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Open Thread: Cubs vs. Giants, Wednesday 5/10, 9:15 CT

photo: REUTERS/Tim Shaffer

A couple of people e-mailed me this photo today; many of you have probably seen it. It's cut off here, but it also said: "Aaron did it with class, how did you do it?"

That's how I feel.

Today's Starting Pitchers
Carlos Zambrano
C. Zambrano
Cubs
vs. Matt Cain
M. Cain
Giants
0-2 W-L 1-4
4.43 ERA 6.27
48 SO 26
28 BB 13
6 HR 8
vs. SF -- vs. Cubs
Reverse psychology didn't work yesterday. Nothing's worked from here trying to get the Cubs out of this losing streak, so here's my take on why it will end tonight:

I have Matt Cain on one of my fantasy teams. Thus, he's due to continue to be pounded.

As I wrote the other day, the first time Z faced Barry Bonds, he snared a comeback line drive and then made a gesture Bonds didn't like, back in 2003. What I didn't realize until I checked Z's record vs. the Giants, noted above, is that that game is the only time Z has ever faced Bonds. He walked him the other two times up, one of which was intentional.

As for Cain, he's been bad so far this year, but according to the Yahoo game preview:

At 20 years old, Cain became the youngest pitcher in San Francisco history to toss a complete game when he limited the Cubs to two hits with a career-high eight strikeouts in a 2-1 win on Sept. 9 [2005].
Finally, I wanted to call your attention to a major stat project that my SB Nation colleague Jeff at Brew Crew Ball has been working on.

I can't imagine how he's had time for this, but he has today posted a complete set of minor league stat splits for every organization. It is nothing short of amazing, and full of great info that we can all use. Best of all, it's current through a few days ago, and is going to be updated frequently with current stats.

The link above will send you to its main page, which is organized by league, major league affiliation, and alphabetically. To go directly to the page for Cub prospects, click here. (FWIW, if you're looking for Felix Pie to be brought up to replace Jacque Jones, it shows that Pie isn't hitting lefthanders, either.)

I'm also going to put both links on the left sidebar so you can refer to them whenever you like. A HUGE tip o' the cap to Jeff for all his work.

Discuss amongst yourselves.