CC you in NY or LA

Ken Rosenthal releases his CC Sabathia odds as the lefty hits the free agent market in November. Only the top two (Yankees at 5-2 and Angels at 4-1) seem possible to this Spitting Seeds. Nothing else in the list seems to work even remotely at this time.

Soriano: "We can't sprint"

Alfonso Soriano has a theory on why the Cubs didn't win in the postseason. Soriano says the Cubs can't win in series play.

"Yeah, it's tough," he said. "We tried, but it just didn't happen. We played all year like a very good team and we expected a little bit more, but it didn't happen."

While he didn't pass the buck, Soriano said he believes the Cubs were built for a marathon, not a sprint.

"We're a very good team for [162] games, but we don't do nothing after that," he said. "That's the difference. We're not put together for [a short series]."

I think this assessment is only fair in terms of the Cubs being too right-handed in terms of their power. Only Jim Edmonds brought a routinely robust bat from the left side. When the Cubs face a team like the Dodgers with a righty-only rotation, this right-handed stacking can only hurt their opportunity to score runs.

The Cubs, however, still thrived against all sorts of pitchers all season long. They dominated the National League, winning 97 games, and they might be the most well-rounded team in baseball. Their rotation trotted out three aces against the Dodgers, yet each looked extremely hittable. Well-rounded teams with front-line pitching is perfectly built for the postseason. The Cubs just failed to put anything together in any facet of the game. Call it tightening up, choking or poor playing; the Cubs were built to succeed but didn't.

Cursed Kenney

Something that went under-published in recent days: Cubs chairman Crane Kenney, who isn't much of a baseball man in the first place, hired a Greek Orthodox priest to lift the "curse" on the Cubs. Cubs players didn't know about it until they saw the curse removal on TV. A TBS camera man happened to catch it.

The story began a couple days ago, when Cubs Chairman Crane Kenney left a message on Greanis’ voice mail to call him. Greanis thought his friends were playing a prank on him, but when he eventually got in contact with Kenney, he found out the reason for the call.

“He said, ‘I’m a devout Catholic, and I’m not superstitious, but if there is anything there, I want to take care of it,’” Greanis said Thursday.

The Billy Goat curse was placed on the Cubs in 1945 when Billy Goat Tavern owner William Sianis was denied entrance to a World Series game at Wrigley Field because he wanted to bring in his goat. The curse was immortalized in newspaper columns over the years, particularly by syndicated columnist Mike Royko, and gained widespread attention during the 2003 postseason when Fox played it up during the Cubs-Florida match-up in the National League Championship Series.

Kenney told Greanis that they wanted a Greek Orthodox priest to bless the dugout, since the alleged curse was placed by a Greek-American.

Cubs management really doesn't get it, do they? I mean, this sort of thing just promotes the lugubrious hex that some say haunts the Cubs. Get a clue, Crane Kenney. It's a joke that someone in his position would believe in such a silly superstition as a curse. His odd attention to something Lou Piniella himself deems ridiculous only adds distraction to the matter at hand.

On the other side of the same coin, Cubs players should be able to shrug off this sort of misstep by their organization.

Dodgers: Cubs buckled

Whether or not we buy it, the Dodgers are saying that pressure got to the Cubs. Joe Torre may know a thing or two about the pressure of the postseason.

"Starting in Chicago may have been a benefit for us," Torre said. "Because I just thought that with everything going on with them having the record they've had, I've experienced it before.

"It's a lot of pressure when you're playing at home. I may be off base, but that's just my feeling."

Dodgers outfielder Juan Pierre, the former Cub, shared Torre's opinion that the Cubs were under big-time pressure.

"In Chicago, everybody worries about the Cubs and you can't relax and go out and play without hearing the hype and it definitely adds pressure, because you're supposed to win," Pierre told MLB.com. "They'd have done better if they opened on the road.

"The fans there are craving it for so long, it escalates and snowballs as soon as any little thing goes wrong, and everybody starts thinking about the past."

White Sox willing to fight

The White Sox 5-3 win in front of a "black out" crowd at Wrigley means the Sox live to fight another day against the Rays. A three-run fourth proved enough to rattle the Rays in their first opportunity to clinch, and the Sox looked comfortable the rest of the way.

Afterwards, A.J. Pierzynski said this was the "loosest" team he's been on in terms of big games. Pierzynski must be on to something. These Sox have won four straight elimination games in the past two weeks, including three straight over three different teams to get into the posteason; something that's never been done before. Closing them out will be tough for the Rays, a feelgood bunch that looked on a roll in the first two games of the series.

Gavin Floyd goes against Andy Sonnanstine Monday afternoon at the Cell. Floyd is extremely tough to hit at home, posting a .209 batting average against.

Angels survive thanks to mercurial Napoli

Mike Napoli continues to baffle with wild streaks of productivity and slump. Tonight, productivity won out in Boston as Napoli belted two home runs and scored the game's winning run in a 5-4 Angels survivor win at Fenway. With the win, Los Angeles forces game four Monday night.

Napoli, who continues his September rampage that saw his average climb from .212 to .273, was down at .197 for a day in mid June before rebounding to .223 in August. He started April off at a solid clip before bottoming out to .218 by the end of the month. He got it back up to the .260's and then .258 in early June before the slide sub-Mendoza.

Overall, his numbers have generally improved over his first three seasons. He's at least a candidate to earn more playing time if he stays hot, but has yet to reach 300 at bats in his career. That makes him an iffy fantasy option again next year, unless youngster Jeff Mathis finally gets his act together. He started hot, but then slumped to .197 himself. Even so, he ended up with more at bats than Napoli.

A steal, or not a steal?

Jacoby Ellsbury's attempted steal of second base tonight, a simple caught stealing in the box score, deserves a little more attention, I think.

For as long as baseball's been scored, players stealing second, who then fall off the bag as Ellsbury did, have been considered "caught" stealing. I've always thought this was a flawed scoring of the play, and I think the remedy should be to give the player a steal and a caught stealing on the same play. Statistically this credits the player with reaching the bag before the throw, giving us a better indicator of his ability to steal, but also explains to us why he was out (over-sliding the bag).

Just an idea I've been kicking around forever. Baseball is unlikely ever to adopt this practice as the could not possibly go back and find out how many caught stealing calls were actually steals and then tag outs. Oh well.