When, in the third inning last night, Carlos Zambrano stalked around the mound briefly, causing trainer Mark O'Neal and Lou Piniella to run out and check him out, we figured it might have been another cramping episode and that they'd have to send him back to the clubhouse for a banana break.

Turned out to be something much more prosaic, as revealed in the postgame news conference: in his last start in Cincinnati, Z had scraped his arm diving back into first base after his fifth-inning single, and the scab had come off. That, plus the rather biting cold last night, caused Z to come back for the next inning wearing long sleeves.

That solved the problem, though Mike thinks he might just need more bananas (along with some thoughts about how D-Lee and Dome might approach a Cub fan's loyalty test):

Click on cartoon to open a larger version in a new browser window

It was that kind of night, as the Cubs had yet another laugher of a win, 12-3 over the hapless Padres, and yet another amazing thing about this team, first revealed by Len Kasper on the telecast (and repeated by Cory Provus on the postgame radio show, if you're wondering where I heard this): the Cubs have now had thirteen different innings in which they've scored five or more runs.

We're simply not used to this kind of thing. They're leading the major leagues in runs scored with 223 -- by a considerable margin over the Red Sox, second with 209. The nine walks drawn last night give them 183 for the season. That's almost half of what they drew in 2006, Dusty Baker's last season, 395 -- in fewer than one-quarter the number of games. I'll make sure to make note here when they pass the '06 team -- it may be before the end of June. And if you're wondering: the club record for walks in a season is 650, set in 1975 (yeah, I was surprised to find that out too, as that team finished badly after a hot start; no one on that team walked 100 or more times, though six walked 60 or more). Right now the average of 4.8 walks per game would shatter that record; they are on pace for 780. The 5.86 runs per game average would mean 950 runs over a full season.

Ain't this fun?

The Cubs came from behind again last night; Z just couldn't keep the Padres bats totally silent, and they went into the bottom of the fifth with a 2-1 lead. Z led off with a double off the wall that looked, at first, as if it might be his 2nd HR of the year. No matter, Alfonso Soriano followed with his fourth HR of the season and after that... well, everyone hit. Or walked. The only one of the starting nine who didn't get a hit last night was Kosuke Fukudome. But he had three walks, scored twice, and got an RBI when he walked with the bases loaded. Ryan Theriot had three hits; Derrek Lee two (and a stolen base, which, like Aramis Ramirez' on Sunday, looked like it came off a missed sign). Ramirez had an RBI single, a walk, and scored twice. And after Kevin Kouzmanoff couldn't beat Aramis Ramirez to 3B, making Ramirez safe and giving Mark DeRosa a hit, Kouzmanoff threw the ball in the general direction of the corner of Addison & Sheffield, allowing three runs to score. Padres manager Bud Black then yanked Kouzmanoff from the game. Yes, I know it wasn't for that reason -- Kouzmanoff had made the last out of the previous inning and was the obvious choice for a double-switch for Black's pitching change -- but it wound up being unintentional humor.

Ain't this fun?

Lou must be having fun, because he sounded exhausted on the radio during the postgame press conference, almost as if he had spent the evening running around the bases himself.

While the Cubs are clicking on all cylinders -- five out of their last six, 15-6 overall at home -- I wanted to comment here about the latest Jim Edmonds rumor. Bruce Miles reports:

The Cubs are having serious internal discussions on whether to sign center fielder Jim Edmonds, cut loose by the San Diego Padres.

General manager Jim Hendry could not comment Monday on Edmonds, who must first clear waivers, much as Reed Johnson had to during spring training before the Cubs signed him after Toronto let him go.

Some quarters in the Cubs' front office are taking a "why not?" approach to taking a flyer on Edmonds, all the while wanting to know about his health, whether he can still play and how good a fit he will be in the clubhouse.

I'll tell you "why not": he's done. I guess I can't fault management for doing their due diligence, but obviously, he'd be signed to replace Felix Pie on the roster. And why is this? Because Lou clearly doesn't trust Pie, doesn't want to give him a shot, and if you look at Pie's record so far in the major leagues, the answer to the question "Can Pie hit major league pitching?" is, "We don't know yet!"

Pie has played 117 major league games over a season and a quarter. The longest stretch of games he has started and finished during that time is nine (last June). This season, his longest such stretch is four games -- the first four of the season.

