we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and dominion over the Cubs . . . .

when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one ballclub to outhit, outpitch, and outfield another . . . .

Zambrano	Looper
8-3, 3.13	9-5, 4.26

happy 4th everybody. it’s a holiday weekend, the cards are playing the cubs, and the teams are fighting each other for first place; jim edmonds is back in town (and welcome back to ya, jed). it doesn’t get much better than this.

i'll be at a barbecue tonight and away from the computer, so overflow threads will be pre-programmed. i don't know whether to expect heavy traffic because it's the cubs, or light traffic because it's the 4th of july. erring on the side of caution, i'm gonna pre-program two overflows --- one will open an hour after game time, and the second will open an hour after that.

historically, card-cub game threads have not brought out the best in the VEB community. most people keep the rivarly in perspective and are able to enjoy the sparring without being obnoxious about it. but there always seem to be a few dicks who show off their most unpleasant, vulgar, and unintelligent characteristics when the cards play the cubs --- indeed, they think it’s cool to act that way when the cards play the cubs. don’t be one of those dicks. have all the fun you want in the game thread; just don’t drive people off my site with repugnant behavior. and if you observe someone else behaving that way, flag the post or write me an e-mail.

i exchanged views this morning with al yellon, my friend over at Bleed Cubbie Blue. his answers to my questions are here; head over there to see my answers to his questions. if you do drop by BCB during the weekend to exchange views w/ the northsiders, remember that you are representing our community ---- be good-humored, fight fair, and refrain from trolling. thanks ev’yone.

1) Jim Edmonds appeared to be toast when he came to the Cubs; he even got called out by Lou Piniella for his lax production after his first week or so in Chicago. How'd he turn it around?
That's a mystery to me, too, but I'm certainly not complaining. In 36 games as a Cub Edmonds is now hitting .294/.391/.587, better than his career numbers, with 8 HR and 24 RBI. He's played a competent CF --- it's clear that he doesn't have the range he used to, but he catches most everything he can get to --- and has contributed to many wins, most notably with his game-tying, last-of-the-9th HR against the Braves on June 12, a game the Cubs won in the 11th on a walkoff HBP. Even some Cubs fans who hated the idea of "that hated Cardinal" in a Cubs uniform are coming around.

To answer your question more directly, Edmonds had an injury in spring training that limited him to six ST at-bats. Clearly, it hadn't totally healed during his time in San Diego and they gave up on him. He's healthy now, and the Cubs have a productive CF platoon (Edmonds and Reed Johnson) at a cost to them of about $1.6 million for the entire season ($1.3M for Johnson, and the minimum for Edmonds, as the Padres are on the hook for the rest of his contract).

2) After half a season of watching Fukudome, do you think the contract he signed is a) a bargain, b) overpriced, or c) fair ?
The contract is fair. Fukudome has been exactly as advertised -- an on-base machine (.395 OBA) who has mid-range power and plays an excellent RF. His best value to the Cubs has been his patience at the plate -- this has rubbed off on his teammates, as they are on pace to break the club record for walks in a season. He is the Cubs' first Japanese-born player and Japanese players are noted for their disciplined approach to the game, something that has been missing from Cub teams for many years. For that alone, he's worth it.

3) What is the secret of Ryan Dempster's success this year? Are you worried he will wake up one day and turn back into the old Ryan Dempster?
Cub fans always worry about just about everything. But Dempster, apart from one disastrous start vs. the White Sox, has been consistent all year. The "secret," which really isn't one, is that Dempster dropped about 30 pounds and spent the winter doing intense workouts, because he realized that returning to starting pitching would require him to get into better shape. Part of his routine was running up and down Camelback Mountain in the Phoenix area before spring training, something that anyone who's hiked those trails would tell you is a tough task. It has paid off. Dempster is also a smart player who understands what it takes to succeed. He'll make the All-Star team and it'll be well-deserved.

4) Matt Murton, Felix Pie, Ronny Cedeno, Eric Patterson, Rich Hill . . . . a lot of highly touted Cub prospects are going stale, rather than establishing themselves as regulars. Does that trend worry you, and what do you think is the reason for it?
Technically, Murton isn't a Cub prospect -- he was acquired from the Red Sox in the Nomar Garciaparra trade. "Highly-touted" is a relative term, too; of the ones you mention, only Pie and Hill had that tag on them, and Hill only in the later stages of his minor league career. Since producing several good-to-very-good position players and pitchers in the 1980's (Shawon Dunston, Mark Grace, Joe Girardi, Greg Maddux among others), the farm system has become fallow in recent years. This I would attribute to bad management and bad drafting more than any other factors. In the last few years under Oneri Fleita and scouting director Tim Wilken, the system has begun to rebuild, and I hope that bears fruit in years to come. Also, keep in mind that although the players you name have had less success than hoped for, the Cub farm system has produced, in the last ten years, Kerry Wood, Carlos Zambrano, Michael Wuertz, Sean Marshall, Sean Gallagher and Carlos Marmol.

