the Cubs are (barring injury) as good as their offense is on any given day. When our productive guys are being productive we are the best team in the majors. When D Lee, Edmonds, Soriano, Fukodome hit like they have during this homestand. Well……..we are average. Our pitching is solid, our bullpen is awesome and middle relief doesn’t matter when we are hitting. DeRosa and Rameriz are carrying this team right now with a little Soto help. The rest just aren’t showing up and the results speak for themselves. But we’ll come out of it, I just worry about the timing of these offensive spells, and I worry about D Lee lack of power, Sori’s lack of adjustments and Fukodome’s lack of anything offensively.

…they’d be in first. What a horrible division. Yet I still have nightmares about the D-Backs.

Let’s hope that Sori is having one of his horrible streaks now. If he is hot going into the playoffs, he can almost carry this offense by himself.

I’m not sure what Darth Vader is doing at the game on September 16th against the Brewers, but I hope he brings his light saber and kicks some serious Brewer ass. See for yourself Darth on the Cubs’ schedule! (new window)

Dan

The call ups will help over the next month, add a little life and hopefully some time off.

Disagree on Pie,

He sould be up the minute Iowa wins or gets beat.

September calls up usually involve some SPEED. This team needs some station to station offense, SPEED when the bats cool off like yesterday. It might get them a few games down the stretch. Remember FLUD last year

also, Jason Dubois shoud be looked at, He had a good year big power #’s and I dont see any power righties off the Cubs bench right now. At Iowa 76 games, 29 HR, 74 RBI, 307 Avg. We have seen him in the past, but it cant hurt

Every little bit helps

A couple of days ago I brought up something that I observed while watching Friday’s game. I believe Sue saw the same thing that I did so I know I wasn’t dreaming.
After Harden left the game, the cameras showed him sitting in the dugout. He was rubbing his right arm/shoulder area.
The first thing that popped into my mind was — is something bothering him?
I really do not know and I want to believe that it was nothing at all.
But now we find out that Harden is being held back until next Tuesday against St. Louis.
That’s not 2 days because of a tired arm — that’s 6 extra days. No matter how you cut it, you do not hold back one of your best pitchers just to give him extra rest. It’s not like we are up by a dozen games.
I am not advocating putting him out there if he is not 100% but I believe there is more here than we are being told.

I guess this is my day for medical questions —
After DLee’s day off last week because of back spasms — I just wondered about something.
In several stories, there was mention of these spasms and their reoccurence. Maybe I have not being paying enough attention but until this episode, I did not realize that this was an ongoing problem that flared up on occasion.
Back problems are nothing to be sneezed at — wasn’t that Sosa’s excuse a few years ago?
What really worries me is the fact that DLee does have back problems. Does this in some way explain why he does not seem to be driving the ball like he has in the past?
I just looked at his numbers in August — 4 doubles and 1 home run.
Sure his average was good but even his base hits don’t seem to be the line drive types that he has produced in the past.
A bad back is not a good thing to have when your body is subjected to toroque trying to drive a ball. The back may be the reason that his swing seems so much weaker than it has been.
Personally, I have not seen him drive the ball on a consistent basis — even when making an out. A lot of pop flies, weak grounders, and medium fly outs.
Maybe I am trying too hard to find a reason why DLee seems to look weak at times. By weak, I just mean the lack of that stinging swing that we have become used to seeing.
A good friend of mine mentioned the other day that too often DLee looks as though he isn’t feeling well. Body language?
Just some observations and enough paranoia for now.

As always Al brings a calm to the proceedings with a reasoned posts where elsewhere on the net you see people jumping from the Sears Tower.

I wanted to ask these jumpers how the Bears did in their first 3 games because according to this panic it must be the last week of the season and the Cubs are out of 1st place.

It seems we are all getting injury paranoid and I know I am. Is it because we believe that we are the strongest team in MLB unless some of our guys arms fall off?

Right now the Cubs are 4 1/2 games up. That didn’t seem like too much of a lead to me until I started to actually look at the numbers. I went through the remainig schedule and looked at the series that are left. Here the are with the record that I would guess for each:

Cubs:
2 vs Houston (1-1)
3 at Cincinnati (2-1)
3 at St. Louis (2-1) – they look like they have quit
3 at Houston (1-2) – man are these guys hot.
3 vs Milwaukee (2-1)
3 vs St. Loius (2-1)
4 at NY Mets (1-3)
3 at Milwaukee (1-2)

I think that you will agree that I have been VERY conservative here and erred on the side of predicting more losses than I think that we will actually have. Even so, that shows a 12-12 record for the rest of the year. That puts our final record at 97-65. Doing this would require the Brewers to go 17-8 over their last 25 games to tie. Looking at their schedule, that is certainly possible, but it would require them to play really good baseball over the next month and the Cubs to play rather poorly. If the Cubs can find a way to split the NY series and take two of three from Houston in Houston or take both of these next two games, that pushes the record to 14-10 and 99-63, requiring Milwaukee to go 19-6 to tie. I don’t think that this will happen.

Anyway, I feel a good bit better about our lead now. It is certainly possible that the Cubs shuffle along to the finish at .500 ball, but their play to this point would suggest otherwise. I do think that we will likely win the division pretty handily (i.e. 2 or more games) and will have it sewn up by the last series in Milwaukee.

Knock on wood, but I feel pretty good about where we sit right now.

…Was down in sTL for the Mizzou-Illini game this weekend…Left after watching Thursday and Friday’s heroics, and suffered through yesterday during the ride home. Let’s get ’em tonight!