Now I ask you -- how can ANY hitter get any consistent rhythm going if he doesn't play? How can Pie learn how to face major league pitching and see enough pitches and different pitchers to hit if they won't give him a chance?

He needs to be out there every day at least against RHP. If the Cubs insist on signing a washed-up, injured, 38-year-old centerfielder who was released by a team in desperate need of hitting, at least send Jim Edmonds to Iowa for a week or two first, and let Pie play.

The bottom line is: the Cubs are 23-15, winners of four in a row and five of six, and scoring metric buttloads of runs. Why mess with success? Please, Jim. Don't do it.

Finally, to discuss this screaming Sun-Times headline from today:

... go to blackhawk24's FanPost.

I suppose I shouldn't have any complaints after today's come-from-behind Cubs win, 7-2 over the Diamondbacks, but indeed, there are some things that need to be said before I recap all the good stuff:

• Ryan Dempster needs, needs, absolutely needs to throw more strikes. Even before he walked two in a row, forcing in one run and setting up a second run scoring on a bases-loaded groundout, he had run a lot of full counts early and threw an alarmingly high total of 118 pitches. The boxscore shows 70 strikes, only three hits and two walks and seven strikeouts, but this wasn't Dempster's finest hour.
• What was Alfonso Soriano still doing in the game after the six-run seventh? He was running very slowly chugging into second after his RBI double, again running slowly around third scoring on Ryan Theriot's hit, and we saw him holding the back of his right quad in the outfield when he came out for the 8th. He'd gone 3-for-4 up to that point, hitting the ball solidly, and the Cubs had a five-run lead. There's no reason he should have stayed in.
• The Cubs ran themselves out of three rallies, twice getting runners thrown out at the plate (though I too would have sent Reed Johnson on Derrek Lee's fly ball to Justin Upton in the 5th).
• What was Carlos Marmol doing in the game in the 9th with a five-run lead? He threw only 12 pitches yesterday, true, but with a five-run lead, that's the perfect opportunity to get Chad Fox some work. Or Sean Gallagher. Lou and the staff constantly talk -- correctly -- about the starters' failure to consistently get to the 7th inning, and that's why they have so many relief pitchers. Well then, use them when the situation calls for it!

OK, I'm done now, because as the title of this post says, the complaint department is closed after the Cubs mounted one of their most impressive comebacks of the season, a six-run rally off Chad Qualls (who was 0-3 despite allowing only two earned runs all year -- he had allowed six unearned runs -- before today) and Brandon Medders, who came in after Qualls had allowed hits to four of the first five batters he faced (the other one, Reed Johnson, sacrificed -- a really nicely laid down bunt which he almost beat out. The Cubs executed two nice sac bunts today, the other by Dempster). All six hits in the inning were solidly hit, capped by the two-run homer, his second of the year -- to the opposite field -- by Kosuke Fukudome, that put the game out of reach.

Scott Eyre got the win in his first appearance of the season, a well-pitched inning. Bob Howry also threw an efficient inning (12 pitches, 9 strikes), and Marmol wasn't overtaxed, throwing only 14 pitches. I still don't quite see the point of his appearance, though.

Back to Fukudome for a moment. Every single day, quietly most days, some not (as today with the HR), he is reaching base at what, for a Cub, is an unaccustomed pace. In 35 games (he sat one out), he has 43 hits and 22 walks -- 67 times reached base, averaging nearly two times on base every game, and now with triple-slash stats of .321/.416./.473.

Just very, very impressive. I still think he belongs in the leadoff slot -- but today, everything went the way it was supposed to, and this is what good teams do, come back even when down, when blowing a lead and not looking good, and so far, the supposedly "invincible" Diamondbacks have been shut down in the first two games of the series, scoring only three runs. A couple of D'backs fans sat down near us today after my friends Brian & Kristy (who had brought their 9-month-old baby girl to her first Cubs game) had to leave. They got pretty quiet during that 7th-inning Cub rally, but I gave them a BCB card. If you two are reading this, welcome.

Tomorrow's Z-Randy Johnson pitching matchup could be a good one, but the weather forecast doesn't look good:

Sunday: Showers. High near 50. Breezy, with a north northeast wind around 25 mph, with gusts as high as 40 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%.

What do you expect? It's Mother's Day, when the weather's always rotten when the Cubs are scheduled at home. I'm off to the Police concert. Till tomorrow, and yes, I'll stop complaining. Celebrate the win!

