Well it’s good to be behind in Guitar Town, the Cubs have been right away strictly out of the competition but I got to see them fool around twice in AT&T Park in San Francisco, it’s regularly good to see the Cubs fool around in person. It was generally engaging to listen to the disapprove birds in somebody else’s [...]



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DENVER(AP) The usually bigger warn than the male whose homer sent the diversion in to additional innings was the male whose homer finished it.

BOSTON(AP) Behind a sealed hall door, the Boston Red Sox distinguished their sixth playoff berth in 7 years in the common way: with spraying beer, memorial hats and T-shirts, and the prevalent promises which they will fool around improved once the postseason begins.

SAN DIEGO(AP) Joe Torre attempted to be philosophical after the Los Angeles Dodgers unsuccessful for the third uninterrupted diversion to bind their second true NL West title.

What a hideous couple of years the 64-92 Cleveland Indians have had.

Eric Wedge will finish out what’s left of the season, but will not be fulfilling the final year of his contract. And the rest of the coaching staff is going with him.

When a physical education instructor gets fired, this subject mostly arises: Who’s error is it really? Well, they’ve mislaid twenty of their final twenty-five games and not long ago went on a vehement 11-game skid; and after 7 seasons as the Tribe’s skipper, Wedge guided them to usually one playoff appearance.

Just sayin’.

Granted, they were one win divided from a outing to the World Series dual years ago — the same deteriorate Wedge was respected with the Manager of the Year Award — but they managed to blow it as a team, anyhow.

Good fitness to the subsequent guy, who will be hired inside of the subsequent couple of weeks.

[USA Today] | [Waiting For Next Year] | [MLB Trade Rumors]

A 47th anniversary? Of what? What’s which all about?

This all proposed with an email sell on a SABR mailing list to which I subscribe. (Yes, I got accede from both group to post their email here.) Josh Heit asked the list over this past weekend:

On Monday, the Mets and Nationals proceed a array and the teams will have at slightest a total 191 waste (Mets 89 going in to Sunday, Nationals 102). Is this is a record? I have checked a small viewable choices such as the 2003 Tigers and did not find a array which kick 191, nonetheless I was not operative off of a extensive list.

To which John Pastier wrote the following decisive reply:

As a 1962 Mets fan, I am deeply repelled which Josh does not cruise The Amazin’s to be an viewable preference to be checked for this honor. This bar was to losing what Rickey Henderson was to hidden or walking, what Barry Bonds was to dash hits, what Ichiro is to singles, what the Rockies have been to thin air, what Joe Morgan is to ball analysis, and what Pete Rose was to creation outs. They have been the undisputed bullion customary of losing, and land up a trifling 191 total waste prior to this juggernaut of improved is similar to asking possibly Babe Ruth ever strike some-more than 40 home runs.

The Mets and the Cubs played any alternative on Sept. 30, 1962, and at the tighten of business, they had total for 223 losses, 120 of them by the Metropolitans. And they did this even yet they were not authorised to finish their full schedule, descending dual decisions short of the claim 162.

I idea Pastier was being flippant about Joe Morgan (either that, or in an ambiguous approach job him a “loser”). Anyway, yes, the Sept. 30, 1962 diversion (which the Cubs won 5-3), binds the jot down for the diversion in which the dual clubs began the day with the most total waste (222; the Mets began the diversion with 119 defeats and the Cubs 103, which is the authorization record, scored equally in 1966). Another engaging note about which season-ending array at Wrigley Field 47 years ago: the initial diversion of which series, a Friday afternoon diversion on Sep twenty-eight also won by the Cubs 3-2, drew a paid “crowd” of 595 people. That array of people could fit absolutely in a integrate of bleacher sections. It was one of 9 games in between 1959 and 1966 that drew paid assemblage of reduction than 1000. How times change.

There will be a couple of some-more people than which in the seats during today’s initial game, a makeup of the delay from Aug 16, but expected fewer than the estimated 15,000 who showed up final night.

