Cubs season HR pace: 132
Darwin Barney NL WAR rank: t6
Starlin Castro NL dWAR rank: 2
Team defensive efficiency (NL rank): .698 (7)

Paul Maholm's ERA+ is now higher than Jeff Samardzija's.

17-1 game will do that to you.

Soriano
April: .250/.263
May: .353/.591
June: .374/.596

We can talk about Soriano being streaking and all but he's been "hot" now for two months. It's a shame that the Cubs are so crappy and wasting Soriano's fine season.

FG has Soriano at 2.3 WAR and BRef has him at 1.1 WAR. On FG he is tied for 21st most in the NL.

Soriano has been passable offensively the last couple of seasons. I thought he was absolutely finished after his 84 OPS 2009 campaign, but he's rebounded nicely. Certainly not worth what he's making, nor a guy you build a team around, but still not a complete embarrassment. He's already within striking distance of his 2009 totals in doubles and homers, which is incredible when you consider that he basically did nothing the first month of the season.

It must be strange for Soriano to hear all this talk of rebuilding and when the team projects to be good again given that there's no chance he will be part of that final phase.

According to FG he's on pace to be worth his salary this year and then some.

Hard to believe that it's only 2-0 ... feels like the Cubs are down by 7 or so.

Rizzo!

Rizzo is awesome!

Out, haha. Right. I'll take it, though.

Soriano playing good defense. The world just makes no sense anymore.

This team might just crack 600 runs this year!

Buckle up, everyone.

Marmol looked frighteningly good in that inning.

Len mentioned yesterday that Marmol was told to throw more fastballs, which he apparently has since returning.