While the Cubs have the day off today, let's both have some fun -- check out BCB reader gary varsho's FanPost about great performances you have personally witnessed -- and also discuss something that I've been thinking about writing for some time, this post regarding the ongoing debate between those who are more of a statistical bent regarding baseball analysis, and those who, well, aren't.

Before you get all bristly and defensive, no matter which "side" you prefer, please read this entire post.

Most of you know I'm not a statistical analyst. That doesn't mean I don't know what the advanced metrics are or what they mean. I am well acquainted with them and I am glad that the Cubs seem, at the very least, to be paying more attention to more than just what we might call the "TV stats" -- BA, HR, RBI. We can see the results already on the field with the Cubs' more patient approach. They are this morning leading the major leagues in walks, and not coincidentally, leading the major leagues in runs scored. Granted, a fair portion of that lead in runs is due to the nineteen runs scored against the Brewers (10% of the season total of 195) -- but I believe this represents something real, not illusory, and as long as Cub hitters continue to take more pitches and draw walks, they'll score lots of runs, and, the recent road trip notwithstanding, win more games. The Cubs had a recent streak, stopped yesterday, in which they had had the bases loaded at least once in sixteen consecutive games -- a streak that equalled the longest in the major leagues since 1974, by the 2002 Mariners, and is likely the longest by the Cubs since at least 1956.

Six Cubs have drawn sixteen or more walks -- that's about 0.5 per game or more, or 80+ for a season -- and that includes Ryan Theriot, and Mr. Theriot is, at least in part, going to be the focus of this post.

Ryan Theriot has been, for better or worse, the focus of the wrath of statistically-oriented people for most of the last year and a half. I am not here to argue that the "scrappy" Theriot is a great player or that he doesn't need to be replaced as a starter. At this moment, Theriot's "triple-slash stats" are .331/.406/.425, which likely represent about as good as he is ever going to get. Can he sustain this over a full season? Maybe, but I doubt it. I also have observed this about Theriot: he doesn't really have the range to be a starting shortstop in the major leagues, nor does he have the arm.

The statistical analysts will say, "Hey! We can measure that!", and they'd be right. I don't have all the advanced metrics handy, but using a basic measure of range, his range factor is below major league average and has been since he started playing SS on a regular basis.

This is one place where we the observers and those who look strictly at numbers agree: Ryan Theriot is probably best suited, at the major league level, to be a utility infielder. Last year, the Cubs didn't have a suitable player to start in his place, so he played every day. In 2008, they do have such a suitable player -- Ronny Cedeno, whose triple-slash stats are even better than Theriot's (.345/.429/.509), and who seems to have "turned it around" this season, thus earning the blogosphere nickname "ONEDEC". I would argue that ONEDEC has earned at the very least more playing time, and probably should supplant Theriot as the starting SS.

What I've taken issue with here at times is this: statistical analysts simply quoting rafts of numbers and saying "such-and-such is a bad baseball player" and claiming that if you simply plug in a player with better numbers, the team will improve. In many cases, this is true. However, let's take the example of another baseball player. Let's call him Barry Bonds, who has put up amazing on-base and power numbers over the last few seasons.

This has caused some people to suggest that this player would be a good addition to the Cubs, or to other teams, and they wonder why this player is sitting home rather than playing.

But now come the other factors: first, Bonds is nearly 44 years old and really can't play the outfield on a regular basis any more. He's under clouds of suspicion and an actual federal indictment. By all accounts the teams on which he played were fractured, because there was one set of rules for him and one set for the other 24 players.

Now, as a major league manager managing human beings, not reams of statistics, would you want that player on your team, knowing the upheaval he could cause? I wouldn't.

Do I want a team comprised of 25 "scrappy" Theriots, either? No, I don't, because obviously "scrappiness" in and of itself doesn't win games. Hustling and playing hard and having the right attitude are important factors in playing any sport. But in the end, you have to have consistent ability. What a Theriot can bring to your team can be exemplified by this real-life example involving a player Theriot is often compared to (in playing style, at least), David Eckstein. A little over a year ago, on April 20, 2007, in a game the Cubs were losing 2-1 to the Cardinals at Wrigley Field in the last of the ninth, Mark DeRosa singled with one out. The aforementioned Ronny Cedeno (not yet ONEDEC) was sent in to run for him. With a 3-2 count on the next hitter, Jacque Jones, Cedeno took off for second base. The pitch was ball four, and Cedeno slid into second and then off second as the throw came to Eckstein.

