The best wide receiver in Chicago sports is ready to make his debut at the highest level of his profession.

The only problem? He’s not a Bear, he’s a Cub.

The Jeff Samardzija ‘era’ begins today when he takes Kerry Wood’s spot on the roster. Despite a history of being promoted through the minor leagues without a track record that suggests he deserves it, Samardzija has actually pitched better every time he moves up a level. His stats were better at AA than A, and better at AAA than AA. In fact, his numbers at Iowa this year, (4-1, 3.13 ERA, 40 Ks and 16 BBs in 37 innings) are pretty good. This looks the one time in his minor league career when his numbers warrant the promotion.

The curious thing about his promotion isn’t just that if he got off the plane and headed southwest to Bourbonnais instead of east to Wrigley he’d be the best wide receiver in Bears camp. It’s that a team in need of a bullpen arm has promoted a starting pitcher.

Since Samardzija has been a Cub, he’s been a starting pitcher almost all of the time (54 starts in 59 games pitched), and there’s a good chance he’ll start tomorrow against the Marlins.

So what does that do for the Cubs’ bullpen?

Starting Samardzija tomorrow would give Rich Harden the extra day of rest the Cubs are going to try to give Rich as often as possible. But starting Sean Marshall on Saturday would accomplish the same thing.

And, if you start Samardzija tomorrow, you push Jason Marquis from a Sunday start against the Marlins to a Monday night start in Milwaukee…against CC Sabathia. Uh…no.

So do you skip Marquis then? If you do, then the pitching matchups for the Milwaukee series are:

Monday: Lilly v. Sabathia
Tuesday: Zambrano v. Sheets
Wednesday: Dempster v. Parra
Thursday: Samardzija or Marquis v. Suppan

Or…maybe Lou will do this. What if you give Harden two extra days of rest? What if you set up a rotation of Harden, Lilly, Zambrano and Dempster v. the Crew? Is that something you might be interested in?

I think you want to find a way to have Harden pitch against the Brewers. If you pitch him tomorrow, he pitches the finale against them on Thursday night. But if you bump him just one day, he misses. So I’d save him for the opener in Milwaukee. The A’s found that Harden didn’t suffer from extra rest. Some guys you try to give an extra day to and they aren’t sharp. With Harden, the more days off they gave him the better he was.

What do we really expect out of Samardzija (and yes, I keep tying his last name so that I can learn how to spell it.)

His start would smell like a showcase just before the trade deadline except for the fact that apparently he has a no-trade clause. So he’s up to pitch for the Cubs’ amusement, not for those of scouts on other teams.

Analysts keep saying that the pressure of a pennant race won’t get to him because he’s played college football in front of 80,000 screaming fans. Yeah, that’s great. He went to Notre Dame. So let’s just say he might be used to be playing in big games, but he’s not used to actually winning any of them.

Speaking of Cubs’ pitching prospects, how about the arm on Peoria righthander Julio Castillo?

Apparently the Bob Novoa look-a-like tried to chuck that ball into the Dayton dugout, but he missed and hit a fan, who had to be taken to the hospital.

Castillo has been charged with felony assault, and a balk.

17 players were ejected in the brawl, though they had to rescind some of the ejections because they didn’t have enough guys to finish the game.

Apparently, the brawl started when a Peoria batter was hit by a pitch in the top of the first. Three Peoria hitters had been hit the night before so Ryne Sandberg’s spunky bunch decided to retaliate. Castillo hit the second batter of the bottom of the first, Zack Cozart in the melon. That started the argument at the beginning of the video, just before Castillo tried to play dunk tank with the Dragons’ dugout.

This is a first for the Cubs’ organization. They had a pitcher who hit a guy in the face in the on-deck circle, they’ve had a pitcher kill an osprey with a ball, but nailing a fan in the face is a new one.

Actually, how do we know the guy wasn’t asking for it? You always see fans stand up behind the dugout asking for a player to throw them a ball. They never tell you how hard you should throw it.

All of this is really going to make Tuesday night’s ridiculous minor league game between Peoria and Kane County at Wrigley that much more fun. Not only are fans staying away in droves, but now you can get Carol Slezak bleating about this incident, too.

Kind of makes you wonder who the genius who scheduled the minor league game at Wrigley on a night when the Cubs were playing…90 miles away…against the Brewers at the same time?

Brilliant!