C.Q. is back, B.A. is gone

Carlos Quentin officially is back from the disabled list, and to answer your next question, yes, Brian Anderson was indeed sent down to the minors to make room for him. In recent games, as B.A.'s average has again headed south while Scott Podsednik was still managing to somehow channel the 2005 version of himself, it has become clear that Pods would move over to centerfield when C.Q. returned.

At least, that's what we think is happening. Tonight's line-up for the first of four games against last year's hated play-off foe, the Rays, was not yet posted as of this writing. Maybe we'll also see a variation in coming games with C.Q. DH-ing against lefties, though Jim Thome has been hot enough lately, hasn't he?

Swinging away

The Cubs lost their 4th game in a row, 8-2 to the Cards, who are running away with the division title for the month of April (good thing there is no such thing). The problem, beyond injuries leaving the Cubs with a noticeable lack of depth, is that the Cubs are definitely tense and swinging away at the plate. A fair amount of contact, a few singles here and there but not often together, lots of lineouts and what else? Oh, right, very few walks--and it's the walks that helped the Cubs win many games last year and a few more earlier this month.

During the Cubs losing streak, here's their team BBs for each game: 0, 2, 2, 2. Compare those numbers to their 3 previous wins: 4, 7, 7. It seems obvious they feel a lot of pressure to make something happen, and when that happens this early in the season, it's a bad sign, but it's also something they have time to fix. Alfonso Soriano has been rendered useless by the line-up change putting him 3rd in the batting order. So useless that it almost seems like he is swinging at bad pitches on purpose--I'm not accusing him of anything, but that's how it looks. It's that bad.

The bright spots today: Ryan Theriot, who had a brief slump hitting lead-off had a pair of hits and 1 of the 2 Cubs walks today. Kosuke Fukudome had 2 hits, and so did Mike Fontenot, who has picked himself up the last couple games.

The worst things about today's game: David Patton grooved one to Albert Pujols with the bases loaded, and guess what? Patton's appearance after a decent start by Sean Marshall, began badly and went downhill as he walked 3 and gve up 5 runs, including the grand slam.

Also, very bad: When the score was still 3-1 Cards, Joey Gathright hustled out an infield hit, but then got picked off. Gathright, Aaron Miles and Patton are among the Cubs players that really need to start showing up in the wake of injuries to others.

Swinging away turned out not to be a bad thing for the White Sox--and especially Alexei "The Missile" Ramirez--tonight as they pummeled the Blue Jays 10-2 after mustering on offense ina 14-0 loss last night.

The Missile, who has struggled badly all month, came up in the 5th inning with the bases loaded and the Sox already up 4-2. The Missile of course hit four grand slams in his rookie season last year, and with his recent difficulties, I was just hoping he wouldn't try to be a hero--just sit on a few pitches and try to make contact. It seemed pretty darn unlikely that his young career had room for another big moment, but the unlikely was exactly what happened. He took a juicy inside-part-of-the-plate pitch into the left field stands, and it exited the yard about as quickly as his first four grand slams did. It was a no doubter--you could tell the way he got those skinny arms fully extended with the fat part of the bat coming directly into your living room. He went 2-4 with 5 RBIs for the game, his 3rd 2-hit game of the last week, so maybe he's back.

Other notables: Jermaine Dye had a 2-run homer and Brian Anderson drove in 2 runs. Paul Konerko was 3-4. Mark Buerhle, who we all were so worried about this spring, is now 3-0, and pitched a pretty quiet 6 innings before handing it off to the bullpen. Every batter in the Sox line-up had at least 1 hit in this one, and the team collected 6 walks. Sounds like a good template for the Cubs.

The dream is alive

Two Chicago baseball teams have reached the postseason for the first time since 1906. The Sox didn't do much in Game 163, but they did exactly enough in beating the Piranhas 1-0 to seal the A.L. Central Division crown. Only four things of note happened:

1) John Danks pitched 8 "black-out" innings, yielding just 2 hits.

2) Jim Thome hit a towering homer over the centerfield wall.

3) A.J.caught what looked like a tough throw at the plate from Junior on a would-be sac fly, blocked Michael Cuddyer's way and held onto the ball, keeping the shut-out intact.

4) B.A. made a diving catch on a sinking woulda-been-a-hit-in-the-dome blooper to end the game.

The dream is alive for the Sox, who are headed for the ALDS, and the dream is alive for SBW, which was founded on the premise that this could be the year for a crosstown Windy City World Series. The Cubs host the Dodgers tomorrow night in a series that has to start soon so I can stop worrying about it. The Sox begin their postseason journey on Thursday, which doesn't afford much rest for a tired team. That's OK. We'll all take a nice long nap in November.

Closer than we would have liked

I predicted the White Sox would do a little something against Roy Halladay and they did, scoring five runs off him without the benefit of a homer, which is encouraging rather than not. The final was 6-5, so the Sox just got by a hot Jays team, but more on that later.

A.J. and B.A. both had key two-out, run-scoring hits, and the Missile and Thome kept the line moving, too. Best of all, Buehrle was smooth, quieting a Blue Jays line-up that had won 10 in a row, and putting the Sox in position to split the series. The game only got terrifyingly close when Jenks gave up 3 runs in the top of the 9th. B.A.'s two-out insurance RBI turned out to be the difference. Jinxie's blow-up was not terribly re-assuring as the season winds down, though he struck out a great hitter, Alex Rios, with the tying run on 3rd to end it.

A supposed closer also gave the Cubs a scare/ Don't worry, the Cubs finally won 4-3 Wednesday night, though Woody came perilously close to guiding the Cubs to what would have been their 3rd straight bottom-9th loss. Woody was definitely throwing some heat, but a lot of it was right over the middle of the plate. He looked angry and in a hurry, and after giving up a double and a HR to Pujols and this year's unforseen star, Ryan Ludwick, he got the next batter, No-Name Phelps on a high fly that Phelps really could have smashed out of the park, such was the plate location of Woody's pitch.

I'm not complaining... not about the win at least. A win is a win is a win, Yogi should have said, and we'll take it. The Cubs again only managed to score in one inning early on, the 2nd, and didn't have any hits after the 5th inning. Also, two errors by Felipe Lopez actually helped the Cubs to 3 of their 4 runs, so a disturbing trend of a quiet offense continues. A-Ram is hitting well, though, and had 2 hits. Al-So threw out a man at home. Nice.

Someone else who looked angry and in a hurry was Ted Lilly. For the most part, that worked for him, as he got Cards hitters to swing into outs quickly, often early in hitters' counts. Lilly also pulled a Butkus move on Yadier Molina, trying, apparently against coach's advice, to score from 3rd on a grounder to 3rd in the 2nd inning. Not sure why Lilly took off--maybe he wanted to get back to the dugout and get ready for his next inning--but he was a dead duck. Unfortunately for Molina, he (Molina) stood square in front of the plate, probably expecting from Lilly a kindly acceptance of a gentle tag. Instead, Lilly leveled him, and the talented Molina later left the game.

Lilly was great through 8 IP, and a quick, confident performance was exactly what the Cubs needed from their starter, but curiosity lingers: Is anger the Cubs' new act? Is that the way you get back on track toward the World Series? I'm not so sure...