99% of major league shortstops would have taken the ball and thrown it back to the pitcher, and the runner would have dusted himself off and stood on second base, the tying run in scoring position with one out. But Eckstein thought fast and tagged Cedeno, knowing he had overrun the base. Cedeno was out, and with two out, the Cubs' rally had just about died. Matt Murton popped up to end the game.

You can indeed measure this play. It is recorded as a putout. But what cannot be measured is the heads-up play, a split-second thought, that helped his team win. Is this a reason to play a Theriot every day? No, because obviously, plays like this happen once a year, if that. But it is a reason to have a guy like this on your team and play him in important situations.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that neither statistics nor "scrappiness" is the be-all and end-all of winning baseball. Should major league managers pay more attention to modern statistics? Of course they should, and in fact, I believe that more and more managers are doing so, and so are some players, like the Royals' Brian Bannister. All I'd like to see is an acknowledgement from both "sides" (if there are even "sides" in this discussion, because the bottom line is, everyone here wants the same result -- for the Cubs to win) that there is, for lack of a better term, room for both "nature and nurture" in winning baseball, and that there are external factors not measurable on a stat sheet that can win -- or lose -- games for you.

For example, in 2006 Ryan Dempster had a miserable year closing games, after doing well in that role in 2005. Why did this happen? Did Dempster suddenly forget how to pitch? Was his velocity down (observations of this said "no")? What I heard was that he was having some personal troubles. Now, it's generally important for anyone -- not just major league ballplayers -- to not let their personal problems affect their work. But that's not an easy thing to do, and sometimes it happens. You can measure the bad performance on a stat sheet. But you can't necessarily measure the cause of the bad performance unless it's related to physical troubles such as an arm injury, for example, for a pitcher.

If this is starting to sound like a "Can't we all just get along?" plea, that's exactly what it is. There is room for all kinds of opinion and analysis on this site, and in fact, one regular poster here -- cwyers -- does excellent statistical analysis. All I'd ask is that everyone respect each other's opinions -- for that is what we express here, our opinions -- and know that we're all rooting for the same goal, a Cubs World Championship.

And somewhere along the line, both a Kosuke Fukudome -- who is fundamentally sound and also an on-base machine -- and a Ryan Theriot, who might win a game with a heads-up play -- will contribute.

Enjoy the rest of this off-day. Go Cubs.

Through yesterday's games, only five complete games had been pitched in the National League in 2008 -- the CG may, at some point, become a thing of the past. (In 2007, three teams -- Washington, Texas, and Florida -- had zero CG, the first time any team had gone through a whole season without one.)

You know that Carlos Zambrano wanted to finish tonight's 3-0 Cub shutout of the Reds -- their second shutout of the year -- but it was left to Kerry Wood, who registered his fifth save of the year, and in easier fashion than many of his previous outings, including a real nasty slider to strike out Edwin Encarnacion for the second out of the 9th. And so, ten years to the day after Kid K's 20-K game, Kerry strikes out two of three in the 9th inning to get a save. Who'da thunk it?

I was out for a while tonight and while listening to the game on WGN radio, Pat and Ron (well, mostly Pat, since Ron had a cold and could barely talk) were commenting that Z didn't have very good velocity, had "hardly thrown a good fastball yet", Pat said in the third inning.

No matter. Z threw 113 pitches, 69 for strikes, and allowed only three harmless singles and three walks, and was never in serious trouble in this fairly swift game that ran only two hours and thirty minutes. In so doing he became the first Cub pitcher this season to go eight innings.

Meanwhile, ONEDEC, who finally managed to get off the bench and into the starting lineup (I'd give BCB credit, since we've been lobbying for this for several days now, but that would be pretty presumptuous. Let's just say Lou made the right call, and gave Mark DeRosa a day off to clear his head), drove in two runs with a single and played good defense. I think we'd all like to see him get more consistent playing time, and the same for Felix Pie, who had a single in four AB, his average creeping up to .232.

If I were making the lineup decision, I'd start ONEDEC again tomorrow, and give DeRo another day off, which would let him rest till Friday. Or, maybe tomorrow would be a good day to give Kosuke Fukudome a day off, since he went 0-for-3 today (and didn't look real good doing it), and let DeRo play RF.