5) Which pursuer do Cub fans fear more --- the Cardinals or the Brewers?
Personally, I fear the Brewers more --- and don't take that as an insult, Cardinals fans. I still can't figure out how your team is doing it, and I look forward to Larry's answers to my questions on that topic. Milwaukee has a great offense --- their weakness, as was apparent in their unbelievable meltdown loss to Arizona yesterday, is their bullpen. This weekend series will go a long way toward setting the tone for the rest of the season, just as the September 2003 series in Wrigley Field did for the Cubs that year, and the July 2004 series, also at Wrigley, did for the Cardinals in that season. Let the games begin!

have the cards ever rallied from 0-9? there was that big comeback in cincinnati some years back on mother's day, but i think they only trailed 0-8 . . . . .

Pelfrey	Boggs
5-6, 4.47	3-0, 4.37

according to Fangraphs, boggs has relied almost exclusively on 2 pitches since he joined the cardinals --- his fastball (70 percent of the time), which averages 93 mph; and his curveball (21 percent), which averages 78 mph. those speeds, if they're accurate, would seem to make him fairly difficult to adjust to. so far, however, hitters have made pretty consistent contact --- when they swing the bat, they either put it in play or foul it off 88 percent of the time (the big league average is just 80 percent). if he learns how to change speeds <i>and</i> locate his pitches, he might be a decent hurler. . . . .

pelfrey relies even more heavily than boggs does on the fastball --- throws it 80 percent of the time, per Fangraphs, with the rest of his pitches split between slider and changeup.

that would have been a tough loss to swallow; thankfully, the mets' lefty relief pitcher was as inept as the cards' was. with their 4 hr last night, the cards climbed to 6th place in the national league in that category and now are on pace to whack 170 hr, the same number the pujols-edmonds-rolen-walker-sanders group produced in 2005. they've outhomered their foes 90-75 so far this year, after being badly outhomered each of the last two years.

pineiro got hit pretty hard for the 2nd consecutive start. last night the mets feasted on his fastball. he threw it 32 times (according to gameday), 23 times for strikes; the mets swung at it 16 times and put it into play 10 times, a very high ratio of BIP per swing. (you’d hope to get a higher percentage of foul balls and swing/misses than that.) worse yet, 8 of the balls in play were base hits, 3 for extra bases. . . . . they were getting extremely good looks at his fastball. only one met swung and missed at the pitch --- delgado, who whiffed at it twice in his 5th-inning at-bat. the velocity on pineiro’s fb was normal, right around 89-90 mph, but (understandably) he didn’t throw it nearly as often as he typically does. per fangraphs, he has consistently thrown the #1 about 55 percent of the time over the last four years; last night it accounted for barely over a third of his pitches. in pineiro’s last start, in kansas city (which i witnessed in person), he threw the heater only about 45 percent of the time, although his results with it were decent enough (he did yield a homer and a double off the pitch). pineiro has spent time on the dl this year with shoulder and groin problems; nagging trouble from either injury might rob his fastball of some life --- which, in turn, might explain why he’s backing away from the pitch. i’m just fishing for explanations here; could be way off. but for one reason or another, it’s a fact that he has altered his repertoire the last couple of starts --- he’s not throwing his fastball as much as he usually does. might not mean anything . . . . but still something to look for in his next outing.

moving on to mulder: clearly a mistake to put him into that situation. in addition to all the obvious reasons not to use mulder there, add the fact that carlos delgado (one of the two lefties he was sent in to face) has a .348 / .483 / .565 career line against mulder in 29 plate appearances --- and most of those occurred when mulder was good. i realize the first hit off mulder was another bloop (the 3d cheapie he has yielded in 2 nights), but you can’t really say he was a victim of bad luck last night. he fell behind the first batter 3-1; gave up a solid line drive to delgado; fell behind easley 2-0 before yielding the sac fly (also well hit); and then hit schneider. the bloop was unfortunate, but overall mulder just didn’t make many good pitches; the results were fair. in any case, mulder has never had the ability to throw the ball past hitters since he came to st louis; he has always pitched to contact, counting on the late movement of his pitches to induce weak groundballs. but with his new shoulder and arm angle, mulder can’t keep the ball down nearly as well; instead of topping the ball, hitters (the few we’ve seen so far, anyway) are able to muscle it over the infield. of the 7 balls put in play against him in his two appearances, only 2 have been grounders. that’s not bad luck, it's a reflection of ability --- and, for a pitch-to-contact pitcher, it’s not a formula for success.

