Boxscore

Aaron “Lemon” Harang had another crappy start for the Reds, allowing 6 runs in 4 1/3 innings. More telling than anything, though, was his 7 walks. Ouch. He has had mainly bad outings since his relief work in the extra innings game on May 25. Perhaps a start off is in order.

The Cubs, bouyed by the announcement of the Rich Harden trade, dropped 7 runs on the Reds to cakewalk to a victory.

The loss dropped the Reds into a tie for first place of the second half of the division with the Pirates. If only that placing garnered a playoff spot.

A day after the Brewers traded for ace C.C. Sabathia, the Cubs made their own move. And for once, it doesn’t look like GM Jim Hendry screwed things up.

A’s starter Rich Harden, he of the 5-1 record with a 2.34 ERA, is now a Cub. And all Chicago had to give up was mostly players they didn’t want anyway.

Going to the A’s are Matt Murton, Sean Gallagher, Eric Patterson, and Josh Donaldson. Murton had bobbed up and down the last couple of years, and despite his great head of red hair, he really hadn’t done anything to prove he belonged in the big leagues. Getting rid of Gallagher removes the logjam of Seans that the club’s had a problem with. Patterson is Corey’s brother, so you know he can’t have much more than suck in his DNA. And Donaldson is a minor leaguer.

Coming to the Cubs along with Harden is reliever Chad Gaudin, who’s been average throughout his career.

While he’s no Wayne Krivsky, Hendry’s made his fair share of bad trades. Steve Trachsel and Juan Pierre immediately come to mind. However, he’s balanced that with his trades for Aramis Ramirez and Derrek Lee, although anyone could have fleeced David Littlefield out of Ramirez. Still, this one seems to fall closer into that latter category.

It took Hendry until the midway point of the season, but he finally fixed the rotation. We’ll have to see if he did it in enough time.

Despite early-season predictions of the Central again being the weakest division in the National League, that hasn’t been the case in the first half, especially judging by the number of players representin’ the NLC.

Led largely by Chicago not sucking for a change, 7 Cubs were placed on the team. Geovany Soto, Kosuke Fukudome, and Alfonso Soriano were all voted on as starters, although Soriano is injured and probably won’t play.

Lance Berkman and Ryan Braun round out the other fan-voted starters from the Central. Not bad for last year’s weakest division. 5 of the 8 starting spots. And there’s a great chance that either Edinson Volquez–the Reds token star–or Carlos Zambrano will start the game.

How the pathetic have risen.

Boxscore

Ryan Dempster hasn’t won a game on the road for all of 2008. With a start where he pitched 6 innings and allowed only 2 runs, you might think he would have broken that string. Especially if you knew that the Cubs scored 6.

Alas, Carlos Marmol swooped in for the vulture win. Marmol has struggled lately, so putting him in the game in the 7th with the Cubs sporting a spiffy new 3 run lead might have seemed like a good time for him to work some things out. But it wasn’t.

Mike Fontenot gave Marmol the vulture win with his go-ahead homer, leaving Dempster to stew in the dugout, happy that the team won but wishing, just wishing, that he could finally win on the road.

This week on the podcast:

• Shawn Chacon’s breathtaking misadventures
• Lou Piniella gets fired. Up.
• Why we hate umpires

And all this *before* Corey Patterson came up with two outs in the bottom of 11 and the winning run on base.

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