GoatRiders of the Apocalypse

Braden Looper (6-4, 4.90 ERA) vs. Rich Harden (5-4, 4.57 ERA)
Story-lines
On the day we celebrate our freedom -- and our right to accuse the other political party of doing anything within their power to stifle it -- the Cubs play a game with immense implications*.  If they win, then they come within mere percentage points of surpassing the Brewers for second place in the division.  If they lose, then they very well may find themselves behind the Reds and back in fourth place by the end of the day.  For Saturday baseball, it doesn't get much better.

(*which, admittedly, require the use of a calculator to fully understand)

Pitching for the Cubs today is Rich Harden, also known as Last Year's Rick Sutcliffe.  But like Sutcliffe in '84, Harden's '85 season hasn't panned out as well as we'd hope it would've.  Still, like Sutcliffe before him Harden is a ginger** with arm problems who can pitch like Cy Young when he's not feeling like Mark Prior. 

(**may not be true)

The Cubs, meanwhile, are trying this revolutionary new strategy of NOT BATTING THE WORST HITTER LEADOFF.  I'm sorry, Cub fans, but in the past month I've heard the following reasons for keeping Alfonso Soriano in the #1 position:

• Because wouldn't it be worse for him to get his outs with runners on base?
• Because who else would the Cubs bat leadoff if not Soriano?
• But he's a headcase!  How's he going to improve if he's not comfortable!

I mean, really?  We're justifying batting a guy who is now hitting .226 leadoff -- in other words, giving him the most at bats of any Cub in any given game -- because the team has nobody better who can hit leadoff and besides, Sori will just make outs with runners on if he's dropped in the order?

Not that today's lineup looks spectacular by any means.  Fukudome is batting leadoff, and he's 8 for his last 32 - a .250 AVG - with a .314 OBP in that time frame.  Maybe Lou is setting Fukudome up to fail so he can say "well, I tried, but I gotta put Sori back in the leadoff spot."

On the bright side, unlike past lineups, Lou is not sticking two-or-more hitters back-to-back in the middle of the lineup.  Instead he's leaving them in the middle but with padding in between.  I mean, I have to ask, which lineup would YOU rather see?

CF Fukudome
SS Theriot
1B Lee
RF Bradley
3B Fox
LF Soriano
C Soto
2B Fontenot

Or
SS Theriot (.400 OBP in the past week)
RF Bradley (.407 OBP in the past week)
1B Lee
C Soto (.936 OPS, .545 slugging in the past week)
CF Fukudome (.222 in the past week, but .833 OPS)
3B Fox
2B Fontenot (.750 OPS in the past week)
LF Soriano

I could be wrong, but the second lineup appears stronger.

Who's Hot
Well, I sorta outlined that in the lineup formation.  Ryan Theriot -- on fire.  Geovany Soto -- not bad.  Even Milton's been playing too well to justify a benching.

Who's Not
The Fonz.  This season has been a total bust for him.

Conclusions
If the Cubs win this one, then they will have started to assume control of their own destiny.  But if they fail to do that, then at least we wouldn't be surprised.  (We're a fickle, cynical bunch)

Or: One more win and it's a route

So.  After an offensive explosion on Thursday, it took the Cubs 10 innings to git'er'done on Friday.  Carlos Zambrano's 7 inning performance was not wasted, but he did not reap the spoils.  Then again, if any no-decision pitcher deserved credit for the win it's Carlos, who's 5th inning single tied up the game until a bases-loaded 10th inning walk gave it to the Cubs.

So, what did we learn from yesterday?  We learned that no 10-run drubbings translate into consistently scoring runs.  We learned at long last that even Lou can no longer justify batting Alfonso Soriano leadoff.  We also learned that the Cubs bullpen is capable of holding a team down in a low-scoring affair.

The results -- the Cubs are tied in the loss column for first place in the Central. 

Not to mention what's planned for today's game, which I will outline in a post following this one probably by a matter of minutes.

Matt Snyder over at AOL Fanhouse made an interesting point the other day.  During their initial podcast, he (as their resident Cubs fan) was asked if the Cubs can get back into the NL Central race.

He noted that the question he was asked included the word "can", which he took to mean "is it possible"?  Well, all you have to do is look to your right to see that, as of this morning, it says "2.5" for us under the "GB" column, and since this is July, and not September 30th, it is quite numerically possible for the Cubs to win the NL Central.  So he said yes, they can.  But then Matt continued to say that if the question he was posed was a bit different, if he had been asked "will they" instead of "can they", he would have said "no", because the Cubs have not at any point in this season resembled a champion in anything.

