Great Weekend

Today's game sucked, but two come from behind wins, late in the game will hopefully shoot some momentum into the Cubs as they go out west.

The Lineup:
1. Lee
2. Pagan
3. Soriano
4. DeRosa
5. Ramirez
6. Hill
7. Floyd
8. Barrett
9. Theriot

As always from Baseball Musings. Pagan was used for a higher OPS than Jones for CF. Floyd was used over Murton in rightfield for the same reason. Overall, Pagan should be where he should be. DeRosa should be a little higher. Barrett's OBP has slipped under .300. And Baseball Prospectus says bye bye to: Rangers, Marlins, Reds and Rockies.

As for this stuff with Dempster going back to start, please no. If I've added correctly, he's 61-68 in years before he came to the Cubs starting. It's not like Lilly coming to the National league with a .500 record. Dempster needs to stay in the bullpen.

Week Updates

Here's the lineup:
1. Theriot
2. Lee
3. Soriano
4. Ramirez
5. DeRosa
6. Barrett
7. Floyd
8. Pie
9. Lilly

Not much has changed. Theriot has moved up. It looks like the Cubs could use one more on base guy in front of Soriano. Unfortunately, he will probably never move out of the lead-off spot. Floyd was used because he has the highest OPS. Lilly was used because he is pitching tommorrow.

The playoff predictor has now added the Cardinals to the list of teams most likely not getting to the playoffs. I would just like ot to be noted that the Cardinals bad fortune started when the St. Louis Dispatch had the "No Chance" article on the front page of their Sports Page. It basically poked fun at the Cubs' bad luck over the years. Don't mess with karma Cardianls.

Last question: Is it being racist if "white" Americans do not want Barry Bonds to break the home run record? Wouldn't he be passing another African-American? So again how is that racist?

Bill Simmons

This article. Ughhhhhhhhh. How does Bill Simmons know what crowd is better? Well, he just knows. He really can't cite anything. For instance what's the Celtics home playoff record in the 1980s versus other teams? What was the decibel level in those games in the "lunchbox" versus those in the United Center or Chicago Stadium versus the Bulls? Does he give examples of what other players said about those arenas? Nope. For instance, last summer ESPN.com ran a huge preview of each big power basketball conference. They listed the toughest home courts. In the Big East, they polled coaches and found Pittsburgh to be a tough place to play with UConn citing Marquette has a hard place to play. Back it up with some facts Bill.

Mike North

Ugh, I had to go into work early this morning so I was listening to the Score at 6:30 and heard a little tidbit from Mike North. He was talking about whether the Bulls were going to beat the Pistons and somehow got on the topic of Dwyane Wade. He said Kirk Heinrich was tougher than Dwayne Wade. That's debateable, simply because there is no real statistic to measure this. One of the reasons North gave was that Dwyane needed a wheelchair to leave the floor when he dislocated his shoulder. First Mr. North, you have never had your left humerus externally rotated so much that it pops out the front of your shoulder and tears your labrum. You have no idea what kind of pain that is. Second, Wade was in a ton of pain when that happened. However, I'm pretty sure he did not tell the trainers to get a wheelchair for him to be wheeled back to the locker room. I'm not sure how one can measure toughness of somebody based on decisions made by other people. It's kind of like measuring my driving ability on how many times I've been hit on their fault. Makes no sense.