I'd be interested to hear what Cubs fan John Judis has to say about Lou Piniella's decision to take out ace Carlos Zambrano after six innings and only 85 pitches last night. Piniella's rationale was that he wants to bring Zambrano back on three days' rest for game four on Sunday. As good as Carlos Marmol has been this year, I think this was pretty clearly the wrong decision. If the series goes five games, you'd rather have Zambrano pitching game five on full rest than pitching game four on short rest (particularly since Lou already tried it once two weeks ago and it didn't work). And if the Cubs lose the series in fewer than five games, they're going to wish they'd let Zambrano go another inning or two. Of course hindsight is 20/20, but it's just hard to think of another example of a manager taking out his ace so early in a tie game early in a series in order to bump him up a day in the rotation later on. Typically you only bring back your game one starter on short rest in game four if you're down 2-1 at that point; for Lou to pre-emptively make that move in the seventh inning of a 1-1 game is puzzling. But for those East Coast viewers who stayed up late to watch the game and hadn't seen the Diamondbacks play much this year, you got a taste of what NL West fans have had to put up with all year. The Diamondbacks are a maddening team to play because they always seem to be outmanned talent-wise (Brandon Webb notwithstanding) and don't do any one thing particularly well, but they don't make many mistakes and always come up with clutch at-bats in close games. You end up losing 3-1 or 4-3 or whatever and have no idea how you just got beat. A final note: it was great to tune into the Red Sox-Angels game on TBS and hear Steve Stone doing color commentary. I'd been wondering where he'd been the last few years after leaving the Cubs' broadcast booth (apparently on bad terms). Not that Stone is the best color commentator in the world (though I'll take him over Tim McCarver any day), but I have such fond memories of watching him and Harry Caray on WGN that it was nice to see him turn up again. --Josh Patashnik