Addison to 35th: Ted Lilly Will Mangle Your Soul

Cubs - 4
Astros -1

WILD CARD BOUND!

Rick Telander (who "calls it as he sees it", which is daring) has a piece in today's Sun Crimes about the twin failures of Chicago '09. This is lazy journalism at it's finest: bitching about the Cubs and the Sox fading yet again, boring quotes from the coaches, etc...oh wait. Ok. I'm back on the posi-train from here on out. Blue skies and sing alongs.

Randy Wells pitched well last night, as he does against the Strohs (14 scoreless innings in two previous starts against Houston), striking out four and allowing one unearned run despite allowing 7 hits. Wells also became the first Cubs rookie in over 10 years to win 10 games, and has truly been a bright spot for us this year. Cubs fans expected Jeff Samardzija to become our own Joba Chamberlin, but he obviously needs some more work, and as Gordon Wittmeyer points out, he's going to get it, along with other Cubbie future arms Jeff Stevens, Justin Berg, and TOTAL STUDS Micah Hoffpauir and Andres Blanco. I love Derek Lee like he's a member of my family, but Hoffpauir is the 1st baseman of the future, and the sooner we all realize that, the better. And no, this is not a repeat of Hee Seop Choi, but thanks for asking. And no, this is not a repeat of Hee Seop Choi, but thanks for asking. See what I did there? Head injury.

Last game of the series with Houston today, and we've got Lilly pitching. Allow me to opine for a minute. When Jim Hendry signed Ted Lilly in the '07 offseason, I was slightly skeptical. Here was a middle-of-the-road guy, not exactly a spring chicken, who was mostly known for getting into a bit of the old pugilistic arts with then Blue Jays' skipper John Gibbons, who had taken him out of a game when Lilly wasn't ready to leave. We kept hearing that we were either going to sign Lilly or Gil Meche, which is sort of like being really hungry on a road trip and having to choose between a scary offramp Applebee's or a Speedway hot dog. But you have to eat, and we had to sign a pitcher. Hendry manned up and signed Lilly from a hospital bed, a heroic task that has been eroded from our collective memories, and for the past three years we've been rewarded with a steely-eyed, hard-nosed pitcher who consistently nets 12 or more wins, whips lollipop curveballs like water balloons, and is the TRUE anchor of the rotation. The guy you knew could come in the day after a Zambrano meltdown and throw 7 innings of 3-hit, 1 run ball. The stopper. All this despite Cubs hitters falling down on their faces every time he pitches. Seriously, Google "Ted Lilly Run Support" and check out how many articles and game recaps pop up detailing "gutsy" Lilly performances with zero run support. There almost needs to be a statistic named after him in Baseball Prospectus.