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Is the season already over for the Cubs? The bad new is that the Cubs are already two games out of first place behind the Brewers and the Pirates. The good news is that there are 160 games left in the season. Teams will go through good stretches and teams will go through awful stretches throughout the course of the season. They will go through stretches of playing poorly and they will go through stretches where they will seem like they cannot be beaten. Right now, they are playing poorly, but next week they could be 5-2 or 0-7. That is the beautiful thing about baseball is that every play matters and that any team can win. In a month, everyone will be settled into their roles, and Kerry Wood will have more than one opportunity to show that he can be a dominant closer. Geovanny Soto will show that he can throw runners out and Fukudome will show whether he can continuously hit starting pitching. One thing is for sure he knows how to take a walk.

After the game, Lou announced that Soriano is going to be batting lead-off again. We will see how this pans out as Soriano is not your typical lead-off man, but he poses much more of a threat than Ryan Theriot, who is a solid player, but is not quite as intimidating as Soriano. Theriot also has many more fundamentals than Soriano, so if Soriano gets on base than Theriot will have a better chance of moving Soriano over, compared to Soriano, who is more of an aggresive player that swings for the fences everytime.

Another tweak that I would make to this lineup is moving Soto to the sixth spot behind Fukudome.  Soto will give Fukudome additional protection and would be a huge RBI machine if he were to bat sixth, rather than DeRosa who is a quality hitter, but because of Soto’s power he has much more potential to drive in a numerous amount of runs.

The last change I would make in the lineup is switching Theriot and Pie.  I think Pie’s OBP will be equal to or greater than Theriot’s this season.  That being said, it would make much more sense to bat Pie 2nd than 8th, that way he could utilize his speed and be in scoring position with the heart of the order up.  Theriot is much less likely to steal than Pie, so Theriot should bat 8th.  Another thing is that if Pie is on first and the pitcher is thinking about throwing a pitch-out he would be much more likely to do it against a pitcher, because generally pitchers are poor hitters. But if DLee or ARam were up the pitcher would not want to be giving up balls and digging themselves into further holes than they are already in, because they are such dangerous hitters.

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