Some things to read while I work on training Gorman to accurately predict the weather.

Win Expectancy Graph
BR Box Score

Ok, let's start with the positive from last night: Manny Parra picked up a couple of doubles, meaning he's only a little more than 500 hits away from the all-time pitcher record.

Ok, done being positive. Brewed Sports noted that Eric Gagne has the highest HR/9 of any major league pitcher that hasn't been released. So why is he still pitching in high leverage, or really any, situation? The Official Site says Ned is trying so hard to get himself fired Gagne is staying in the eighth inning role.

Jayson Stark listed CC Sabathia as a top-three candidate for NL Cy Young, but decided Tim Lincecum deserves it more. Via The Hardball Times, I found Tim Marchman of the NY Sun, who argues that the sleeper candidate may be Ryan Dempster. That's probably a reach.

Others are still weighing in on Sabathia's near no-hitter. Hal McCoy thinks it was a hit. UmpBump doesn't like Doug Melvin's idea for a new official scoring system.

Manny Ramirez, Mark Teixeira, Adam Dunn...and Ray Durham? MLB Trade Rumors has a list of top upcoming free agents sorted by OBP. Ray Durham makes the top ten.

On injuries:

White Sox 3B Joe Crede left last night's game after 5 innings with tightness in his back.
Nats C Jesus Flores left last night's game on a stretcher, but preliminary reports say it was just an ankle sprain.
Ken Griffey missed his second straight game with a sore back.
Cards OF Joe Mather is done for the year with a broken hand.
White Sox OF Carlos Quentin was scratched from last night's game with forearm soreness.
Rangers C Jarrod Saltalamacchia is done for the year with a strained muscle in his forearm.
Carlos Zambrano left last night's game after five innings with arm trouble. He'll be re-examined today.

We're getting close to the window for teams to negotiate with potential minor league affiliates, and two stories today imply their could be some significant movement in AAA: The Indians are leaving Buffalo and will likely sign a deal with Columbus. Meanwhile, the Dodgers are reportedly moving from Las Vegas to Albuquerque.

Drink up.

Tonight at 7:05 CT, it's Jeff Suppan vs. Ryan Dempster.  Both starters have overperformed so far, and both starters are going to face a good offense tonight.

Here's the BR Game Preview.

Project-a-tron sees this as a very even matchup:

• Brewers: 5.5
• Cubs: 5.3
• Brewers WinExp: 47.5%  (home field swings it back in the Cubs favor)

Go Brewers!

Blah blah blah, this is a big one, whatever.  I don't care how on-the-bubble Sheets is or that we're getting Cameron back or that we're playing the Cubs.  It's game #26, and after the series, we'll have 134 left.  So let's all chill out about that.

That said, it will certainly be an interesting series.  Here are some things I've noticed, and others I'll be watching for.

• We all knew the Cubs were going to be a good team, but there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of their 16-9 start.  They've had a relatively easy schedule, and while they've played a couple of good teams, they haven't beaten very many good pitchers.  Their two-game sweep in New York came off of John Maine and Nelson Figueroa, and while they beat Aaron Harang (hats off to them), they lost to Edinson Volquez.  We took the series at Wrigley to open the season, and there's very little I've seen since to indicate that the Cubs are clearly the better team.
• Left field for the Cubs is a giant, yawning chasm of suck.  Soriano was awful before his injury, and while DeRosa has been okay in his starts in left field, that leaves Mike Fontenot (OPS: 545) at second base.  The Cubs have the offense at other positions to more than make up for it, but it's unusual to see so many people work together to produce so little at an offensive position.
• Kerry Wood isn't the best reliever in the bullpen, but he'll do.  He's striking out about one batter per inning and generally doing a good impression of a major league closer. Carlos Marmol, on the other hand, is downright dominant. I'm not about to give Piniella credit for strategery, but if the Cubs have Wood pitching like this in the 9th and Marmol putting out fires whenever necessary, they will be in very good shape. Maybe even good enough to escape the negative effects of a soft pen outside of those two guys.
• A big part of the Cubs' 16-9 start has been the offensive production of Geovany Soto and Kosuke Fukudome.  Neither one is a huge surprise, though I don't think most people expected both of them to have 900+ OPSs.  Right now, everybody but the left fielders are hitting better than expected, but Soto and Fukudome are in a whole different category.
• Ryan Dempster currently has an ERA of 2.90 and an FIP of 4.24.  Something's gotta give.  A walk rate over 4 per 9 suggests that the ERA will budge first.  If his HR rate ends up around his career average (or worse, as it was last year), that 4.24 will look mighty appealing to Cubs fans.
• As regular readers know, I am not concerned about the goings-on of small samples, so I could care less about the poor clutch hitting over the weekend, or David Riske's last couple of outings.  The Brewers offense as presently constituted will score lots and lots of runs, no matter how bad they look on any given day. 

If all that wasn't enough to think about, mark your calendars for Thursday afternoon: Carlos Zambrano and Yovani Gallardo.  Nice.