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 desperately needing a bat in the middle of the order. It's too bad money is so tight right now, because the Giants could certainly use a certain eccentric slugger in the middle of their order. They still aren't altogether out of the running for Manny Ramirez, but I believe he's staying put in Los Angeles. Too bad they wasted all that money on Barry Zito and Aaron Rowand.
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.
According to wire reports, Bob Howry is going to be paid $2.75 million to throw a baseball in 2009. Cubs fans everywhere are just happy it will be in a different uniform, as the San Francisco Giants are the ones who decided to waste money on the 35 year-old who hasn't made an adjustment in two years.
Howry was brutal this season for the Cubs, compiling a 5.35 ERA and losing his late-innings role to an unpolished rookie, Jeff Samardzija. He didn't walk many, so his awful numbers were a byproduct of his inability to be effective within the strike zone. He allowed a whopping 90 hits and 13 home runs in 70 1/3 innings of work. No matter how you slice the numbers, he was just unusable in 2008.
The Giants believe they uncovered the reason for Howry's problems. He was overused by Lou Pinella and the Cubs' staff. Not necessary his in-game work, but the number of times he was warmed up in the bullpen and not brought into the game. I would be a lot more willing to buy that opinion if he showed signs of fatigue.
A quick word about the lack of Dugouts lately ... as it turns out, we write about baseball so much that we love baseball, and when the playoffs start we're rarin' to go with Dugout after Dugout of wacky dialects and references to Watchmen. Then, two weeks pass we haven't done anything because we've been sitting around watching the playoffs.
I personally thought the Cubs were going to go all the way, because I have brain damage and never learned basic reasoning. Four out of ten Fanhouse writers picked the Cubs to go all the way, because when we aren't running a sports blog we're picking our nose and eating paste.
Don't get discouraged, Cubs fans! They've still got a chance! Tonight's Dugout is after the jump!
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.
Following their 10-2 loss to the Cincinnati Reds last night, the Chicago Cubs have now lost six games in a row. Not exactly a great thing for a team holding onto a division lead in September, but at the same time, it's the Cubs first real losing streak of the season. It was bound to happen at some point.
Things almost got a lot worse for the Cubs on Friday, because before they lost the game, they nearly lost their manager. Lou Piniella and first-base coach Matt Sinatro decided to make the drive together from Chicago to Cincinnati, but apparently all that time spent coaching baseball doesn't help a man's sense of direction.
Lou and Matty's Excellent Adventure ended up in the right place Friday -- albeit, three hours after they planned to get to the ballpark on their drive from Chicago and only after overshooting that right turn at Toledo by 90 miles and buying a map.
''I don't know what happened,'' manager Lou Piniella said. ''I probably shouldn't have taken the nap. Anyway, we're here."
Unfortunately for Cubs fans, Bob Howry has a GPS system in his car, and made it to the stadium on time. Maybe Lou should take him on one of those rides where he'll mysteriously disappear.
Not even blisters are easy things for Kerry Wood to recover from, apparently. After saying for two weeks that the blister on Wood's index finger wasn't serious, Wood is now on the disabled list and Lou Piniella is indicating that Wood might not be back any time soon. He's apparently been throwing with a protective pad on his finger, which can't be great for control, and is in too much pain to throw when the pad comes off.
At least part of the Cubs decision to not rush him back is probably based on Jeff Samardzija's nice first weekend at Wrigley, where he flashed a nasty 96-98 mph fastball with wicked movement. He struck out five in his four innings against the Marlins and picked up a two-inning save on Sunday. So yeah, there doesn't seem to be a need to hurry Wood along.
For his part, Piniella says he's going with a closer-by-committee for a while and that Samardzija will be part of it with Carlos Marmol and Bob Howry. Marmol looked pretty good in nailing down the ninth inning for a save against the Brewers last night and leads all relievers with 79 strikeouts in only 58 and 1/3 innings. He did hit a roug patch before the break, though, which is probably why Lou's going with the committee. As noted, Samardzija has looked good, but closing games with a guy that has a total of four major league innings while in a pennant race is probably a bad idea. Though not as bad of an idea as closing with Howry.
