The Cardinals have started their home season 10-2 -- their best home start since 1968, when they started 10-1 at home and won the NL pennant.
Enough of that.
Bruce Miles mentioned possible replacements if the Cubs have to DL anyone, especially important given the fact that Aramis Ramirez, Milton Bradley and Carlos Marmol are, essentially, not available today. They include Iowa Cubs Jake Fox and Bobby Scales. Both of those players have huge holes in their games (Fox: defense. Scales: lack of ML experience). I think I'd rather scan the waiver wire, and I repeat what I've been calling for, for the last couple of days: release Joey Gathright and sign Jim Edmonds.
That would also help with this fact that Bruce reminds us of in that post from yesterday (which is still true today):
... the Cubs haven't hit a home run since Micah Hoffpauir went deep against Micah Owings on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, according to Gordon Wittenmyer, the Cubs actually do have other infielders:
So for now, backup catcher Koyie Hill, who played third base in college, is the backup third baseman behind Saturday's starter, Mike Fontenot. Left fielder Alfonso Soriano, who played second until three seasons ago, is Aaron Miles' backup at second. And Piniella was informed by reporters that outfielder Kosuke Fukudome was a high school shortstop.
Well, that's just great. We're going to use a high school SS, a college 3B and a guy who was such a butcher at 2B that he had to be moved to the outfield as our backups? On second thought, maybe Bobby Scales isn't looking so bad after all.
Once again, it is going to be a warm and windy day in St. Louis:Today: Partly sunny, with a high near 84. Breezy, with a south wind 10 to 13 mph increasing to between 22 and 25 mph. Winds could gust as high as 39 mph.
Some of the outfielders seemed to be having trouble with fly balls and popups yesterday. Maybe some of the Cubs can launch balls into the jetstream while Rich Harden is striking out Cardinals. If the lineup has not yet been announced for today by the time this post is made at 11:15 am CT, I hope Lou ends the Theriot leadoff experiment. Put Alfonso Soriano back where he belongs -- leading off.
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Todd Wellemeyer was supposed to have pitched last Sunday in the game that was rained out. Instead, he was pushed back to Tuesday, and he got hit pretty hard by the Mets. He left the game trailing 4-0, but the Cardinals came back and won 6-4. Reed Johnson is the Cub who hits him best -- 5-for-12 with a double. With only 8 K's and 29 hits allowed in 17 innings, the Cubs should be able to put the ball in play today.
Rich Harden is sixth in the league in K's with 26, despite having nine fewer innings pitched than anyone who has more K's than he does. The Cardinals have been one of the league's best teams in batter K's (ranking 13th; the Cubs are also doing well in this category, ranking 11th). Something's gotta give today -- may as well be the Cardinals. Rich is 1-1, 3.65 in two career starts vs. St. Louis, and no current Cardinal has homered off him. Yes, I know this is still the wacky Harden photo I've been using -- it's the one from his SB Nation stat page. I have asked for a replacement.
Today's game is on WGN. No Fox blackouts today. (You were probably happy if you were blacked out yesterday.) It's also on broadcast TV (KSDK) in St. Louis and at the MLB.com Mediacenter.
Baseball-reference.com game preview
Discuss amongst yourselves.