While the Cubs haven't quite righted the ship yet (they're still only 4-8 since hitting the high-water mark for the year at 15-6), it is significant to note that they haven't lost more than two in a row yet this year, and this despite having less than consistent starting pitching. What this tells us, I think, is that they've been able to use multiple weapons to win games. Sometimes they do get good starting pitching. Other times the bullpen holds the opposition down till the offense gets going. Still other times, the offense bludgeons the other side. And sometimes they just get lucky.

All of those things are elements of building a championship team. The Cubs, clearly, are not yet there, and they probably need to change or add some parts, depending on how certain players perform over the next couple of months. But at 19-14, win tomorrow afternoon and they'll have a .500 road trip (yet another mantra of winning: win 2/3 of your games at home, play .500 on the road, and you'll win your division easily), and come home Friday to what shapes up as a terrific matchup with the hottest team in baseball, the Diamondbacks.

Last night BCB reader Unique challenged me to write a recap in the evening if the Cubs came back to win. They didn't, so I didn't. But with the quick win tonight, and a day game tomorrow, I figured I'd take care of this one while it was still fresh. Nicely done, men in blue. See you all tomorrow.

Prince Fielder, Yovani Gallardo and Reed Johnson have a close personal encounter after Johnson's ground out

Yovani Gallardo grimacing in pain after the collision; 1B coach Matt Sinatro looks him over

Reed Johnson and Kosuke Fukudome in yet another close personal encounter chasing Prince Fielder's fly ball in the 6th inning

Johnson drops the ball!

Derrek Lee slides into 2nd after a throw beats Ryan Theriot to 3rd (top of photo)

Prince Fielder chasing the errant throw after Lee's slide

Kosuke Fukudome slides into the plate in the 6th inning. This photo clearly shows him sliding in safely before Jason Kendall tagged him.

Fukudome is called out, As you can see, plate umpire Brian O'Nora was out of position to make this call.

Lou Piniella makes his point after the bad call on Fukudome by O'Nora

Ask and you shall receive -- David did get the Soto/Fielder collision, though with someone's waving cap in the way:

Click on photos to open a larger version in a new browser window. All photos by David Sameshima

The Cubs were shut out by the Nationals 2-0 this afternoon -- the first time they have been shut out this year.

That took 25 games. For perspective, here's a list of the first game in which the Cubs were shut out in the twelve seasons before 2008:

2007: game 11
2006: game 23
2005: game 7
2004: game 19
2003: game 21
2002: game 21
2001: game 23
2000: game 27
1999: game 17
1998: game 13
1997: game 6
1996: game 23

So in all but one season -- and that happened to be a pretty bad year, actually, 2000 -- the Cubs were shut out earlier than the 25 games it took in 2008. This offense is pretty good -- it just got shut down today.

This was posted by BCB reader cwyers in the comments in the overflow thread, and in case you haven't seen that, and even if you have, it bears repeating:

The spread in talent between major league ballclubs is pretty small when you take a step back and look at it from a distance; the Nationals only look like a really bad ballclub when you compare them to other major league teams. And even then, we tend to exaggerate the difference in quality between two teams.

Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. The good teams tend to win more and the bad teams tend to lose more, but that’s over a 162 game season. In ONE game, any team in the majors, even the Giants, has enough talent to win.

It’s not a problem about "being in their heads," or being tired, or being mentally weak, or whatever character defects the armchair shrinks like to ascribe to sheer random chance. This happens, and it happens all the time. The difference between the best and worst record in baseball last season was only sixty games of 162.

What you do is you tip your cap to the other team, and you move on to play the next game.

Couldn't have said it better, although I will quibble a bit with one assertion that Colin made: I think the Cubs are tired after playing 13 games in three time zones over the last 13 days. Four different times in that 13-day stretch, they played a night game after a day game, and that can really screw up your body clock, especially considering that the first seven games of this season were all day games, and that's after playing a month of day games in Arizona (there was one split-squad night game during spring training).

(Also, wasn't the difference between best and worst in 2007 thirty games, not sixty?)

This isn't to offer excuses, and you might say, "How can they be tired after not even one month?" But given the cross-country travel of this bizarre "if it's Wednesday, this must be Denver" road trip, switching game times and time zones, I can see how the Cubs would have come out a little bit flat this afternoon.

