Chicago Cubs vs. Colorado Rockies Preview, Wednesday 9/26, 7:40 CT

All right, I'm buying into this race for the No. 2 draft pick completely. After all, what else do we have? Sure. Bring me to the dark side.

After Tuesday night's loss, the Cubs' "magic number" for clinching the No. 2 draft pick in 2013 is eight. Any combination of eight Rockies wins and Cubs defeats locks in that second pick for next year.

Now, seriously, I'm not rooting for the Cubs to lose. I don't do that and won't. At the same time, there is apparently a significant difference in the total amount the Cubs would have available to them in the 2013 draft for all draft picks (not just slot money for No. 2 vs. No. 3, but for every round) if they were to finish worse than the Rockies.

That might help future years. This one's done. (Also see below for some important information about game threads.)

Cubs lineup:

Sappelt RF, Barney 2B, Rizzo 1B, Soriano LF, Castro SS, Castillo C, Vitters 3B, Mather CF, Berken P

Easy way to stay in the starting lineup: hit a home run leading off the game. Nice work, Sappy Sappelt!

Rockies lineup:

Rutledge SS, Blackmon LF, Pacheco 1B, Rosario C, Colvin CF, Nelson 3B, Brown RF, LeMahieu 2B, Pomeranz P

More guys you've never heard of.

Today's Starting Pitchers

Jason Berken Cubs vs. Drew Pomeranz Rockies 0-1 W-L 1-9 1.80 ERA 5.30 7 SO 73 3 BB 41 1 HR 12 vs. Col -- vs. Cubs

Jason Berken has never faced the Rockies. Players on the current Rox roster are 1-for-4 against him (a Jason Giambi double). He threw very well in his last start. Who knows? Maybe it'll continue. (Probably, it won't.)

Drew Pomeranz, the No. 1 pick of the Indians in 2010, joined the Rockies last year in the Ubaldo Jimenez deal. Since coming to the major leagues with Colorado, he's been consistent -- consistently bad. His career ERA is 5.31. That's 5.30 this year and 5.40 last year. He pitched five decent innings against the Cubs August 24 at Wrigley Field; the two runs off him were solo homers (Welington Castillo and Alfonso Soriano). Maybe doom is not in our future for tonight.

Today's game is on CSN Chicago.

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 Rockies site Purple Row.

Based on some feedback you all gave me in the recap post from this morning, I'm going to adjust the way I'm doing game threads -- hopefully, this method will work, starting tonight and for the rest of this season.

You'll see the game preview -- like this one -- as usual, two hours (2½ in this case) before game time.

Then, the other discussion threads will post on time schedules as they always have, first pitch thread at game time, overflows at one hour, two hours and 2:45 after game time. I will create a stream for each game where you can find all the discussion threads. For today's game go to this GameStream (as I'm calling them); you'll find the First Pitch Thread there at 7:40 p.m. CDT and the others will post in that stream at 8:40, 9:40 and 10:25 p.m. CDT.

Once the game is over and I write a recap, it will post as a separate story on the front page; I'll have the preview and recap up there as individual stories, but they will also reside in the stream. Hope that makes more sense and makes things easier to find. The game threads can all also be found in the section titled Chicago Cubs Game Threads, which you can find at that link or in the drop-down menu under "Sections" in the middle of the site.

Let me know if this works, or if you have other suggestions.

Discuss amongst yourselves.