Chicago Cubs vs. Colorado Rockies Preview, Thursday 9/27, 2:10 CT

In case you missed it earlier today, the Marlins are going to give Adam Greenberg his chance at another MLB at-bat, next Tuesday when they face the Mets. Greenberg gets a one-day contract and he's donating it to the Sports Legacy Institute, which focuses on brain trauma.

Sounds like something the Cubs could have done. The Marlins get good PR out of it, attention gets focused on something that needs it, and it's a nice feel-good story.

It'd be weird if he got hit again, or walked, and still didn't get an official at-bat. Depending on when he gets in the game (or maybe they'll even start him), he'll likely be facing R.A. Dickey. That ought to be interesting.

Meanwhile, Jed Hoyer has created some interest with his comments about free agency:

"We’re obviously going to be active in the free-agent market. I don’t think there’s any question about that," general manager Jed Hoyer said.

"A big part of our research and a big part of our work is evaluating the guys that are likely to be free agents. Exactly how much money we spend in part will be determined by the market and where it goes. We have some money to spend, and that’s an area we’re going to focus on heavily."

That's a pretty generic statement. Have at this; I'll have much more to say about this when the season is over.

Cubs lineup:

DeJesus Rf, Barney 2b, Rizzo 1B, Soriano LF, Castro SS, Valbuena 3B, Clevenger C, Jackson CF, Volstad P

Look! A Brett Jackson sighting!

Rockies lineup was not available at posting time. Check the BCB Twitter feed for the Rockies lineup.

Today's Starting Pitchers

Chris Volstad Cubs vs. Jhoulys Chacin Rockies 3-10 W-L 2-5 6.22 ERA 4.73 55 SO 39 43 BB 26 13 HR 9 vs. Col -- vs. Cubs

Chris Volstad had his best start of the year against the Rockies August 26 at Wrigley Field; he threw 6⅔ shutout innings. Do you really think he can do that again? In Coors Field? In three career appearances at Coors Field covering 12⅓ innings, Volstad has a 6.57 ERA and three home runs allowed. Now you're getting the idea.

Jhoulys Chacin also started that August 26 game, and gave the Cubs one run in five innings. Since returning from the DL in August, Chacin has a 2.88 ERA in seven starts and just two home runs allowed in 34⅓ innings. Current Cubs are hitting .208 (11-for-53) against Chacin with no home runs. Doomed, I say. Doomed, we are.

Today's game is on WGN.

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 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 StoryStream™ 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 2:10 p.m. CDT and the others will post in that stream at 3:10, 4:10 and 4:55 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.