Top Ten reasons to keep watching Chicago baseball

To put it simply, Chicago baseball has been difficult to watch right now. The Cubs were supposed to run away with the poor NL Central and while the Sox expectations were not high, the sporadic hitting has made it frustrating to pay attention. But it's times like these that separate the real fans from the phonies. Real fans are going to pay attention while fake fans are going to continue to file into Wrigley. (BOOM... ROASTED!) But there are a ton of reasons why you the fan should continue to watch, Below are the top 10.

10. Cub Milestones
Both Carlos Zambrano and Ted Lilly are shooting for their 100th wins of their career. Big Z is on 99 while Lilly is not too far behind with 95. Both TV announcing crews do a great job honoring marks like that, making the games that much more fun to watch.

9. Gordon Beckham
Beckham will most likely be up in the bigs by mid-June, and he is surely the most anticipated prospect to be called up for the Sox in the last 10 years. Where he will play is interesting also, as he has ties to play third, short, second and even played a little center in spring training. How sick would it be if he created an Evan Longoria-like spark and didn't miss a beat in the move to the bigs?

8. Slumping stars
Derek Lee and Alexei Ramirez have been downright pitiful this season. Neither are hitting over .210, and both need to succeed if the team is going to win. Both have been rightfully benched. Alexei should turn it around within the next few weeks while a veteran like Lee just needs to find his stroke. Regardless, these make for interesting story lines, as Ramirez and D-Lee are key components for their respective teams.

7. Carlos Quentin



Quentin went into the season with something to prove after the should-have-been MVP broke his hand. And Carlos hasn't let himself down. While his average has dipped to .245, his on-base is .352. He had an early lead on the home run title but Carlos Pena has just been on a tear (yay for fantasy baseball). If he can up up the average there is no doubt we will see numbers similar to his 2008.

6. Pitching
There are so many interesting story lines with the pitching for both teams. Buehrle has been awesome while Floyd and Danks have both looked good too (Danks needs to turn things around though), but the senior citizen duo of Colon and Contreras have been subpar. Meanwhile on the North side, the big four have done enough, but Zambrano and Dempster have not lived up to expectations. Oh, and both bullpens have been disastrous.

5. What else you going to do?
Alright, the Hawks are still playing, so it's hard to make this argument, but they play once every three days. And all ESPN talks about is Manny, A-Rod and Brett Favre so by default I have steered clear of that.

4. Milton Bradley
This might be unfair because I have never met Bradley (or any major leaguer for that matter), but he is out of his mind. All of the fan's fears have come true, almost as if he is trying to be an idiot. It's only a matter of time before he does something even more ludicrous than he has already done and I want to be there when it happens.

3. Two explosive managers



The only good thing about both teams not playing well is the fact that the likelihood of a manager rant escalates. And as we have said a million times before, Ozzie and Lou are baseball's two greatest "ranters." We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of Guillen throwing Ken Williams under the bus for lack of offense. I'd just settle for another blowup doll incident at this point.

2. Red Line series
Now the games don't start until mid-June, but it's never too early to start discussing Chicago baseball's most anticipated regular-season games. Last year was one of the more memorable six-game sets, with the Cubs taking the first three at Wrigley followed by a Sox sweep at the Cell. While you cannot ever expect another Michael Barrett punch, something outlandish along those lines would make for interesting contests.

1. It's May
As long as you can the games back to a minimum, come August, if you're playing good ball, that's all that matters. The Sox are three games out in a division led by the Royals while the Cubs -the most talented team in MLB on paper- are 2.5 games out and should turn it around. Almost anybody can win both divisions, and even if both teams were 10+ games out right now, I wouldn't be worried.