Heading to the Windy City

Tim Lincecum's dominance over us was just a sidenote as the big interest was in where we would playing on Wednesday. So while his 13 k's didn't mean anything this season he gives notice that he has joined and maybe even surpassed Peavy/Webb as Cy Young capable pitchers in our division. You just have to wonder what our chances would be in this post-season if our rotation was Lincecum/Lowe/Billingsley/Kuroda.

Kershaw will be great but dang, that Lincecum is something super special right now. Other then Tampa Bay there are 8 teams beating themselves up for not picking him in the 2006 draft.

CC pitched the Brewers into the playoffs and basically did for the Brewer rotation what Manny did for our offense. Andrew was supposed to do a study on mid-season pickups and I think he found that CC and Manny were the two best pickups in history. Hopefully he'll expand that study and publish it so we can read it. The Mets could have forced a playoff game but the bullpen failed to deliver and the offense couldn't come up with a big game against the worse Marlin pitcher. The Marlins have got a serious rotation headed into 2009 with Josh Johnson, Rickey Nolasco, Volstad, Andrew Miller, and Anibal Sanchez. Scott Olsen can't even make that 2009 rotation but yet he shut down the Met offense and closed Shea stadium to silence.

So we are headed for Chicago and hopefully Andrew will be doing a statistical breakdown of how these teams match up before Wednesday but at first blush it is hard to be optimistic against this well balanced team from top to bottom. They have gotten above average performances from just about everyone on their team on both the offensive and defensive ends.

We can match up in the pitching department but even with Manny, Blake, and possibly Rafy we look to be on the short end of the offensive stick, but these are the Cubs so anything can happen.

The great numbers of the staff don't look so tough if you look through the right colored blinders. Zambrano has been awful since his no hitter and his quest for personal glory may have blown his chance for post-season success. RIch Harden is just a twinge away from shutting himself down and Ted Lilly is carrying a 6.61 ERA into these playoffs after folding under the pressure in 2002/2007. We will ignore the success he had in 2003 and consider it an outlier. I don't know what to say about Ryan Dempster. He was a long shot to have this kind of season at age 31 but he did. 

By Wednesday all the numbers will be broken down and none of it will probably mean anything as someone as nationally obscure as Blake DeWitt may end up deciding the outcome. What we know for certain is that there will be heros and goats in every game and some careers right or wrong will be defined by how they perform during the next 30 days.

I just plan on enjoying it, we don't get to play in October very often these days and we've never had someone like Manny on our side when we have gotten there.