Jay Mariotti’s been gone for one day and suddenly it’s a race to see who can take his place as the most annoying newspaper writer in Chicago.  Both Maude and Gordo made strong opening arguments, and honestly, I’m not even sure who to ridicule first.

So why don’t we instead start with Chris DeLuca?

His article today was ostensibly about how the White Sox reacted to Mariotti’s resignation, but less than halfway through it became DeLuca taking shots at Mariotti.  Now, I’m all for that.  I’ve been doing it for 11 years, but it kind of rings hollow…no, pathetic…that DeLuca couldn’t muster the courage to do it until after Mariotti left.  I know the Sun-Times, for obvious reasons, tried to curb their own writers’ criticisms of Mariotti, but somehow, the hollow shell of what Rick Telander once was managed to do it.

But DeLuca really started rambling at the end and started defending his own newspaper.  He even called reports of it’s looming demise “playing fast and loose with the facts.”

This despite the fact that in May, the New York Stock Exchange told the Sun Times they would be de-listed because the newspaper had “had fallen below NYSE minimum standards for average closing share price and average market capitalization.”  The Tribune’s bond rating just got dumped to an even lower rating and it was already beyond junk before that.

Both papers are hemorrhaging readership.  The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released its most recent news consumption survey and they’ve never measured levels of newspaper readership as low as what they found this time.  Forty-six percent of Americans say they read a newspaper regularly.  That number was 71 percent as recently as 1992 and 52 percent two years ago.  They asked those surveyed if they read a newspaper “yesterday” and a whopping 34% said they did.

So, DeLuca says, “He wants you to believe that newspapers — specifically the two biggest ones in Chicago — are dying.”

And DeLuca wants you to believe they aren’t.  For once, Mariotti’s not the one playing “fast and loose with the facts.”

DeLuca also writes:

The Sun-Times was a vibrant, relevant newspaper long before Mariotti arrived 17 years ago. It remains one today. The Sun-Times has built its reputation as being a bulldog covering the city and being the No. 1 source for sports and entertainment coverage. You want to know about the Cubs, Sox, Bears, Bulls or Blackhawks, you read the Sun-Times — either off the rack or on the Internet.

But the fact is that the Sun-Times’ baseball coverage is abysmal.  Cubs’ fans are forced to read the mamby pamby ramblings of the witless and talent starved Gordon Wittenmyer.  Sox fans are stuck with Joe Cowley who is always more concerned with kissing AJ Pierzynski’s ass than actually covering the team.

Truth is, if you want to “know about the Cubs, Sox, Bears, Bulls or Blackhawks” you read the Daily Herald, or you go to the blogs.

DeLuca tries to minimize the departure of Mariotti, but instead of just stating the obvious, that the Sun Times is better off without him because he’d been literally phoning it in for a decade, he tries to make the ridiculous assertion that the Sun-Times still has star power.

Much to Mariotti’s surprise, there are bigger names at the paper. Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper enjoy the kind of international following envied by journalists everywhere. Rick Telander has a national appeal Mariotti never could match.

I like Roger Ebert as much as the next guy, but he’s been battling serious health issues for several years now and only recently got back to reviewing movies on a consistent basis.  If Roeper is followed “internationally” it’s not for his writing in the Sun-Times, it’s for getting to sit in Gene Siskel’s chair for a few years before Ebert pulled the plug on the TV show.  Telander’s relevance and talents have eroded so much over the years that only the presence of Mike Downey across the river is keeping him out of the basement.

DeLuca does make some good points about how Mariotti didn’t work hard, never went into clubhouses or locker rooms, and needed the beat writers to get quotes for him to use in his columns.  Mariotti famously only entered the newsroom the last few years to sit in his weird glass booth and scream for a half hour as part of “Around the Horn” the abomination of a TV show that nine people watch on ESPN every weekday.

I’m glad he’s gone and I won’t miss his bleating, but just getting rid of one blowhard doesn’t make the rest of the mediocre lot more talented.  The way Mariotti covered sports in Chicago the past several years, he already was a blogger.  And there’s a place for blogs and writers who don’t go into the locker room, but you have to be entertaining, and Mariotti wasn’t.