It's hard to imagine a better way to kick off the mad dash to baseball's trade deadline than with the Brewers and Cubs pulling trades for big-name pitchers within two days of each other. Of course, those moves raise a pretty big question: who's the favorite to win the division now? Let's break it down.
Definitely not favorites: Pirates, Astros, and Reds. The Reds are young and exciting but at least a year away, the Pirates seem to be meandering down the right road but they're still way down the path in the wrong direction, and the Astros are a disaster area.
The Cardinals: This team perplexes me. By all accounts they shouldn't be very good, and yet they've still got the second best record in the NL and are ahead of the Brewers in the Wild Card standings. They probably won't join in the arms race with the Cubs and Brewers, but they get Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter back from the DL in pretty short fashion. Still, they're short on offense besides Albert Pujols and Ryan Ludwick, it's hard to know what to expect out of Carpenter after missing most of a season and a half, and Kyle Lohse is a prime candidate to turn into a pumpkin.
It's kind of useless to debate which team has the best fans ... but it's also kind of fun. Red Sox fans come out in droves wherever the team plays -- the team has the highest road attendance in the majors. But that's not enough to convince Cubs reliever Bobby Howry that the Red Sox fans are better than the Wrigley Field faithful. From the Chicago Tribune:
Cubs reliever Bob Howry, who played in Boston in 2002-03, says there's no comparison, because Cubs fans are there in good times and bad.
"Their fans wouldn't show up if they were losing like we were last year," he said, referring to the 3.12 million attendance figure for a 96-loss Cubs team.
The Cubs had an average road attendance of 36,780 through Saturday, third in the majors to the Yankees (38,106) and Red Sox (38,664).
Side note: is it me, or does comparing road attendance seem to be a silly way of determining how fervent a fan base is? I mean, Yankee Stadium holds more than 57,00 people while Fenway Park holds less than 40,000 -- of course the Red Sox are going to average more road fans, they get to play in bigger road stadiums. Then again, maybe the reason no one mentions that is because it's so blindingly obvious ...
Howry threw yesterday and felt much better, which is a huge relief for Cubs fans, who can always count on Howry to give away a lead in the seventh and eighth innings:
While it wasn't as strange as Kerry Wood's hot tub injury during spring training, Howry's incident still merits a mention on the all-time list of bizarre Cubs injuries.
Has the reliever learned a valuable lesson?
"Yeah, next time instead of moving it, I might just wheel it," he said. "I didn't want to take the cover off to use the wheels, so I just picked it up."
Howry threw off flat ground Saturday and said he's OK to pitch. Manager Lou Piniella is more concerned about his trio of left-handers than Howry's health.
"We need our left-handed bullpen to start getting the job done," Piniella said, referring to Scott Eyre, Will Ohman and Neal Cotts.
Like I said, this is a huge relief, because Howry is so good at baseball. Wait, no he's not. Sell some more grills with Manny, Bob. You'll be doing the Cubs a favor.
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. 
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 
According to wire reports, 
A quick word about the lack of Dugouts lately ... as it turns out, we write about baseball so much that we 
Following their 10-2 loss to the Cincinnati Reds last night, the Chicago Cubs have now lost six games in a row. Not exactly a great thing for a team holding onto a division lead in September, but at the same time, it's the Cubs first real losing streak of the season. It was bound to happen at some point.
Not even blisters are easy things for 
It's hard to imagine a better way to kick off the mad dash to baseball's trade deadline than with the Brewers and Cubs pulling trades for big-name pitchers within two days of each other. Of course, those moves raise a pretty big question: who's the favorite to win the division now? Let's break it down. 
It's kind of useless to debate which team has the best fans ... but it's also kind of fun. Red Sox fans come out in droves wherever the team plays -- the team has 
No word on whether 
