tuesday night mu sings tonight's national anthem

with a 1-2 of mark prior and carlos zambrano, the cubs have done a pretty solid job in managing houston's lineup. if kerry wood can come back and avoid injury, that rotation's weakest point is likely to be greg maddux, which is not a bad weak point to have, all things considered. while maddux isn't the immortal maddux from the mid 90s, he still is the WILY VETERAN(tm) who can generally provide you 6-7 IP of 0-4 ER baseball.

meanwhile, over in le stade olympique, johan santana seems to have continued on his recent success, despite losing 2 out of his last 3 starts. in both of those games johan pitched well through about 5-7 innings, giving up 0-1 ER with something like 1BB/6Ks in each of those starts, then the wheels fell off. fortunately for mister santana, the new york mets came a-callin' and he managed to get on track for a 7 IP 1 ER 10 K outing which looked like the kind of line i've been expecting from johan all season long. going into the bottom of the 9th, his line looks like this: 100 pitches, 8 IP, 2H, 2ER, 1BB, 7K. as it turns out, that will be all for mister santana tonight, as he has been mercifully listed to keep his ERA over 2 for the night.

the whitesox have been a source of quality entertaining baseball this season, and tonight has been no exception. down 5-0, in the 8th and 9th innings, the sox scorched armando benitez to the tune of 5 runs (only three of which were credited to him) on home runs by frank thomas and timo perez (the timo-o-meter is currently at 2, for those of you who truly give a damn). frank thomas, while starting kind of slow, is now at ~.300/17/43, which at roughly a 2.5-3 multiplier, looks like another 40/100+ year for mister thomas.

i knew that i jinxed the cubs, as zambrano has mustered up some hits to the middle of that houston lineup. and as i type this sentence, here comes a 2 run single by captain morgan ensberg to give houston a 2-1 lead over carlos zambrano. chuckles has had two bad outings this year, a 7 run shelling at the hands of the arizona diamondbacks, and something like a 4-5 ER game in houston. it looks like chuckles could give up around 4 runs by the time this is all said and done.

sticking with the cubs for a second, i'm once again faced with the chagrin that accompanies the talks of MARK GRUDZIELANEK returning to the cubs. they make it sound like todd walker hasn't been that good... but has anyone stopped and looked at his numbers over on addison ave? i believe, going into tonight's game, he is .286/10/25/0 with 25BB and 25K. i mean, while he's not your prototypical leadoff guy, what more do you want? grudz probably would have a hard time hitting 10 home runs all year, and his .315ish average last season was, i believe, his best in quite some time. basically, he's a backup type player who can give you decent hitting, usually .280+, without much in teh way of power or rbi. not to mention this guy has a slightly torn achilles that he didnt have surgery on, so i doubt he'll be 100% when he gets back. so now, the campaign of this not-read BLAWG is to tell the world this: todd walker should be the cubs' 2B, and i have absolutely zero patience for anyone who tries to convince me that the GRUDZ was the MVP of the cubs last year. excuse me for being old fashioned, but when you have a pitcher named mark prior going 18-6 with a 2.43 ERA, that guy is your MVP, end of story.

jeff bagwell seems to be on the way to stickaforkin'emhe'sdoneville, i'd estimate maybe 2 years left, three if there's some sort of a fluke. he's getting old.

as i continue to type away, zambrano gave up a double to jason lane with one out, so they're intentionally walking ausmus to load the bases. fortunately, the double was a ground rule so captain morgan ensberg couldn't score for first on the play.

in a surprise move, wade miller is hitting for himself in this situation. i'm thinking that the weekend of intensive bullpen usage is whats going through the mind of jimy williams right now, other than, perhaps, the whereabouts of the wanton M missing from his first name.

pop fly. shallow right. nice catch. almost a double play at 2nd. now scrapman craig biggio gets a chance to put this one away for the astros.

after his bobblehead night saturday in milwaukee, scott "i-pod" podsednik is having more o-fers than ray ordonez.

ron santo just screamed "YES!" as surprise defensive stalwart, aramis ramirez, robbed biggio of a double to get the force at 2nd. 2-1 astros at the end of 6, another quality baseball game from a chicago team.

as i prepare to catch a ride home, i would like to note that in the years i've watched chicago baseball, this is easily the best season for quality baseball on both sides of town. the sox have been cardiac, and the cubs have managed to not completely tank with key components missing from their team, so this instills hope in this jaded slacker that, indeed, there might be quite a buzz going on in october in this town. still, there's a long way to go, and the seeming return of quality johan santana starts can't help the sox' quest any.

more later, more sooner.