In spring training last year, Lou spent much of his pregame talking hitting with Matt Murton. Now, Teacher Lou is going to have a talk with Kosuke Fukudome about his hitting woes. The Cubs are winning, and thus can carry Dome's struggling bat, but it'd be great to get him back on track.
Some of you may be worried about D-Lee's hitting troubles, but he isn't. And about all those DP's? Another good hitter, Vladimir Guerrero, is leading the major leagues with 26 GIDP.
And, calling all dentists: Z's visit to work on his cracked molar is delayed till after the Cubs get back from Pittsburgh.
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As usual, a reminder that the above stats are Harden's with the Cubs only -- see the pitcher box above the stat line for his combined stats.
Jason Bergmann is 0-2, 4.76 lifetime vs. the Cubs. No current Cub has more than 7 AB against him, so the batter/pitcher matchup data is a bit spotty. Derrek Lee has homered off him, but D-Lee left yesterday's game with back spasms (hope it's nothing serious). He has a career ERA of 4.82 and has won only one game since May. Let's keep it that way.
Meantime, Rich Harden has allowed more than one earned run in only one of his seven Cub starts. Aside from that game (August 5 vs. Houston, and the Cubs won anyway), he's given up NO runs at all in three of them, and exactly one in the other three, all on solo HR. The wind's going to be blowing in today. He's never faced the Nats, and the three players on the Nats roster who have faced him (Willie Harris, Ronnie Belliard and Cristian Guzman) are a combined 0-for-12 against him.
Today's game is on WGN and MASN; it should be on EI and thus available nationally. Also see the MLB.com Mediacenter.
Baseball-reference.com game preview
Once again, a reminder that you can find the overflow comment threads, including the first pitch thread, on the right sidebar of both the front page and any interior page in the box headed "RECENT STORIES IN GAME THREADS". Today's first pitch thread posts at 1:15 pm CT, and the overflow comment threads will post at 2:15, 3:15 and 4 pm CT, and you can use the last one for recap discussion as I am heading to a party after the game and won't likely be able to have the recap posted till after 6 pm CT.
Discuss amongst yourselves.