Heck considering the matchup was Piniero vs. Cole Hamels ill take it.

That is true. Lot of teams stinking in up. Especially the NL West.

Against Cole Hamels, no less.

Beane has his share of blunders. He got shit back for Hudson.

Yep. On the road, too.

Of course, no one will care about that - we'll just hear about how the ALMIGHTY CUBS beat the hapless Reds at Wrigley. :spock:

the reds aren't so bad. nobody in the nl central is really that bad. the worst team is only 8 under. other than the al east, most divisions the worst team is around 20 under.

the cubs are still an indefinite 'believe it when i see it' proposition until further notice though. obviously.

I understand that beating up the dregs of the league doesn't impress you. However, most teams, especially good teams, HAVE to beat the not-so-good teams, like the Pirates, San Fransico, San Deigo, etc. As for the sweep aganist good teams, sometimes sweeping them isn't a necesserly. If a team wins 2 out of a 3 game series, isn't that good enough for at least 85 wins? If you take 2 out of 3 in every series, you can't do no worse than .570 at least.
As for the beating the hell out of St. Louis, no, that's true. However, a win is a win, and a loss is a loss, regardless if it's a 1 run game or a 9 run game.

I'm not annointing them as the '27 Yankees or anything like that. However, the numbers don't lie.

- 1st in the NL on team OBP of .359.
- 1st in the NL on team batting average of .283.
- 2nd in the NL on team SLG of .444.
- 3rd in the NL on team ERA of 3.86.
- 3rd in the NL on team pitching of OBA (On Base Allowed) of .320

So, obviously they're doing something right, and quite frankly, it's not something fluky. I think by the end of the season, that the Cubs will possibly win 90 games, and be at least 8 games up in the standings.

I think the last couple of years have proved just get in the playoffs and anybody can win it all. Heck the Cards lost in the playoffs a bunch of times with a great regular season record, but were not an impressive team at all in the regular season the year they won the world series. Go figure. Until the Cubbies get it done in the postseason, they will always have thier doubters.

I admit, if I was a GM, I'd have jumped at the chance to have Harden. I love watching him pitch.

Speaking of A's pitchers Justin Duchscherer has an ERA of 1.78 after throwing a shutout tonight :eek: holy Raiduhs

I don't think it's an awful deal for either side. The Cubs have to go for it all. The A's got 4 guys who could play at an ML level for someone who usually can't pitch a whole season without getting hurt.

On paper, it looks like the A's got fleeced on this deal. Of course, you can't tell how good a trade will be until at least 2-3 years down the road.

But the A's have optioned 3 of those 4 guys to their farm system, and Gallagher is moved to the pen, which I think is not a smart move. And the Cubs got two solid players, and didn't have to give up Vitters, Pie, Hill, and Marshall? That's pretty impressive.

The value would've been 10x higher if harden wasn't injured half his career

This is outstanding. Harden was obviously the 2nd best pitcher available for trade if he can just stay healthy . Zambrano-Harden-Dempster-Lilly-Marshall. Looks like it will be an amazing 2nd half of the season between the Cubs and Brewers.

yeah....Harden could be the next Mulder that the A's dumped. still pissed about that trade.