(And throw my throwback ball onto the field.)

I would add that I'd negotiate (ha-ha) with Barroid to try to sell it to him, but his price  would be double or triple the market price----just to piss him off and prove, to his mind, I'm a racist along with the rest of the world.

That alone would put the team over .500 at 25-24.

While your point is taken -- yes, this team needs to play better fundamental baseball -- the reason they are losing games is because the bullpen keeps blowing leads. Fix that and you'll fix the problem.

They actually hit better with RISP than they do otherwise. You could look it up.

Ramirez recently bitched about all the day games at Wrigley the Cubs have to play in comparison to other teams but I wonder if there is more to it than just that. For example, why did they schedule yesterday's game during the afternoon when they were coming off a West Coast trip the day before, presumably getting back home very late in the morning? Why not schedule the game at night and give those guys an extra hour of sleep or so?

I also wonder if the coaching staff adequately preps the players with scouting reports, film, etc. for that critical first game, especially early in the season when the teams haven't played yet.

I think there is more to these losses than the simplistic "the relief pitching sucks" theory that is very popular these days.

Sadly, because of all the ups and downs with this team, mistakes are magnified. Just think how horrible this team would be if the starting pitching wasn't our strong point? Just think of getting into the bullpen in the 4th or 5th inning instead of the 7th or 8th? I shudder to think.

Soriano not getting to some fly balls, Barrett not throwing out ANYBODY, all the freaking walks. These things are killing us because we don't hit sac flies or can lay down a sac bunt. Extra runs are plated because we fail to hit the cutoff man, extending innings.

I usually feel HR's are overrated, UNLESS the team is built for them, like the Cubs. It was refreshing to see them score 7 runs against the Dodgers without the benefit of a HR. HR's take care of themselves, moving runners along and driving in that man at third consistently will make up for the bullpen, and if the bullpen could cut down on walks and throw strikes, they will make up for baserunning blunders.

I don't have any data in front of me, but I have a feeling that most of the 1 run losses were because of the bullpen. I don't remember too many times where we were losing and only scored enough runs to get within one. It seems we have taken late leads only to give the runs back.