This is all I have ever said on here the past two months, that the Cubs I have been watching day in and day out lack fundamentals, can't hit worth a damn, the manager has been sitting on his hands, and appearing confused, and the GM keeps making excuses while picking up the dregs of the rest of the league.  Most, if not nearly all of you, have taken offense to me saying the same thing Matt is, which has disappointed me greatly. 

I would have expected a bit more respect for a guy who has been watching the Cubs for 40 years now, and at least knows good baseball from bad baseball, and the baseball I have seen so far in 2009 has been bad.  Many of you have leaned on the "early" crutch, as in "it's early, we're only 2.5 games out, we can do it".  And I said, yes, we can, but that doesn't mean we will, because I have seen no evidence that the Cubs possess the character to do so.

But, at least, most of you were decent enough to not make this a personal issue.  While I shake my head sadly for all of you who come out here for another glass of Kool Aid, at least if you came here and said "I'm sick of hearing Rob complain, he bums me out," well, that's a valid opinion, and I have no right to tell you what to feel.  Point taken.

But then there's others who have suggested that I kill myself.

Look, you miserable drops of monkeyjizz...it really isn't fair, first of all, to come after me like that.  My hands are tied.  We made a pact here on GROTA, some time ago, that we would not make personal attacks in public.  Yes, last week, it got pretty damn personal around here, with some of us in one corner, and some in the other corner, but at least we were decent enough to e-mail each other to express our anger.  We didn't fight it out here.  We understand that there are real boundaries in the world.  There is the world out here that you all see, there is the next lower level - e-mails, which is somewhat private, and at the same time, direct and, not anonymous.  Then there is REAL life, where a man stands before another man, and names will never hurt me, but sticks and stones and fists and kicks can break my bones.

But,there were no suggestions I take my own life, just suggesting I walk away from blogging on here.  So, e-mail was the appropriate avenue for such things.  It was a way for us to air our grievances, without standing next to one another, where human nature might have caused one or the other of us to do something we might have regretted.  We agreed to disagree, and I believe the worst is behind us.

Funny thing is, though, it all relates to the small minority of you who sit there in your safe anonymity, in your mom's basement or whatever, and suggest I hang myself.  See, once upon a time, I had my own blog, and I made the mistake of expressing a few of my liberal viewpoints, which were followed by two separate, distinct threats on my life!  I felt that the other day we were inadvertently going down a similar path, because God forbid you ever ever refer to race, creed, religion, gender, or orientation on the internets. Fact is, considering some people's recent suggestions, along with encountering some ACTUAL violence last weekend in Chicago -  I've been spooked out lately.  But, I did not do the best job of expressing my concerns, which led to our own little personal apocalypse.

But finally, with all the background out of the way, let's deal with my business now, shall we?  I do not have the ability to fire back at you on a one-to-one basis out here, nor is this the place for it.  This is a Cubs blog, and here we will talk about the Cubs, and only the Cubs.  At the present moment, they have won three in a row, A-Ram comes back Monday, and Ryan Freel, Neal Cotts, and Aaron Miles are no longer taking up space in our clubhouse.  Frankly, all of that isn't quite enough to change my mind personally, but Cubs stock hasn't been this high in a while, and hopefully July will turn out to be a big month for all of us, and we will cover it ALL in gory and graphic detail, right here on GROTA, with Series Previews, Game Casts, Game Recaps, and our own observations, as well as our continuing Cubs 101 series, brought to you by the fine folks at Coast-to-Coast Tickets.

So if you persist on making suggestions that I do harm to myself, I suggest that you do the manly thing, and e-mail me personally at ribeyerob@yahoo.com.  Because I gotta tell you, I'm NOT going to kill myself.  If you want me dead, you're gonna have to come out and do it for me.  I'll tell you where and when to find me, and I'll be waiting for you, all 6-foot-3 and 300 pounds of me, along with transcripts of the e-mails, and a guy with a videocamera, so he can take all the footage of me beating the living piss out of you and post it on YouTube for the rest of us to laugh at.  Because I'm totally sick of your s**t, and if you keep invading my boundaries, if you're gonna talk the talk, walk the walk. 

GO Cubs!