The Milton Bradley saga continues!  After Jim Hendry suspended him for the remainder of the '09 campaign, there was some talk that the union would contest it.  But then - then! - the Cubs decided not to withhold the $400,000 Bradley would have been set to lose, and so Milton and the union have accepted it without complaint. 

At the same time, M.B. issued an apology to the team and fans.  I think that if he was sincere in his sorrow, then he would indeed admit he does not deserve the $400k still owed to him.  I and a lot of Cub fans would have respect for the man if he actually ask Jim to keep the money that he has not earned.  Or better yet -- if he was a smart worker, he would take that remaining cash and donate it to a couple of major charities (perhaps even Cubs Care) as a way of winning over the fans. 

No matter what, Bradley needs to start the healing if he means to play in Chicago next year, and cheap words will not get it done.  A gesture like a $400k donation, and perhaps seeking psychiatric help, would go a very long way.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand -- the Cubs failed to sweep Milwaukee, although it wasn't due to the better effort of Jeff Samardzija.  The Shark shocked me by pitching 5 innings, allowing 5 hits, 1 walk, striking out 3, and allowing 3 runs off of 2 homers.  He also hit a homer himself, although his offensive stroke was about all the Cubs had tonight.

Thus, the Cubs failed to sweep.  Still, they're only 4 wins away from finishing at .500.  It's gonna hai!

Jeff Samardzija (1-2, 7.89 ERA) vs. Chris Narveson (1-0, 4.22 ERA)

Story-lines
Maybe there's something to this concept that a team plays better when it need not keep a watchful eye on the piece of shit right fielder whose negative attitude festered in the clubhouse all year long.  (I'm speaking rhetorically, of course.) 

Or, maybe the Cubs have taken a page out of Milton Bradley's book and now that they have nothing to win, they're playing like the loose team they haven't been all season long.  Or maybe the Brewers just suck that badly.  Regardless of why, the Cubs are on the verge of a rare road series sweep, although Lou has decided to play roulette by handing the ball over to Jeff Samardzija. 

Speaking of everybody's favorite mentally ill professional athlete, Milton Bradley's mother has been speaking to the media lately.  This is perfectly normal behavior for a man over the age of 30. 

She wants you to know that Milton's son, who is apparently the only 3-year-old in all of Chicago to be enrolled in school, has been the victim of racial taunts and slurs from his classmates and teachers this past summer.  Apparently, in this society in which teachers live on egg shells -- especially when it comes to their behavior with their students -- Milton's kid has been getting called all sorts of inappropriate names. 

One guy I know thinks we should go easy on Bradley because he is clearly mentally ill.  It's an interesting point, but there's a huge depth of difference between a fan like me calling him a nutjob and him being clinically diagnosed as having anything more than the world's biggest chip on his shoulder.  Still, if Milton would consider getting help, I would fully support it and welcome him back to his second chance in Chicago.  (Which his mother says he's open for, if the Cubs want him.) 

But back in the land of reality, where it is not acceptable for your mother to speak on your behalf if you are a grown adult, I'm very curious to see where Milton winds up -- because he's going to be headed somewhere.  Maybe Cincinnati, since Dusty always wanted a crack at managing him, or more likely a city where they don't care how you play like D.C.  Either way, Milton's done.

(with the graphic hopefully coming soon)
In yesterday's GameCast, I wrote that a gassed-out Randy Wells might "get lit up tonight worse than a bum with a fresh bottle of anti-freeze at hand."  Wells responded by pitching 6 innings, allowing 7 hits, walking 0, and striking out 5 while surrendering only 1 earned run.

Wells now looks certain to finish the year with a winning record and has a shot at hitting 12 wins on the season, which means he now has a good shot of finishing the year with more wins than his ROY competition in JA Happ.  But upon further review, Happ is having a helluvayear.  They've both pitched about 153 innings; Happ has surrendered 130 hits to Randy's 152, but he's walked 52 to Randy's 43, and Happ has 105 strikeouts while Wells has 93.  To me, it looks as if Wells should at least get several first place votes, but he'll be lucky to get any.

Offensively, the Cubs combined for 8 hits and 5 walks, with 4 of those coming from Derrek Lee (he was 3 for 4 with 1 walk).  Lee and Ramirez drove in the motherload of Cub runs, with Derrek elevating his homerun totals on the year to 35 and RBI stats to 109.  Seriously -- Lee saves his best for years the Cubs kind of suck.  What's up with that?

The Cubs play today for a series win.

Randy Wells (10-9, 3.06 ERA) vs. Dave Bush (5-7, 5.88 ERA)

Story-lines
After delivering an unholy ass-whupping on the Brewers last night, faded Rookie of the Year candidate Randy Wells will vie for his 11th win of the season against Brewers punching bag Dave Bush.

Wells has been pretty erratic the last few starts, although I'm impressed to note that he's actually having a better month ERA-wise than he did in August (3.10 to last month's 3.70). 