So, give credit to John Lannan, who kept the Cubs off balance all day, and to Jon Rauch, who had Daryle Ward swinging at a pitch to end the game as if Ward were saying, "Enough of this game, let's go home." The Cubs had two big chances to chase Lannan and put the game away -- in the fifth when they caught a break on Nick Johnson's error and loaded the bases with one out, only to have Ryan Theriot hit into a soul-sucking double play, and again in the sixth when they again had runners on second and third with one out. Groundouts from Mark DeRosa and Ronny Cedeno took care of that.

Too bad, because for the second straight start, Ted Lilly threw pretty well. A pair of two-out singles in the second inning scored the only runs the Nationals got all day. The Nats had only four singles, and the two walks Lilly issued (neither of which were involved in the scoring). Michael Wuertz and Kerry Wood also threw well today, as did Sean Marshall, getting out of the 7th inning after walking pinch-hitter Aaron Boone.

So, as Colin said: tip your cap to the other guys (who the Cubs, under this year's pick 'em schedule, won't see again for almost four months, till late August at Wrigley Field), enjoy the day of rest -- actually, closer to two days off with the next game not being till Tuesday night -- and get ready for another series with the Brewers.

Two series with the Brewers at home in April and none in Milwaukee till July? That's a topic for another day.

Those flags will fly above the Wrigley Field scoreboard for the rest of the Cubs' road trip; after the team returns, the flags will be autographed by the entire team and be auctioned off at cubs.com.

That's the good news from today. The bad news, of course, is that SBN was down all day -- once again, we apologize for the extended outage and we appreciate your patience. Or maybe that was good news, because I can only imagine the angst that would have been seen here in the game thread during the disastrous bottom of the 8th in the Cubs' 4-2 loss to the Rockies, snapping their winning streak at six.

There was still some good that came out of today's game -- Jason Marquis threw seven solid innings, allowing just two runs and striking out four. Even though the Cubs lost, the seven-inning outing was very important, because with the extra-inning games of late, the bullpen has been in danger of burnout. Only one reliever -- Kevin Hart -- was used today. Hart deserved a better fate than his first loss of the season. After allowing a leadoff double to Matt Holliday, Hart got Garrett Atkins to ground out. Holliday took third, and Brad Hawpe was intentionally walked. So far so good, right? Hart then got the slumping Troy Tulowitzki to hit a DP ball to Ronny Cedeno -- but his flip to Ryan Theriot was bobbled, Holliday scored, and the Rockies put it away with another run after the second out was finally recorded.

It wasn't because Cub fans didn't fill Coors Field for another day -- I was amazed at the number of blue shirts I could see in the stands. I doubt the Rockies would have drawn 32,791 on a Thursday afternoon in April if not for Cubs fans.

These two-game series, one against the Mets and one against the Rockies, are strange not only for their brevity, but because they were both night games followed by day games -- each being two games played in less than 24 hours. It's almost as if the Mets and Rockies were ships passing us in the night, hardly to be seen again. Colorado comes to Wrigley Field in about a month, at the end of May, but the Mets won't be seen by the Cubs till the season is in its final week. Those games could wind up being really important.

I was out for a while this afternoon and thus listened to most of the first half of the game on the radio, the first time I've listened to a significant chunk of baseball via Pat & Ron this season. As most of you know, though I love Ron Santo for his Cub support and fandom, I've never liked his radio style that much -- personally, I prefer an analyst who gives more, well, analysis. That said, I know many people do love Ron for exactly who he is. I mention him because for the first time, I thought he sounded really tired -- and not just because it was a day game after a night game. Ron will be 68 in June and I hope his health holds up. This team has a chance to be something really special and I want him around to see every inning.

After a winning streak this long gets snapped, about all you can say is: it happens. Go out there and get 'em starting tomorrow night in Washington -- the Nationals are really bad struggling. Even Jay Leno noticed, making this recent joke:

"46,000 people showed up to see the Pope in the Washington Nationals' ballpark. He beat the Nationals 15-1. … To make sure the crowd did not get unruly they cut off beer sales after the 7th commandment."

Finally, when I stopped by Wrigley Field to take the photos of the flags this afternoon, I found them in the process of filming a commercial with a large group of kids on Waveland:

Click on photos to open a larger version in a new browser window. All photos by Al

"It was a tough first 10,000 wins," [Ryan] Theriot said with a chuckle. "I hope the next 10,000 are easier."

