The MLB schedule makes even less sense this year than in most seasons. Even notwithstanding the fact that the weather has been terrible in Chicago this April, on what scheduling planet does it make sense to have four of the five NL West teams make their only visits to Wrigley Field in April? (Only the Giants have not been to Chicago yet; they don't arrive until June.)
After Wednesday, the Cubs, barring some miracle which will match the two teams in the playoffs, will say goodbye to the Rockies for 2011. In fact, by the end of the next road trip -- 31 games into the season -- the Cubs will also be done with the Diamondbacks and Dodgers for 2011. They won't see the Padres again until the last three games of the regular season in San Diego.
As for their divisional rivals, the Cubs haven't played the Cardinals yet, and won't for another two weeks; they don't go to Pittsburgh until July (and then play there seven times between July 8 and August 4), and in a 16-day stretch from May 4 through May 20 will play in Los Angeles, Chicago, Cincinnati, Miami and Boston.
The MLB schedule was done better when it was made out by that husband-and-wife team of college professors that used to lay it out on their kitchen table. They should be given the job again.
Enjoy the game tonight -- weather permitting.
Cubs lineup:
RF Fukudome, 2B Barney, SS Castro, 3B Baker, 1B Pena, CF Byrd, LF Soriano, C Soto, P Garza
A-Ram gets the day off. Nothing wrong, just a scheduled off day.
Rockies lineup:
Fowler CF, Herrera 2B, Gonzalez LF, Tulowitzki SS, Helton 1B, Smith RF, Lopez 3B, Iannetta C, Rogers P
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Esmil Rogers made a number of relief appearances and starts last year, but none vs. the Cubs. He has faced Reed Johnson and Blake DeWitt before (both 0-for-3). The Cubs did face Rogers in spring training this year on March 15 in Mesa and he threw five shutout innings and allowed only one hit, a single by Carlos Pena.
Matt Garza faced the Rockies in Denver on April 15 and gave up five runs on seven hits in six innings. Five of the seven hits were singles; Garza has not yet allowed a home run this year in 24.2 innings.
Oh, and Garza is about the worst-looking hitter I've seen, definitely the worst hitting Cubs pitcher since Mike Bielecki, who went 3-for-70 (.043) in 1989 with 35 strikeouts. (And then drove in two runs with a single in his first postseason at-bat that year.)
Today's game is on CSN Chicago and ROOT Sports, the newly- (and not very well) named Denver sports channel. Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.
Baseball-reference.com game preview
Please visit our SB Nation Rockies site Purple Row.
Today's first pitch thread will be up at 7 p.m. CDT and the overflow threads will post at 8 pm, 9 pm and 9:45 pm CDT. If you need more overflows due to rain delays or extra innings, post them in the fanshot section.
Discuss amongst yourselves.