I'm still trying to figure out if Wells is the real deal.  He turned 27 a few weeks ago, which makes him a late bloomer, and his strikeout totals are a very unCub-like 5.39 per 9 innings.  Still, he's strung together a very effective season and has obviously earned a justified chance to start in the rotation next season as well.  Which isn't to say he won't get lit up tonight worse than a bum with a fresh bottle of anti-freeze at hand.

So far in 2009, Randy's record against Milwaukee is 0-1 in 2 starts with a 5.00 ERA in 9.0 innings of work.  But even if the Brewers tee off on him like it's batting practice, the Cubs will have no excuse not to respond in kind -- Dave Bush isn't exactly the poster child for Cy Young candidates. 

Anyway, since we can no longer have the expectation of a Cubs playoff appearance, we will now focus on how they are 5 wins away from their third straight winning season.  In fact, they can go 5-8 the rest of the way and still finish with 82 wins ... for whatever that's worth, which isn't much. 

This is the reason why the Brewers are a middling, .500 team-at-best -- their pitching sucks.  The same Cubs offense that struggled to scratch together more than 3 runs against the playoff-bound Cardinals went off on the Brewers like Milton Bradley at a press conference, scoring 7 runs in the first 2 innings.

Probably the best story of the night -- at least for this Derrek Lee mark -- was the continued production of M.V.Lee.  Think about it like this -- four years ago, Lee had a season for the ages, batting .335, hitting 50 doubles and 46 homeruns, and he still only managed to drive in 107 RBI.  So far in '09, in about 75 fewer at bats, Lee has had about 40 fewer hits, 17 fewer doubles, 12 fewer homeruns, is batting about 30 points less, and he's still managed to hit the 107 RBI mark.  Somebody find Dusty Baker and ask him: how the hell does that happen? 

The Cubs easily outpaced the Brewers tonight, with strong offensive nights from Lee, Aramis Ramirez (who followed a Lee homerun in the second with a homerun of his own), and Jeff Baker, who went 2 for 5. 

On top of the hits, Tom Gorzelanny continued to make an argument for his inclusion into the rotation next season by way of surrendering 6 hits in 5 innings, walking 1, and striking out 9 while allowing only 2 earned runs.  He was relieved by Aaron Heilman who managed to allow 5 runners on base in 2 innings of relief without surrendering a single run.  Go figure.

All told it was just another pointless-but-fun night of baseball.  Props to Lee for his bat mastery, and to the Cubs for winning in the face of ass-hattery. 

Tom Gorzelanny (5-2, 5.29 ERA) vs. Braden Looper (13-6, 4.89 ERA)

Story-lines
And so the death march continues.  The humanist in me thinks it would be wrong to compare this season to a genocidal march that wiped out a vast and horrifying number of native Americans, and yet passing up on the opportunity to call the remaining road games of this season the Trail of Tears would be too much for me.  Still, I know it's in bad taste.

Faustus posted a link in the ShoutBox (what's that?  You can't see the ShoutBox anymore?  Try to log in, dumb-ass) which mentioned the willingness of Carlos Zambrano to pitch in Los Angeles, Boston, or across town.  If Carlos winds up flaming out and leaving the Cubs in disgust, I will make it my personal mission to ruin every attacking member of the Chicago media.  Guys -- stop destroying beautiful things.  There are plenty of news-worthy things to slag, you don't need to chase the good and colorful ones out of town.

Ignoring the now totally eliminated playoff hopes, the Cubs still have a good chance of finishing with a winning record for the third season in a row.  That would be their first time doing that since back when bell-bottoms were still popular and Ron Santo had both his legs.  It's an extremely small, ultimately pointless consolation prize, but it's still better than being the Pirates.

Anyway, Tom Gorzelanny has a fair chance of being a starter next year.  Braden Looper often pitches with a gas can located on the mound.  This should be a winnable game, and the recently-put-asleep offense has a chance of waking up. 

Overview
Milton Bradley is suspended, Alfonso Soriano is hurt, and Kevin Gregg is a deadman walking. The three scapegoats of the season all seem to be getting their just desserts. Unfortunately, we are the ones that have to eat the crapcake they baked for us over these last 15 games.

Now we can sit here and eat it while trying to find something good to say about 2009, or we can start thinking about next season. It is usually at this point that I give you the matchups and what they mean for the upcoming series. However, I’ve decided to give a little analysis of where these starters are going to end up next season.
 
Sans Brewers pitchers of course. No one cares about Wisconsin.

The Matchups
September 21st - Tom Gorzelanny vs. Braden Looper
Tommy GoGo doesn’t have the kind of stuff the guy (Rich Harden) he is replacing today, but he might be just non-crappy enough to take Harden’s spot for 2010. What you lose in Harden (strikeouts, untapped potential) is replaced by a quality in Gorzelanny (reliability, durability) that Harden doesn’t have. GoGo is a fifth starter at best, but the Cubs could do worse next year.

September 22nd - Randy Wells vs. Dave Bush
Wells has fallen off these last few weeks (he has only won two games since August 14), but we can all agree that Randy has pitched his way into next season’s starting rotation. Depending on what happens with Zambrano, Wells will most likely be the future No. 4 guy. I personally think he deserves to be No. 3, but there is a pecking order and seniority blah blah blah.