We are in uncharted territory.

Not just for the 10,000th win in franchise history -- a 7-6, come-from-behind, extra-inning thriller over the Rockies -- but for the 15-6 start which is now tied with the Diamondbacks for the best record in baseball.

Here are all the Cub teams since 1900 that have started the season better than 15-6:

1907: 17-4.

That's it. Four other post-1900 Cub teams (1906, 1932, 1969 and 1975) also started 15-6, and a number of 19th Century teams were 15-6 or better (the best, the 1879 club, went 18-2 with one tie), but the 2008 Cubs are now in the upper echelon of great starts by this 132-year-old franchise. The 1975 team is the outlier in that group -- they were playing over their heads and wound up 75-87 in fifth place in the old NL East -- but the rest of them were all either pennant winners, World Series winners... and we won't talk about the 1969 team, as you all know how that wound up.

The Cubs also won their fourth extra-inning game on the road last night (and haven't lost any -- the only extra-inning loss this year was on Opening Day at home). The last time the Cubs won four extra-inning games on the road was 2004 -- but that year, it took them till August to do that.

Winning anything on the road, particularly at Coors Field where it rarely seems to matter how big a lead you get, is always gratifying. I want to give thanks right here and right now to the thousands of Cubs fans who made the "Let's Go Cubbies!" and "Fukudome!" chants audible -- loudly -- on the CSN telecast (although at least on my cable system, Comcast in Chicago, there was no audio at all on the HD feed for the first few minutes; later they did fix this problem). I know some of that came from BCB readers who posted here that they were attending last night's game.

Rich Hill pitched -- well, okay, considering that his career ERA coming into this game at Coors Field was somewhere orbiting Mars. He walked four, but got out of most jams mostly unscathed; his boxscore line shows he allowed two runs, but only one of those -- a Clint Barmes HR -- scored while he was in the game. Four Cub relievers contributed to the rest of the Rockies' five-run sixth inning, giving Colorado a 5-3 lead.

Then the Cubs clawed back, scoring one run and executing a double steal (when's the last time you saw that happen?) in the 7th, making it 5-4, then taking the lead 6-5 with two strikes and two out in the 9th on Aramis Ramirez' long home run 3/4 of the way up into the LF seats.

Just as Manny Corpas blew a save with two out in the 9th, so did Kerry Wood, allowing a single to Scott Podsednik (Len & Bob noted how much Pods looked exactly like he did as a White Sox, with the Rockies' very similar sleeveless uniforms) and a triple to Ryan Spilborghs, after retiring the first two Rockies in the 9th on strikeouts.

But the Cubs would not quit, and manufactured a run in good style in the 10th, the winning run being driven in by Ryan Theriot in the 2008 "Have A Different Hero Every Day" Cub style. Carlos Marmol finished it out uneventfully -- isn't it nice to know that after your closer comes out of the game for a pinch-hitter, there's someone else right behind him who can also close?

Finally this morning, apologies from me and SBN for the massive outage last night which was caused, ironically, by a server upgrade which was done the night before (if you recall, I'd made this post Tuesday night alerting you to what was supposed to be a short planned outage). Trei and the tech team are hoping we're past the issues, which were caused, we are told, by "bad RAM"... however, they are going to monitor traffic later today when more game threads get going. Apologies from me and know that they're doing everything they can to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Uncharted territory. This is also the first time in Cub history that they have had two separate winning streaks of five games or longer in April. Keep it going. I'll have a game thread up later this morning for the 2:05 CDT start.

David returned to the ballpark on this sunny Sunday and shot these four game action photos:

Top to bottom: Mark DeRosa dives for a foul fly in the first inning; Ryan Dempster lays down a perfect bunt in the second inning; Ryan Theriot slides in safely after his second double of the game in the fourth inning; Reed Johnson dives but fails to catch Jose Bautista's fly ball in the fifth. After missing this catch, Johnson made a heads-up play by holding up his hands. The ball had gotten lodged in the ivy branches, and even though it was visible, the umpires agreed it couldn't be played and called it a ground-rule double.

Click on photos to open a larger version in a new browser window. Photos by David Sameshima

Remember yesterday when I told you the Pirates were a bad team? And some of you disagreed with me?

The Pirates are a really, really, really bad team. The Cubs smacked Pirates pitching around again today for 13 runs (this time on 18 hits and seven walks) and completed the series sweep with a 13-6 blowout of the Pirates that wasn't as close as that score.

