Per Paul Sullivan, Carlos Zambrano is on the disqualified list:
Cubs place Z on disqualified list. 30 days w/o pay. Can't be w/ team
There isn't a whole lot more I can say about Z that hasn't already been said by me and others, both here at BCB and elsewhere. However, 30 days gets us to within two weeks of the end of this season -- thus, I doubt that he will pitch for the Cubs again this year. As of early this afternoon the Cubs were in discussions with Z's agent:
General manager Jim Hendry was unavailable for comment. Zambrano's agent, Barry Praver, did not return phone calls. Sources said the two have been in discussions, and that Zambrano has not filed any retirement papers.
If nothing is resolved by this afternoon, the Cubs are likely to place Zambrano on the restricted list indefinitely, as they did last year when Zambrano was sent to anger management counseling following his dugout incident with Derrek Lee on June 25, 2010 at U.S. Cellular Field.
I will, however, reiterate something I wrote earlier today: that is, that the Ricketts family has to make major changes in the way the baseball operation of this team is run. Whether that's in personnel, or procedures, or both, is up to them. But it simply cannot be run in this dysfunctional manner any more. I wrote "blow it up" a couple of weeks ago; that can be interpreted in a number of ways, but change must come. It's time. This dysfunction goes far beyond Carlos Zambrano.
In the meantime, there are still 43 games remaining on the schedule. One of them is tonight.
Cubs lineup:
Castro SS, Barney 2B, Ramirez 3B, Pena 1B, Byrd CF, Soriano LF, Colvin RF, Soto C, Wells P
Braves lineup:
Bourn cf, Prado lf, Freeman 1b, Uggla 2b, Jones 3b, Gonzalez ss, Ross c, Constanza rf, Lowe p
Today's Starting Pitchers | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Randy Wells faced the Braves twice last year. He threw really well in one of the games. And not so much in the other one. Overall, current Braves are hitting .254 (15-for-59) against him with two home runs (one each from Jason Heyward and Alex Gonzalez).
Derek Lowe last pitched against the Cubs on June 3, 2009. He gave them just two runs in seven innings, but the Cubs won anyway. You remember when the Cubs used to do that, right? (Boxscore for amusement value only.)
Today's game is on WGN and FSN South. Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.
Baseball-reference.com game preview
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Today's first pitch thread will be up at 6:10 p.m. CDT and the overflow threads will post at 7:15 pm, 8:15 pm and 9 pm CDT. If you need more overflows due to extra innings or rain delays, post them in the fanshot section.
Discuss amongst yourselves.