Shirk has hope.

From article, Notes: Cubs bolster battery

The Cubs have one more month to play, and general manager Jim Hendry already was looking ahead to next year.

For some reason, Jim has stopped looking ahead.

"It'll be a busy offseason for us, an important offseason for us," Hendry said Friday. "I haven't been hanging my head -- we've been focusing on what we have to do."

It is always important--and busying--to clean your desk out after you are fired for reckless incompetence. But apparently nothing to "hang your head" about.

"Hopefully, the young pitchers will help me sort out things better by the end of the month," Hendry said. "Hopefully, guys who are having good years can finish up that way. You hope to win as many games as you can and not blow games like we did in Pittsburgh."

That's a lot of hope you're hoping for, Jim. And which rookies are having the good years? The right fielder who Dusty won't play even if he hits .400? The worst overall shortstop in the majors? The idiot parade of starting pitchers?

Also, "you hope to win as many games as you can"? Your team has won as many games as it can, Jim: 55. I'd hope that you'd hope for a few more.

Hendry said it's better to judge the players when they're facing a contending team rather than a team that's out of the race. The Cubs will be facing some Wild Card contenders, including the Giants this weekend, the Cincinnati Reds, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies.

So you need to watch them play the AL, then, because nobody in the NL is seriously contending to win the World Series.

I don't quite understand this comment by Hendry. Theoretically, the teams with better talent would be the contending teams, and so he is saying that you have to judge players based on how they do against the best players in the game. There are only five teams with winning records in the NL, so you can only judge a player by how he performs against these teams? There are sixteen teams in the National League, eleven of which have sub-.500 records. Apparently this chunk of 68.75% of the league is unimportant, because only 31.25% of the league matters.

"When you're playing people trying to get in, you should have pride about beating somebody in the race," Hendry said.

Maybe you should stick to trying to beat the other 68.75%, Jim Shirk.

Minor matters: Jerome Williams gave up five runs on nine hits over 6 1/3 innings in Iowa's 7-4 loss to Oklahoma.

Oh god he's still bad. But you can never hate a guy who replaced Latroy Hawkins on your roster.