You could point out -- and some of you did and they also did on the WGN radio postgame show -- that the Pirates are over .500 against the rest of the league. What does that say about the rest of the league? -- that'd be my argument. And this is what a good team is supposed to do against a bad one -- win nearly all the games. So far vs. the dregs of the NL Central -- the Pirates and Astros -- the Cubs are 8-1 (and 11-4 vs. the Central overall). And the Cardinals, who started out so hot, just lost two of three to the Giants, who are even worse than the Pirates.

Example of how bad the Pirates are: their pitching staff issued 19 walks to Cubs hitters in this series.

Now think about that. That's about five percent of all the walks that Cub hitters drew in the entire 2006 season (395 of them that year). Cubs hitters are taking a cue from Kosuke Fukudome (who sat today due to a minor eye problem; he'll be back tomorrow) and are being very, very patient. They have now drawn 81 walks in 18 games -- that's 4.5 walks per game, which would be 729 walks for a full season, or nearly twice as many as they did under the non-base-clogging philosophy of Dusty Baker.

It's easy, Dusty: get guys on base and a lot of them will score. A simple thing, really.

And that's what the Cubs did early and often today. Reed Johnson -- who has been a revelation in the leadoff spot and a good reason why Alfonso Soriano shouldn't ever, ever be placed back in that leadoff spot, ever (did I say ever? And the Cubs are playing better without Soriano. At this point, Alfonso, don't hurry back!) -- led off the bottom of the first with a double and scored on Ryan Theriot's single.

Theriot had four hits and a walk today. I know, I know. He's not this good. Yes, I know. He's not going to hit .340. But would any of you -- even those of you who have devoted a ton of time to statistical "proof" that Theriot can never, ever improve and that he's a terrible hitter, etc. etc. admit that maybe, possibly, he might have a career year this year? That maybe he can push his game to a higher level? I heard today that Theriot spent quite a bit of time in the weight room in the offseason. We are seeing the results already -- he's now hit five doubles in eighteen games, and the ball seems to come off his bat with much more authority than it did a year ago. When I say there are things that cannot be measured on a stat sheet, that's one of them. Stats can only tell you what has occurred, and project what might occur in the future -- not tell you with 100% certainty what will occur in the future.

At least admit that it's possible. Deal?

Almost too many kudos to go around today. Aramis Ramirez, always a slow starter, had four hits, four RBI and his fourth HR. I didn't think anyone would hit one today into the teeth of a pretty good wind off the lake, but the Pirates' Ryan Doumit hit two and came up in the 9th with the chance to hit a third, which Mike said would have been the "weirdest 3-HR game since Freddie Patek". Instead, he struck out to end the game.

More weirdness: Ryan Dempster gave up hits to the first two hitters -- then retired twelve in a row, making some good defensive plays (one thing we hadn't seen much of from Dempster, throwing one inning at a time as closer, is that he's a very good infielder), and then fell apart in the fifth, giving up three runs and making the game then close at 5-3 before striking out Adam LaRoche with the bases loaded to end the inning and qualify for his third win. The bullpen today gave up three runs in four innings, but it didn't really matter with the 13-run outburst.

I don't know -- and don't right now have time to look up -- the last time the Cubs scored 13 runs in consecutive games. Phil said to me in our seats, "The Cubs scored 13 runs in every game in this series." No, they didn't, I replied, but it took me a couple of minutes to remember that Friday's score was 3-2.

Which led me to say to Mike, "I can remember game scores from 1974, but I can't remember one from two days ago." That's pretty scary.

That's what kind of day it was, in bright April sunshine but chilly temperatures (48 degrees reported in the boxscore is probably a little lower than it really was). It was so cold that some of the 20something women sitting around us got a little loopy. One of them came up from the shade in the corner to tell her friends that she was "moving because it's too cold down there -- but you all can move into the empty seats if you want." They declined.

The Cubs are clicking on all cylinders right now, and I imagine their confidence level will be high going into the brief two-game interlude with the Mets tomorrow. They'll need that -- the Mets are a better team than the Pirates.

Finally, this morning I noted that Carol Slezak had used a term I used in a post 11 days ago -- "Fukudomania" -- and wondered where she might have seen it. Turns out Bruce Miles used it back in February. Credit where credit is due!

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