Game 20 Thread / Mets @ Cubs (2 of 2)

Wade Miller style back spasms?

We rebooted it, oiled it up, and fed it two pounds of TCBY Frogurt as a reward for acting so good at the doctors office. The prediction,

5 IP, 3 K's, 5 H, 2ER (0-1, RBI (Sac Fly, Deep Center)) . . . and Ted's first Win.

I"m only gay late in games when we are tied or behind.

Fair enough, but I don't see Pie as a top of the order hitter at this part of his career.

Re HAnk:

Not too hard to see why this guy has a career .224 BA

What a god-awful GIDP with bases loaded and 0 outs - with TEd "Babe-Ruth" Lilly on deck.

Total freakin' waste.

Get hit by a pitch or anything else!

Great to see Cedeno lining it up the middle and going opposite field the last couple of days.

Not been watching on TV but Gameday says his fastball got up to 90 mph in the fourth inning. Good to see his velocity continues to improve.

Beltran was on the run and did a little jump up agains the wall and caught it. Just missed.

Also, Howry looks great today. A lineout to Cedeno on a reach for an outside fastball, then two topped groundouts to DeRosa and swings that looked pretty bad. He bounced one curve on an 0-2 count, but everything else seemed to be right on the blac.

Nope

He's really Picked up a screwed up dead leg flatfooted swing. No weight transfer.

What a slug.

So who sits on the bench until Cedeno gives the Cubs a reason not to play him? Everyone is swinging a hot bat except Fontenot! Even the bench is producing. Even BLANCO is hitting!

I'd be tempted to leave Cedeno in at SS until he starts having bad plate appearances again, if that happens. Let DeRo play LF some days when you play Theriot at 2B.

Hey, Soriano, no rush coming back. I like the lineup better without your .175 batting average anyway. When you come back, learn to hit 6th, behind Fukie.

to ensure that it isnt a problem for him going forward. Let me be the first to suggest that he moves to a utility role. For the good of his back and all.

Sounds like a quaint old-fashioned exclamation.

"Sweet wandering vertebrae! A two-game sweep of the Mets!"

how about that backing acting up whenever Ronny feels hot?
or, do we say it doesn't act up when Ronny feels tired and needs a day off?

you can tell the physical tool difference between these two. I do hope this is a turning point for Ronny.

Len and Bob were talking about Theriot. Apparently has some sort of condition since birth where one of his vertabrae moves on him. He's always going to deal with it and when it happens he has to take a day or two off. So nothing to worry about, but then again it will probably always happen occasionally.
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Theriot has a condition called Spondylolysis. The docs usually call this a "spondy". Basically, there is a weak spot in some of the bone that makes up the posterior bony connections in the lower lumbar spine (between the facet joints known as the pars interarticularis). It usually develops as a teenager. It's most common at the two lower lumbar levels, either L4-5 or L5-S1. If the area where there is fibrous tissue that creates a weak spot gets stretched, the vertebrae in front can slip and lead to a more problematic condition called spondlolisthesis. Apparently The-Riot has the former and not the latter.

Spondylolysis usually responds to rest which is why Theriot has missed a few games. Expect this to act up from time to time since apparently he's had this flare up in that pattern from his teen years. Often the treatment includes NSAID's (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory med, like Motrin or Naprosyn). It has to be pretty unresponsive to conservative measures to be treated with surgery, but if that is done it's usually a fusion at the level of involvement, if it's unilateral (only on one side) it can sometimes be treated with an attempt to repair the weak spot. Surgery for this sounds pretty unlikely.

Here's a link with some diagrams of the anatomy.

http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00053

Incredible. We're not drinking the kool aid though, are we?

I'm thrilled that the Cubs made a NY team look identical to the Pirates in the box score. I mean, wow. Both games, though, looked close until late innings. Still, 8-1, 7-1. I love it.

Maybe MacFail will take Theriot!

To paraphrase an old saw, Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don't make with Andy MacPhail.

New team=down grade.

New city=major upgrade!

Cedeno was 0-11 lifetime with bases loaded before that however.

Really the offense has been amazing. I hope it's a sign that D Lee is back to '05 form. Can you imagine '05 D Lee in the middle of a good lineup? Insane.

Fukudome has had an affect on the lineup top-to-bottom, too.

And I've busted Pie's balls a lot the past few years, but I really liked what I saw the last couple days. He's shortened his swing (he still has the goofy flair at the end, but I can live with that). By compacting it he can wait just moments longer before he decides to commit to a pitch. That slight moment could be the difference in correctly reading a big league slider. The surprising thing is even with the shortened swing, he still has power. I would have bet money he'd become a singles batter with a shorter swing.

Hahahha... that's great.

Going nuts is part of the fun of winning 14 games out of 20.

You're right that the pitching was great this series. I think, though, we'd be talking about the pitching more if we weren't all so pleasantly surprised by the offense from Cedeno and Pie. We expect Z to pitch well, and before the his first 3 starts, we mostly expected Lilly to pitch well. Still, they actually deserve most of the credit for these wins. Those late innings would've probably looked a lot different if the Cubs hadn't already had narrow leads.