how else could tony have played the inning? he could have stayed with mcclellan, who has a very good record vs left-handed hitters (.599 ops against) and at home (.621 ops against). however, kyle needed 17 pitches to get through the first couple of batters of that inning, and he was up to 27 pitches for the game; he has thrown more than 27 in an outing only twice all year. if tony was trying to avoid burning the guy out, it was a good call. but why not villone there for the lefty-lefty matchup? the old geezer has smothered lhb this year, holding them to a .191 average / .298 slugging; over the last 5 years (including 2008) he has faced 561 left-handed hitters and held them to a .208 / .314 / .300 line. villone has only pitched 5 times in the last 3 weeks, facing just 19 batters over that span, and he had a day’s rest under his belt; he ought to have been fresh, no? maybe villone still hasn’t recovered from the beating he absorbed in the 20-2 loss vs philadelphia last month; he threw 66 pitches in that outing, his highest count since 2004 (when he was a starting pitcher), and has appeared in only 5 of the 17 games since. . . . . i also wondered if perhaps tony was saving villone for potential 8th-inning matchups against reyes (a weaker hitter vs left-handers) and chavez --- but if that was his thinking, i disagree w/ it.

hard to know which half of the pitching staff to worry about more at this point, the bullpen or the rotation. i’m still most worried about the latter --- although the starters held it together for a couple of cycles after wainwright and wellemeyer went down, the last two-plus cycles through the rotation haven’t been encouraging. with waino out and wellemeyer ineffective, there’s just not a whole lot to work with; i fear an implosion. re the bullpen --- i’d be all in favor of picking up a left-hander on the cheap, but strongly against yielding one or more big prospects for brian fuentes. as i noted the other day, relievers of his ilk cost a load of talent on the mid-season trade market --- even those heading into free agency. a left-handed specialist just isn’t worth that much to me. HC has mentioned joe beimel as a more affordable target --- that’s the type of guy the cards might get cheap, although i don’t think beimel himself will be dealt (the dodgers are only 1.5 games out of first). but ron mahay might; another possibility is the giants’ jack taschner, although he’s probably due for a regression from his current 2.54 era. the blue jays’ most tradeable lefty, brian tallet, has a wicked reverse split; ditto the mariners’ ryan rowland-smith. i just don’t see a whole lot of options out there on the trade market --- and i’d rather do nothing than overpay for a guy like fuentes, who i’ve watched his entire career out here in denver. i think st louisans would grow to hate him in short order; he’s inconsistent and mistake-prone, capable of losing the strike zone for a week or two at a time.

the cards go for the series win tonight --- tomorrow, the cubs.

lefty relief pitchers not doing their job for either team tonight . . . it's 7-7 heading into the 9th. c'mon boys

i guess wellemeyer's elbow still ain't right . . . . . . mets 6, cards 3, bottom 5th.

Armas	Wellemeyer
0-0, 0.00	7-2, 3.46

thanks to those who put the kaibash on the Erin Andrew photos in today's main thread. i had my nose in archives all day, wasn't on the site at all  . . . . i don't think anybody meant any harm in posting the pix, and the images themselves are certainly not in poor taste --- well, ok, the close-up of her ass is not exactly elevating . . . . anyway, it began as a reasonably good-natured appreciation, but i sense that a line has been crossed. a lot of women read VEB, and they don't read it for the fixations on comely sideline reporters. neither, for that matter, do most of the men come here for that type of content . . . . i'm asking Erin's fans to share their tributes to her elsewhere.

tony armas has been at triple A all season long and pitching very well --- 2.54 era, 5:1 k/bb ratio over 17 starts, 102 innings. seems like he has been around for 100 years, but he is only 30 years old --- 4 months older than wellemeyer --- and might still have some years left in the big leagues. he had a 6.03 era last year for the pirates . . . .

