Well, all I can say this morning is: thank you, Astros, for helping keep the Cubs in first place, and thank you, Mets, for sending the Cardinals to their 5th straight loss and keeping them four games behind. Now, it's up to the Cubs to step up and do it themselves.
Note on the brawl in Dayton Thursday night: pitcher Julio Castillo is being held on $50,000 bond. There will be more fallout to come.
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For now, at least, this info -- provided to me by SBN's data provider -- will show only Harden's numbers with the Cubs. I'll continue to post his full season totals in the pitcher box above.
So let me get this straight. In a game where beer is served freely in the stands every day, the Marlins are starting a pitcher who is named after the act that established Prohibition in 1919? What are they...
Oh. That's the VOLSTEAD Act. This guy is named VOLSTAD.
Never mind. Anyway, he's not yet 22 years old, has made three ML appearances, two starts, and has never faced the Cubs. For perspective: when Volstad's teammate Luis Gonzalez made his major league debut on September 4, 1990, Volstad was still almost three weeks away from celebrating his fourth birthday.
Rich Harden faced the Marlins during interleague play a month ago on June 20; he gave them five hits and one run -- a HR by Dan Uggla.
Today's game is on WGN again; at least you'll beat the Fox blackout that way. Incidentally, Fox's market-by-market list for who gets what game today shows Chicago as getting game #3 -- but there are only two games listed. Hmmm. For tonight's games see the MLB.com Mediacenter.
MLB.com Gameday (2007 version)
MLB.com Gameday (2008 version)
Baseball-reference.com game preview
Today's first pitch thread will post at noon CT and the overflow comment threads will be up at 1:30 pm and 2:30 pm CT.
Discuss amongst yourselves.