Friday Baseball Headlines and Cubs vs. Diamondbacks Preview, Friday 4/30, 1:20 CT

Let's have a moratorium, for a short time, from these things:

• Calls for Jim Hendry's firing
• Calls for Starlin Castro to be called up yesterday
• Calls for (insert name of Cubs veteran player here) to be traded

And instead, just peruse these interesting baseball stories and notes while we wait for this afternoon's game vs. the D'backs.

• The wind will be blowing out strongly again this afternoon.
• As the Cubs get ready to begin the renovation of Wrigley Field, here's how the Orioles are thinking about refreshing Camden Yards, a stadium that isn't even 20 years old.
• Here's a fun chart showing the longevity of many longtime major league broadcasters.
• How much time do you spend watching the Cubs? Flip Flop Fly Ball gives you an idea with this graph showing how a dedicated Detroit Tigers fan might have spent 2009.
• Check out some new cool baseball-glove styled shoes.
• For Chicago Bears fans here, an article (with photos) about the 1940's style throwback uniform they'll be wearing for some games this year.
• As always, please contribute your own caption to the photo.

Today's Starting Pitchers

Randy Wells Cubs vs. Rodrigo Lopez Diamondbacks 2-0 W-L 1-0 2.49 ERA 4.88 19 SO 15 5 BB 6 0 HR 3 vs. Ari -- vs. Cubs

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I hesitate to say things about pitchers like Rodrigo Lopez, who generally are middle-of-the-pack but seem to take on Cy Young characteristics when they pitch against the Cubs. Lopez's numbers are about the same as Ian Kennedy's, but Kennedy pretty much dominated the Cubs yesterday until Kosuke Fukudome's grand slam. Lopez is 1-1, 7.59 in two starts vs. the Cubs in his career. But one of those starts was last July 20 in Philadelphia, where he made the Cubs look silly. Alfonso Soriano (14-for-38, .368, 3 HR) is the only current Cub who has more than six lifetime AB vs. Lopez, and no one else has more than one hit off him. In short, we're doomed.

Randy Wells has been very good this year. He hasn't given up a home run yet, but who knows how long that will last in today's jetstream. He did, however, throw seven shutout innings against the D'backs last October 3 at Wrigley Field, striking out 10; that's his only career appearance vs. Arizona. A repeat of that performance would be welcome today.

Today's game is CSN Chicago, and also on the D'backs cable channel, FSN Arizona. It's also being picked up by the MLB Network for national telecast. Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.

MLB.com Gameday

Baseball-reference.com game preview

SB Nation game preview

Please visit our SB Nation Diamondbacks site AZ Snakepit.

This afternoon's first pitch thread will be up at 1:15 pm CDT, and the overflows will post at 2:15, 3:15 and 4 pm CDT.

Discuss amongst yourselves.