baseball . . . . go figure. despite playing without albert pujols for most of the month, the cardinals led the national league in runs scored during june, at 136 --- 5 runs a game, their best month this year by a longshot. they finished 2nd in the league in slugging, a category in which they’d ranked 9th in the league during the first two months; their 36 homers were good for 3d in the nl during june (they had been 10th in the league heading into the month). even their luck turned around: the cards recorded the league’s second-highest reached-on-errors total during june (13), a category in which they had ranked dead last during the first two months. maybe opposing defenses stopped paying attention w/ pujols out of the lineup. . . . . so the cards reach the (more or less) halfway point in the season ranked 4th in the nl in runs, 5th in slugging, and 2nd in obp.

the starting rotation also thrived without its leader in june --- actually, without its two best pitchers, as wellemeyer and wainwright combined to make only 5 starts during the month, throwing just over 28 innings. st louis starters ranked 3d in the league in era for the month anyway. good starting pitching, good run support --- with a competent month from the bullpen, the cards might have flagged down the cubs. here’s a stat that’ll break your heart: the cards led 16 games during june after 7 innings, and were tied in another 4; they only trailed 7 times. if they’d held all the leads and split the ties, they would’ve gone 18-9 during june and passed the cubs --- with pujols and wainwright both out for most of the month. whatever; can’t blame izzy this time. . . . . the cards enter july ranked 6th in the league in era. they have allowed the 2d fewest walks in the league and the 4th fewest homers; the defense takes care of the rest.

one other statistical oddity i noticed while fishing around this morning: despite batting the pitcher 8th, the cardinals rank 11th in the league in OPS out of that batting-order slot. one of the teams below them, milwaukee, also bats the pitcher 8th --- but 4 of the clubs below the cardinals are using position players in the 8 hole, and still getting less offense. it gets better: the cardinals rank 4th in the league (!) in isolated power out of the #8 slot. . . . on the other hand, out of the #9 hole they only rank 5th in the league in ISO --- milwaukee is batting jason kendall there, so no surprise that they are ahead of the cards, but chicago, arizona, and washington all get more sock from their (mostly) pitchers than the cards do from iz2 / kennedy / ryan.

turning to last night’s game: kyle lohse dusted off his curveball, throwing it 21 times against the mets --- 20 percent of his pitches. early in the year duncan talked about wanting lohse to make better use of his curve, a pretty good pitch that kyle had stopped throwing over the years. in 2005-06 it virtually disappeared from his repertoire. he started using it again last year as an auxiliary pitch, and in the first month of 2008 he heeded duncan’s advice and began to throw it regularly --- it accounted for almost 10 percent of his pitches in april. for whatever reason he junked it in may --- just 4 percent of his pitches --- and before last night he had thrown the curve just 3.7 percent of the time during june. (thank you fangraphs for all that data.) but last night lohse used the bender to great effect: threw it for strikes 2/3 of the time and got 4 outs on it without allowing a base hit.

i was glad to see the homer by duncan, but i think he got a little too excited about it. his next time up, apparently trying to hit another one, he took 2 gigantic swings at pitches out of the zone and got himself out; in the at-bat after that (against heilmann) he whiffed at another bad pitch before regaining his discipline. a big component of duncan’s mini-rally --- .856 ops in the last 10 days, dating back to the start of the interleague trip --- has been improved discipline at the plate: he has walked 7 times (one intentional) in his last 34 plate appearances. to draw his previous 7 walks, it had taken duncan 99 plate appearances, nearly 3 times as many; he was flailing at everything. the homer wasn’t all that impressive, and duncan is still anything but "fixed" --- he did strike out twice last night --- but any contribution from that quarter is welcome.

ditto mulder. he threw strikes (10 out of 14 pitches), and he threw with more velocity than we’ve ever seen from him in st louis --- nearly every pitch was a fastball (12 of 14), and all but one reached or exceeded 90 mph according to pitch fX, with a max of 92 (attained 5 times). he even threw a fastball past somebody, ramon castro, to get a strikeout on a 3-2 pitch. i’d be the last guy to get excited about his performance --- indeed, just to be a jerk i’ll point out that mulder’s first inning back from surgery last year also was scoreless (1 hit, no walks), and he started getting hammered immediately thereafter --- but i have to admit he threw harder and displayed better command than i expected. only one of the 4 balls in play against him was hit on the ground, but with his new arm slot i we shouldn’t expect him to pound the bottom 1/10th of the strike zone the way that he used to; he doesn’t get on top of the ball anymore, and that’s by design. lord only knows how this experiment will turn out; the cards have tried crazier things and had success with them, so maybe this will work out too. here's hoping so. 

the season half over, and still so very much to learn about these cardinals . . . . . .