FanHouse JeffSamardzija

The Cubs continue to make minor tweaks to their roster as they cling to relevancy in the NL Central race. After recalling Kevin Hart and Sam Fuld in the past few days, relief pitcher Jeff Samardzija was brought back to the big leagues Tuesday. He'll replace Jose Ascanio in the bullpen.

Samardzija, the highly popular pitcher who once played wide receiver for Notre Dame's football team, came onto the scene with a solid rookie season in 2008. He worked 26 times and compiled a 2.28 ERA. Earlier this year, though, Samardzija had a rough go at the major league level. In five outings, his ERA was a large 8.10.

The biggest weakness in the early going of 2009 for the Cubs has been bullpen depth. Carlos Marmol and Aaron Heilman have been good, but they can't pitch every night. It appears the Cubs are going to halt the project of stretching Jeff Samardzija out so he can be a starter in favor of adding him to the bullpen. He would be part of the bridge to the eighth inning, giving Lou Piniella another option to Heilman.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, in order to make room for Samardzija, the Cubs will designate Luis Vizcaino for assignment, meaning they have 10 days to trade him, or else he'll be released.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

One fantasy baseball question becoming increasingly more prevalent these days is very succinct: Is David Ortiz done? The problem? It's a tough question to answer. What do we actually mean by "done?" Is he ever going to be the guy who hit 54 home runs or the one who drove home 148 runs again? No. Not a chance.

We haven't even completed two full weeks of the Major League Baseball season yet, but the (arguably) best rivalry in the National League is already giving us a taste of what an exciting race the NL Central could be this year. With all due respect to the Reds, Astros, Brewers and Pirates, and with all due disclaimers about how long the baseball season is, it seems blatantly obvious the two best teams in the division are the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals.

For the past three days, the two teams have put on an entertaining show for anyone fortunate enough to be watching. Each game went down the wire, with both teams showing a flair for the dramatic.

Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over.

Meet the ...
Team who decided 97 wins wasn't enough. Seriously, why would you go out and intentionally make your team worse? Sorry, I'll spare you the huge homeristic rant right now. Instead, I'll just say that you can find good fantasy options at nearly every turn with this team, even though you shouldn't be taking any in the first few rounds.

You know, getting traded once can probably be quite the ordeal for a baseball player. If you've been in a city for a while, you've more than likely bought yourself a home, and maybe you're married with kids so packing up all your stuff and moving across the country can't be easy. Both Aaron Heilman and Garrett Olson have gone through this type of thing recently, as Heilman was sent from New York to Seattle in the J.J. Putz deal, and Olson left Baltimore for Chicago in a trade for Felix Pie only ten days ago.

Well hopefully neither player put down a security deposit on an apartment in either of their new cities because they've both been traded again. This time, for each other.

It seems apparent at this point that the San Diego Padres are intent on trading Jake Peavy this winter. Sure, they just signed him to a three-year extension last December worth $52 million, but they thought they were going to have a good team at the time. A 63-99 record this season proved otherwise, and now the organization is heading in a different direction.

The Padres want to rebuild, and they could use all that money they promised to Peavy to do it, so they're going to try and move him. The problem is that Peavy had a full-no trade clause put in to his new contract, so their options are limited. In fact, there are only five teams they can trade Jake to at the moment that he'll be cool with.

[Jake's agent Barry]Axelrod said Padres General Manager Kevin Towers told him late in the season that the team was looking to rebuild and that could benefit from unloading Peavy's contract. Axelrod said he recently gave Towers a list of teams to which Peavy might consent to being traded. On that list were the Dodgers, Atlanta Braves, Chicago Cubs, Houston Astros and St. Louis Cardinals.

"This isn't Jake asking," Axelrod said. "He wants to stay in San Diego."

Of those five teams, I'm guessing you could take the Dodgers right off the list. I don't think the Padres would trade Peavy to a division foe unless they got a lot in return. As for the Cubs, I'm not sure if they have enough in their system after the Harden trade to get Peavy, though maybe if they were willing to give up Jeff Samardzija and Carlos Marmol, the Padres would listen. Can you imagine the Cubs with a rotation of Carlos Zambrano, Rich Harden, Ryan Dempster, Ted Lilly, and Jake Peavy? Why they might win 120 games before getting swept out of the first round next season!

You'll also notice that the Yankees, who have expressed their interest in Peavy over the last few weeks, aren't on the list.

Every four years, Major League Baseball's postseason intersects with a presidential election. This is one of those years. In the spirit of the season, we here at MLB FanHouse have divided the playoff teams up for a series of debates. Matt Snyder and Will Brinson discuss the NLDS between the Cubs and Dodgers.

We'll run through different aspects of each team -- starting rotation, bullpen, defense, starting lineup, bench, manager, and end with a prediction. We'll do it with numbers and snarky commentary (most of which was used by Brinson), and we'll get right to it after the jump.

The mantra of every single non-Cubs fan in the world is the same heading into this postseason, and it couldn't be more misguided.

If you really don't think the Cubs are going to the win the World Series, that's fine. It's neither offensive nor outlandish, as long as your reasons are rational. If your reason is something along the lines of "because they are the Cubs" or has anything to do with any circumstance outside Lou Pinella and his 25 troops, however, you have no idea what you're talking about. Wake up.

Let me lay it out for you. Jerseys and logos don't cause winners and losers. Players and managers do. The Cubs franchise hasn't won the World Series since 1908. That's as much a coincidence as anything else. There's been bad management, what some would call bad luck, and plenty of bad players ... none of which have been inflicting the team during this 2008 season.

If you think teams need postseason experience to excel -- you better not look at last year's Rockies -- then the Cubs have plenty of it. The team was in the playoffs last year. They got swept, but as Ryan Theriot said, "sometimes you have to lose before you win." It's a learning curve.

When Jeff Samardzija was called up about three weeks ago, lots of people (and this includes me) wondered if he was ready for the big leagues. He's responded with a mostly dominant 13 and 2/3 innings out of the bullpen, holding opponents to eight hits and two runs while striking out 14 over that span. His dancing 98 mph fastball has made him a real asset in the Cubs bullpen. That may not be enough for the Cubs, who need a starter this Sunday and are considering the ex-receiver for the spot start:

``Might as well just throw it in there,'' Samardzija said of the possibility he draws the start for the Cubs Sunday in Florida. ``We've kind of done a little bit of everything.''

Piniella hasn't called Samardzija's number for Sunday, and likely won't make that decision until the weekend. But he said Wednesday the rookie is one of his options for covering the spot in the rotation that opened because of Tuesday's rainout in Atlanta.

Samardzija worked as a starter in the minors and it seems likely that his long-term role with the Cubs is, but he's been so good in the bullpen that I think the Cubs would be slow to move him out of that role before the playoffs. A good starter is always better than a good reliever, but Samardzija won't be able to overwhelm hitters with his fastball from the rotation and the learning curve is a bit steeper as a starter. Even if he does start on Sunday, it'll probably be a one-time thing.

UPDATE: Lou Piniella says he's going to start Marshall and piggy-back him with Samardzija so as to not stretch anyone out too far, which is probably the most logical conclusion here.