Fukudome and 99.99% playoff odds

Kosuke Fukudome's playing time has become less and less as the season has progressed. His overall batting line has fallen to .259/.360/.378. A .738 OPS out of your right fielder pretty much sucks. His OPS since the all-star break has been a pathetic .619. His VORP was above 10 after 3 or 4 weeks of the season and is now 5.0. He's been below replacement level offensively most of the season. A decision to bench Fukdome should have been made at least 3 months ago, but Lou has finally decided it's time and is no longer pretending that Fukudome is his starting RF. "We'll see what we do [with Fukudome]," Piniella said. "All year I've played everybody. Now I'll play the people that I feel can help us the most offensively. He'll get back in there, but I'm looking to win baseball games now. This is no longer a situation where you can experiment too much." Fukudome has 20 plate appearances in September so obviously Lou feels that other players give him the best chance to score runs and he's right. Without a doubt. More from Lou. "I'm not disappointed in anybody," Piniella said. "It has nothing to do with disappointment or anything else. I've always adhered to the philosophy that the first five months of the season you can experiment a lot, you can do a lot of different things, you can play everybody. But boy, I tell you, when it gets down to it at the end, you're gonna play the people that you feel offensively can give you the best chance to put runs on the board." "I've been using his talents at the end of games," Piniella said. "I've put him in the outfield, because he's a superior outfielder defensively. But we've got to score runs. We're playing good teams, and we're playing for a championship. If I get him in there and he swings the bat, you're darn right I'll keep him in there." When asked something along the lines of the team not paying $48 million for a defensive replacement, Lou had this to say: "I don't have an answer for that." I do. You paid about $44 million too much for a defensive specialist. Nothing you can do now. Use those skills to help the team, but limit or completely eliminate if at all possible, the skills that have hurt this team over the last 5 months, which would mean giving him few or no plate appearances at all. There's not one hitter on this team who is worse than Fukudome. And a couple of the pitchers give you a better chance of doing something than Fukudome does at the plate. I don't know why this decision took so long, because Fukudome has sucked ass for a long time now. .688 OPS in July, .546 in August and a pathetic .311 in September. May and June were OK (.792 and .789), but nothing impressive for a right fielder. This has been obvious for some time now. I'm just glad it was finally done. Lou has shown that he doesn't care about what someone has done in the past or what kind of money they make, if you perform, you play. I don't always agree with who thinks is performing (Ryan Theriot in 2007, but I'll give him a pass since in 2008 that has at least turned out to be quite beneficial to the Cubs offensively anyway). Since April 23rd, Fukudome has hit .243/.338/.356. And it's only getting worse. He's not even as good as Ryan Theriot was last year. Moving on… BP's Playoff Odds Report now has the Cubs at a 99.99% chance of reaching the playoffs and a 99.89% chance of winning the division. I don't see how the Cubs are going to blow a 10 game lead with 13 left to play, but apparently there is a 0.11% chance of them doing that.