September 23rd - Ted Lilly vs, Chris Narveson
He leads the team in wins (12). He has the lowest ERA (3.02) of all the starters. He has pitched more innings (170.0) than anyone not named Ryan Dempster. Ted Lilly did not pitch in the 2008 playoffs, nor was he the Opening Day starter of 2009, but he is the ace of this staff. Lou might refuse to give TRL the official title, but everyone knows it. He probably won’t be the No. 1 guy next season either, but then again, there have been greater tragedies in the world.

Conclusion
We can all agree these remaining games are early tryouts. Some guys have already made it (Lee, Ramirez) and some are playing a spot next season (Fox, Gorzelanny). But there is also some pride involved here. The friggin Brewers are only 2.5 games behind the Cubs. That team has sucked all year and I refuse to let them finish in second place.

Yeah, it doesn’t matter. I know. But do you know what does matter? The continued suppression of all things Wisconsin by the far superior people of Illinois.

Go Cubs.

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Any shadow of a hope Cub fans had left on their bitter, broken hearts was dashed today after the Brewers pummeled Randy Wells and the Cubs by a score of 7-4. 

Actually that pretty well sums it up.  We've been writing for a while now about how gassed Wells likely is having pitched more innings than ever before, and it seemed to take the toll on him today as he only lasted 4 innings, giving up 5 hits, 5 walks, and 5 earned runs.  The funny thing about how over-looked Wells has been is that a recent ESPN article about rookie pitchers getting gassed late in the season actually omitted him on their list.  Douchebags.

Offensively the Cubs nickled and dimed their way into four runs, but really the hitters just didn't seem to have it.  So it goes.

Still, I'd like to see Wells pull it together for another win or two, but the likelihood of that happening is on the same level of the Cubs reaching the playoffs.  Which, if you notice the tombstone, isn't something we consider to be possible at this point (sorry, Token).  But hey -- we've got about 10 more Cubs 101 articles to come, including a whole whack about the Cubs of the last 3 seasons.  So, yay?

Dave Bush vs. Randy Wells

Story Lines

The Cubs blew a great chance last night thanks to Rich Harden not having command, and the Cubs are basically set back two days, which at this point is too much.

Sorry for the rush, but I had to parent conferences during planning today, so this is all I have. Hopefully, the Cubs will take the third game of the series today.

A day after the Cubs beat the holy hell out of the Brewers, Milwaukee came back with a barrage of hits and runs against the soon-to-be departed Rich Harden.  The Cubs surrendered 9 runs off of 13 hits, with all the runs coming over the span of 4 innings.  But as bad as Harden was in being chased early, Balkin' Dave Patton was the true culprit of mediocrity in that he surrendered 4 earned runs in his 1.1 innings of work.  Who wants to bet he never pitches regularly in the majors again after this season?

Other culprits of mediocrity were Aramis Ramirez and Geovany Soto, both of whom were responsible for errors in the third and fifth resulting in 2 unearned runs.  But hey, Aramis and Geo also combined to go 3 for 9 with 2 runs scored, 2 runs driven in, and 1 homerun hit between them.  So, y'know, it kind of balances out.  ...sort of.  In the meantime, the Rockies are on the way toward beating the Giants tonight, although they've got a long way to go before victory is assured as the game is only half over.

On a side note, I'd like to address further what has already been written about the growing Chicago hate for Carlos Zambrano, hot on the heels of hatred for Milton Bradley and, by some, Alfonso Soriano.  First, while Rob and I have a split opinion on the value of Carlos, I know we both love the guy (minus his faults) and don't want him off the Cubs.  We just want there to be another guy who's better heading the rotation.

But ignoring that, while I think Milton Bradley is a freaking idiot, I still believe that he'll be a Cub next year and therefore I hope he'll be a productive Cub.  More to the point, I think he should be one.  Hating Milton for struggling or not getting a hit every time he's got an RBI opportunity is, dare I say it, stupid. 

Even worse, though, to me is the stupid hatred toward Soriano.  The Fonz has demonstrated no selfishness, but instead probably has a bit of a low baseball IQ.  That's not a crime worthy of hate.  He's also struggled all year while battling a knee injury.  Based on our shared opinion of Mark "Mary" Prior, playing hurt is an extremely admirable characteristic.  And belittling his past success in '07 and '08 as "one month of hitting well" is pretty ridiculous.  If the Cubs are a successful team in 2010, the massive, powerful bat of Alfonso Soriano will probably be a big reason for it.  And I suspect that if his knee is repaired, then his defense should be a shade better than shitty. 

So get over the Cub hate.  We'd be stupid to think that Carlos, Milton, Geo, and Alfonso are happy to have sucked so much.  And in the case of the Big Moose, Soto, and Sori, we'd be ignorant to forget how successful they've been not just in the past, but as recently as last season.  I get that being a Cub fan means, by our nature, that we are often swimming in the negativity, but give me a freakin' break!