Just remember: somewhere out there, there is a miserable Rockies fan, paying the cost of our great cheer today. If you should happen so see him, tell him thank you.

Lou is reconsidering his idea of using Hoffpauir in right field. Oh thank God.

His reasoning?

"Fukudome is playing so well in right field, I'm thinking 'Let's not even mess with that unless we have to,' " Piniella said. "He's the best defensive right fielder in this league.

"He charges the ball well. Right field is a tough field to play here. He goes to the line well, he gets a good jump on the ball. I'm of the thought that the less you disturb that, the better."

Hoffpauir's stay probably will last until Daryle Ward returns from the disabled list. Piniella said that's still at least 10 days away, although Ward said he believes he'll be ready sooner. The idea of using Hoffpauir in right and Fukudome in center also was broached, but Piniella has had second thoughts.

Sounds about right to me. (Technically, I think Brian Giles is the best defensive right fielder in the league, but it's close - Fukudome is +10 plays compared to the average right fielder so far this season, which is just amazing.)

The person who really benefits from this is Jim Edmonds - unless Pie starts forcing the club's hand by bloodying AAA pitching, there isn't an alternative lefty center fielder available in the organization (unless you count Eric Patterson or Sam Fuld, and obviously the Cubs don't).

The beat writers asked Piniella about moving Marmol to the rotation; Lou wasn't keen on the idea.

Interesting tidbit from the Sun-Times: Hendry didn't make Soriano his $136 million offer, marketer extraordinaire turned club president John McDonough did. I honestly don't see the need to obsess over Soriano's contract; so long as it isn't keeping the club from addressing other needs (and so far, it hasn't) and so long as Soriano continues to hit as well as he has... I mean, sure it's an overpayment. But I'm actually pretty happy having ownership that would rather overspend to put out a better on-field product than simply pocket the revenues (otherwise known as the money they make off of us, the fans). Remember: if Soriano isn't making that money, Sam Zell is.

Bruce Miles is wondering about Big Z's pitch counts:

You had to really look to find Carlos Zambrano on Baseball Prospectus' leader board under "Pitcher Abuse Points." That was, until last night. Zambrano threw a season-high 130 pitches in the Cubs' 2-1 victory over the Dodgers. With that pitch count, he moved up from 39th to second in PAP.

Baseball Prospectus, at baseballprospectus.com, awards zero abuse points for pitch counts under 100. From there, points go up exponentially in categories based on number of pitches. Zabrano's 130-pitch effort was a Category 4 pitch count as far as the Baseball Prospectus people are concerned. Gil Meche leads the majors in PAP, followed by Zambrano. When Dusty Baker was manager of the Cubs, it wasn't uncommon to see Zambrano's name in the top three all year. Until Wednesday, Zambrano's top pitch count this year was 114. The 130 represented his highest output since 2005, under Baker.

Zambrano has been high on the PAP leaderboards for years without breaking down. What conclusions you want to draw from that are up to you; Pitcher Abuse Points are highly controversial among the analytic community. Possibly Zambrano is a ticking time bomb, with a shoulder injury just waiting to happen.

But if you look at how Zambrano has handled his workload up until now, his body type, and just the fact that he's an older pitcher, I wouldn't worry about it too much; Joe Sheehan points out that PAP (and the pitch count revolution in general) was mostly about YOUNG pitchers, and that doesn't describe Z at this point. (Since that post says negative things about Dusty, I'm compelled to point out Sheehan had some of his facts wrong regarding the Reds' throw days. I have to say, for the record, using starters as relievers on their regular throw days strikes me as inspired. Overall I have to tip my cap to Dusty for a lot of the things he's done in Cincy - he's inherited a mediocre team and they've had some bad luck, but he's done a lot of inspired things there. Even if he has Adam Dunn trying to bunt; that's just stupid.)

And our own Bob Brenly is drawing heat from MGL. (Mitchel Lichtman is a former analyst for the St. Louis Cardinals, now a freelance consultant.) It's pretty fascinating, at least to me - it's a really dense read, and MGL is writing for his regular readers, who understand what he means when he says RE and such.

Short version - Brenly said you hold up at third with one out when there's a force play at first, because you don't want to make the second out of the inning at home. MGL says that you should always run for home in that case, because the difference between runners on first and second and runners on second at third is miniscule compared to the chance that you'll score a run, with the pitcher taking the sure out at first.

The reason I bring this up - other than the fact that I just really enjoy reading MGL talk about game strategy - is that I want to point out that Brenly was hired for a wide variety of reasons, and many of them have nothing to do with whether or not he's actually correct with any of his insights into the game. He's fun to listen to, which is why he's got a job as a color man. But please, take his analysis with a grain of salt.

Rich Hill is off the disabled list. He apparently gave up three runs in three innings. That's what I like to call "irrelevant" - especially in games that don't matter, what matters less are results and more the process used to achieve them. More important: 3 walks, 5 strikeouts, 1 home run, 42 strikes, 24 balls. What really matters is how well he was locating his curve, but I can't tell that from the box score.

Jim Edmonds says he's changed his batting stance. For what it's worth.

And today - today, it's the epic pitching matchup of Ryan Dempster versus Glendon Rusch. I'm taking the family to Wrigley- hopefully the Cubs haven't used up all of their runs against the Rockies for the series.