FanHouse Skip Shumaker

Here's an example of how badly the Chicago Cubs need another left-handed arm in their bullpen for the second half of this season. On Sunday night manager Lou Piniella had his lone lefty reliever Sean Marshall in to pitch the ninth inning. Well, with the bases loaded and nobody out, the Cardinals had Brendan Ryan at the plate so Piniella brought in righty Aaron Heilman to face him.

But Lou still needed Marshall to face Skip Shumaker after Ryan's at-bat, so he moved Marshall to left field for an at-bat before moving him back to the pitcher's mound. A somewhat ingenious move by the crafty Cubs skipper, but it speaks more to the team's lack of left-handed relief than anything else, which is why it's not all that surprising that the Cubs are interested in the recently released B.J. Ryan.

Things couldn't go more right for the Brewers and more wrong for everyone else in the NL Central if the Brewers could write the script themselves. Today the Cardinals put both Jim Edmonds and Braden Looper on the shelf, just after the Cards had won two in a row and pulled even with the Cubs for second in the division.

Edmonds is going on the DL with about a million different things wrong with him. He had off-season shoulder and
foot surgeries and the shoulder has been giving him trouble recently. He's been pretty bad this year, but the Cards don't have many options to replace him with. They're calling up Skip Schumaker (not Rick Ankiel, like I think they should), owner of a .233/.277/.279 line with the Cards this year. Anyways, this injury puts So Taguchi in the lineup every day. Did you know he's 38?

Amazingly, it probably hurts them even more to put Looper on the DL. He's cooled off a lot recently after his ridiculous start, but taking him out of the rotation means that Kip Wells has to stay in the rotation. I discussed Wells' struggles at length yesterday. His replacement will technically be Anthony Reyes, who's been better than his 0-8 record but certainly hasn't been great this year. That's the thing about these two injuries for the Cards. Neither of these two guys have been great, but the Cards just don't have anyone to fill the holes. Six and a half games can look like a hundred sometimes.