Game 104 Thread / Marlins @ Cubs (3 of 4)

Home plate umpire took a fastball directly off his chin. The catcher didn't even deflect it... He had to leave the game.

The Cubs have someone batting 900?

Damn.

And protection is, for the most part, a load of crap.

AND... going into today's game, Kosuke had reached base in 7 of his previous 14 at-bats. While I understand demoting/moving down a guy who is struggling, I don't understand demoting/moving down a guy AFTER he seems to be coming out of his slump.

And of course... he has reached base in each of his first two at-bats today.

Whoops, I guess it was a push.

I'm not watching the game, only following it online, so -- why take Harden out after 5 innings and only 87 pitches? His line (10 Ks, 2 H, 3 BB) was pretty good.

that we wont hit this way the rest of the year. Not only is August filled with home games, but they are home games aganist some bad teams.

If Jimbo was smart he would offer up Soriano and a solid prospect for Manram without taking a look at their contracts, I'd say it save the Cubs 80 million throught the course of their contracts.

speaking of jumping off the ledge...wow.

Soriano has an NTC anyway...but if the Red Sox want to deal Manny while being one of the better teams in the AL, you know there's some serious behind-the-scenes problems going on...

Here's the thing: I have problems with this team, but it's just as ridiculous to judge the offense by this slump as it was to anoint them the best offense ever because of the beginning of the season. In the end, you have to judge a player by their season wide numbers and not what they did over a one month period. At the end of the season ARam and Lee will probably hit .300 and it will be a successful season.

To me, no one should be surprised by Fuku's hitting. The platitudes he was getting at the beginning were a bit much for a tiny sample size and it was to me pretty much given his numbers would go down from Japan, especially in home runs. I'd say league average with outstanding defense is just about right for him.

Soriano is a very streaky hitter who will get hurt. Again, no one should be surprised by this. He will go on a tear, we'll win a bunch of games and people will forget this bit.

Soto is a very good hitter but is also young and will go through these streaks. While obviously we'd all love for him to be the exception, it's no knock against him he's been slumping because rookies do that. He'll bounce back at some point and in the end it will average out to quite good numbers. A 1.048 OPS (what he hit in April/March) was fun as all get out but also unrealistic for an entire season, especially for a catcher. In the end, he's second in the NL and 3rd in the MLB in OPS and that is still really, really good for a rookie.

Theriot just seems to be hitting and hitting and hitting and who knows when it will end. Logically it should end, but hey, who are we to argue with scrap.

DeRosa, despite some claims to the contrary, was never and will never be a great hitter. He is quite useful as a super-utility player but a 109 OPS+ is the highest he's ever hit and the highest you're likely to get from him. Johnson, DeRosa and Edmonds are all extremely replaceable (note I didn't say bad) players and thus there should no hesitation to replace each one with the hot hand. But the fact we get slumps from any of them again should be no surprise.

It just seems we have some unrealistic expectations some times from hitters. Someone goes on a hot streak hitting way over their career numbers and suddenly we expect them to hit like that all the time. Most hitters get a .300 BA at the end of the season by hitting .400 for a while, then .200, etc, etc. You enjoy the .400, ride out the .200 and with our team, it just happens most of the guys are hitting .200 at the same time which hopefully means they'll all hit .400 at the same time.

Does Wrigley do those electronic tickets that you can email? If so, try Ebay in the morning before you go...that's worked for me at other parks.

Well tied now. Braun homer. 4-4. Seems like Gagne has gotten better since he gave up those homers to the Reds. That sucks.

meh...STL wins.

its almost august and the top 3 teams in the NL are from the NL Central.

take that world of speculative sports journalism.

don't the cubs are too surprising...and most people wouldn't be too shocked to have the brews up there...but, STL? wow.

I'm definitely hating the offense right now...these last 2 games were extremely winnable.

This rule is common in amateur baseball, well at least variations of it. Personally, I think it is a great rule for the All Star Game, but start in the tenth inning.

I didn't really see an out pitch from Samardzija the other day. I think he's likely to scuffle. If not him, who goes down when Wood is ready?