Starting revolution note: Lou voiced during final night’s postgame headlines discussion which Jeff Samardzija will begin tomorrow vs. the Pirates, and Tom Gorzelanny on Friday vs. the Diamondbacks. (It was creatively the alternative approach around.)

Game One Starting Pitchers

Ted Lilly Cubs vs. Charlie Morton Pirates 12-8 W-L 4-9 3.02 ERA 5.01 143 SO 54 34 BB 37 22 HR 7 vs. Pit – vs. Cubs

Game Two Starting Pitchers

Carlos Zambrano Cubs vs. Jeff Karstens Pirates 9-6 W-L 3-5 3.69 ERA 5.45 146 SO 49 74 BB 44 10 HR 12 vs. Pit – vs. Cubs

I’m going to try to contend good things about the Pirates’ starters today, Charlie Morton and Jeff Karstens, but geez, those annals have been flattering bad. Neither one strikes out most hitters, and both ERA’s have been north of 5.00. The final time Charlie Morton faced the Cubs, they scored ten warranted runs off him in one-plus innings on Aug fourteen at Wrigley Field prior to John Russell took empathize on him and got him out of the game. Jeff Karstens had one resplendent impulse as a Pirate, in the initial diversion he threw for them after being acquired from the Yankees. On Aug 1, 2008, he threw 6 shutout innings opposite the Cubs at Wrigley Field. His subsequent dual outings opposite the Cubs, not so most — 5 warranted runs in 3 innings in a begin on Aug 25, 2008 and dual warranted runs in dual innings in service on Sep 9 of this year.

Ted Lilly will be perplexing to reduce his ERA next 3.00 and finish the year with a sub-three ERA for the initial time in his vital joining career — a estimable goal. A win currently would additionally be his 45th as a Cub, giving him an normal of fifteen wins a year over the initial 3 years of his four-year deal, one of Jim Hendry’s most appropriate free-agent signings. Ted is 1-1 vs. the Pirates this year with a 2.77 ERA and he threw improved in the Jun thirty loss, when the Cubs got close out by Ross Ohlendorf (who the Cubs won’t face in this series), than in the Sep 9 feat at PNC Park. Ted is additionally 8-1, 1.60 in twelve starts at Wrigley Field this year and 8-3, 2.55 in fourteen starts in day games.

Carlos Zambrano is 1-0, 2.19 in dual starts vs. the Pirates this year; he will be perplexing to follow up his shutout of the Giants with an additional clever opening to finish the year on an up note, and additionally to get his 10th win. That would have 7 true years in stand in total for Z and it would be his 106th career victory. Of the stream Pirates, no one has some-more than fourteen career AB opposite Z, and usually Brandon Moss has homered off him.

Today’s initial diversion is on WGN and FSN Pittsburgh. Today’s second diversion is on CSN Chicago Plus (CLTV in Chicago, “check internal listings” elsewhere). For alternative games currently see the MLB.com Mediacenter.

MLB.com Gameday (game one)

MLB.com Gameday (game two)

Baseball-reference.com diversion preview (game one)

Baseball-reference.com diversion preview (game two)

SB Nation diversion preview (game one)

SB Nation diversion preview (game two)

Please revisit the SB Nation Pirates site Bucs Dugout. They appear a small waste over there.

There won’t be a apart diversion preview thread for the second game; cruise this a preview for both games (feel giveaway to revisit this thread prior to the night diversion begins). Overflow criticism threads will post currently for diversion one at 2:15 and 3:15 pm CDT. The initial representation thread will post for diversion dual at 7 pm CDT and overflows at 8:15 and 9:15 pm CDT.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

It looked for “just a prohibited minute”, as Jack Brickhouse competence have pronounced 40+ years ago, which the Cubs would wand off rejecting for an additional day. Ex-Cub Jason Kendall strike a one-out, three-run, game-tying homer for the Brewers opposite the Rockies in the ninth inning. Two innings later, though, the Rockies’ Chris Iannetta strike a homer of his own, a two-run walkoff, and the Cubs’ rejecting series was marked down to zero.

Thus we proceed “wait compartment subsequent year” once again.

Thankfully, there have been still a couple of games of Cubs ball to suffer for the rest of 2009 — given you know you’ll skip it when it’s divided for the winter — and a couple of things nonetheless to fool around for.

One of those goals was set by Ryan Dempster. He wants to throw 200 innings for the second true season, and went a prolonged approach toward which idea with a remarkably pitched five-hit, 6-0 shutout of the Pirates. Dempster reached 195 innings with one begin to go (on Sunday), lowered his ERA to 3.51 — inside of operation of the 2.96 he had final year — and threw his initial CG shutout given he was a part of of the Marlins on Jul 3, 2001. It was the Cubs’ second shutout in 4 games, and the initial thrown by a Cubs pitcher at Wrigley Field given Jason Marquis blanked, coincidentally, the Pirates on May 9, 2007. Odd records from which game: usually one Pirate who played which day stays on the bar (Ryan Doumit), and Marquis’ competition which night was stream Cub Tom Gorzelanny (John Grabow, who came over from Pittsburgh with Gorzelanny, additionally pitched in which game).

Dempster was outstanding. Though he gave up dual doubles, both heading off innings, those runners were stuck and usually one alternative Pirate (Brandon Moss, who walked and went to third on a Delwyn Young singular in the second inning) finished it past initial base. Dempster threw 120 pitches (81 strikes), which wasn’t even his top sum of the deteriorate (he threw 121 opposite the Brewers in a 12-6 detriment on May 9) and had the Pirates underneath carry out all night.

Meanwhile, the Cubs were receiving value of Kevin Hart’s wildness — something he exhibited even when he was throwing sincerely great in his 4 Cub starts prior to the traffic to Pittsburgh — and a little trashy Pirates invulnerability in putting 6 runs on the house off Hart in the initial 4 innings. The Pirates finished 3 errors, all of them on what appeared to be slight plays, assisting the Cubs measure dual unmerited runs out of the six. The Cubs drew 7 walks in all, 4 by Ryan Theriot — who was an glorious leadoff male final night, reaching bottom all 5 times he was at bat. (That’s not an publicity of Theriot for leadoff — I still hold the pursuit should go to Kosuke Fukudome — usually a note which he did a great pursuit yesterday.)

The win clinched a winning deteriorate for the Cubs with their 82nd win. That’s the initial time the Cubs have had 3 uninterrupted winning seasons in 37 years, given 1970-71-72. And it’s the initial time they have finished so in a manager’s initial 3 years in 74 years, given the 1933-34-35 Cubs had 3 true winning years in Charlie Grimm’s initial 3 seasons as manager. There sojourn alternative personal goals on top of Dempster’s 200 innings; Carlos Zambrano goes currently for win #10 to finish in stand in figures, and Sam Fuld still seeks his initial vital joining RBI (only dual players, both 100+ years ago, had some-more image appearances in a deteriorate than Fuld has right away — 103 — but an RBI). I’d similar to to see Tyler Colvin get a little some-more personification time in the final 6 games, too.

Last night’s voiced throng was 35,308. That brought the deteriorate paid assemblage to 2,989,120, so today’s first-game assemblage will put them past the 3 million symbol for the sixth true year. Last night’s opponent, the cold weather, and postseason chances being fundamentally over kept the in-house equate to what appeared to be about 15,000. The bleachers were about half-full (maybe 2500) and the rest of the play ground about one-third occupied, most of whom left after the seventh-inning stretch. The Cubs will have to have decisive moves to urge the team, and in my perspective not lift sheet prices, to keep sketch in 2010 the approach they have the final 3 seasons.

The initial diversion of today’s separate doubleheader starts at 1:05 pm CDT — the initial time a diversion has proposed at which time at Wrigley Field which I can remember. The diversion preview thread will be up at 11:30 am CDT.