Let’s go to Maude, Phil Rogers, who wrote one of the weakest columns of his tenure, and frankly, it’s astounding.  At least when he does things like his ridiculous +/- trade columns, you can tell he put effort into them.  You see just how woefully dumb he is, but you know he’s trying hard.

Today, he thinks Cubs’ fans are worried that the White Sox are going to beat the Cubs in the World Series.

I mean, seriously, holy shit.  Just how many head injuries has Phil suffered?

Even the lead is horrendously bad.

Beware the sneak attack.

In baseball, more than any other sport, it’s unwise to draw attention to yourself.

This apparently supposes that the Cubs should not have done anything as so foolish as to win 83 of their first 133 games.  This only brings undo attention on you.  No, you should lose more, then you can SNEAK ATTACK!  It’s brilliant.

First-round draft picks who come with hype often turn out to be Corey Patterson or Kip Wells. The trades that don’t make big headlines, like the White Sox’s deal for Carlos Quentin, often turn out to be a lot better than the ones that are analyzed in day-by-day detail for weeks, like the Mets’ addition of Johan Santana.

Sigh.  First round picks like Corey Patterson and Kip Wells didn’t fail because of hype.  They failed because they were not good at playing baseball.  Just because scouts thought they were better than they turned out to be, and shit for brainses (brainses?) like Maude believe them and repeat it doesn’t change it.  Carlos Quentin’s a very good player.  He was of course, a number one draft pick of the Diamondbacks and would have been a top five draft pick except he had Tommy John Disease and had to have surgery and sit out his first pro season.  He was one of the most highly touted prospects in the minors for years.  I don’t get Phil’s point.  Johan Santana has sucked for the Mets and that trade was horrible for them because a) they are in first place and b) Johan is 12-7 with a 2.70 ERA.

You know what?  Screw it.  I’m not going through this crap again to pick it apart line by line.  Maude’s thesis is this.

Cubs fans don’t want their team to lose in the World Series.

Shocking, I know.

Cubs fans really don’t want their team to lose to the White Sox in the World Series.

Wait, you mean it’s OK to lose the World Series as long as you don’t lose it to the White Sox?

Cubs fans will be scarred for life because the Cubs will lose a World Series to the White Sox and the Cubs are better than the White Sox.

I think my brain just exploded.

I’m a Cubs’ fan.  I could give two shits about the White Sox.  They were allegedly in the World Series in 2005 and I didn’t watch a second of it.  I don’t really feel like I missed anything.  But you know what?  Two teams who aren’t rivals of the Cubs, the Red Sox and Rockies played in the World Series last year and I didn’t watch that either.  I want to see the Cubs play in, and hopefully win, a World Series.  I do not care who their opponent is.  It’s been 63 years since the Cubs won the National League.  I don’t care who they play in the World Series, I just want to see those bastards play in one.

Would it suck if they lost a World Series to the White Sox?  Yes.  Yes, it would.  It would also suck if they lost a World Series to the Twins, or the Red Sox, or the LA Lakers.  Especially, the Lakers, come to think about it, because I doubt Pau Gasol even knows the rules.

As for Wittenmyer, the guy really is an unctuous little toad, isn’t he?

For weeks he’s been pissing and moaning about how hard the Cubs’ schedule is in the last 29 games.  Those games start tonight.  For a month he said that the Cubs had better build a lead because it’s going to be tough and they’ll choke.  So what have the Cubs done?  They’ve gone 20-6 since July 30 and they have a six game lead in the division and a 9.5 game lead in the wild card.

Now he’s reminding Ron Santo about Willie Stargell and the Mets 23-7 finish to end the 1969 season.  First off, it’s so germane to the 2008 Cubs, because why?  Because one of the guys on the team is a radio broadcaster?  I would have liked for Ron to have fed Gordon his teeth just for asking.

I don’t think the Cubs playing good teams down the stretch is all bad.  I think last year, the Cubs took advantage of a weak September schedule (they played series against six different teams who were a combined 84 games under .500) to get into the playoffs.  That was the benefit of a weak schedule.

But, they finished the season by going 2-4 on a road trip through Florida and Cincinnati (though the last two games, a win and a loss in Cincinnati came after they clinched) and looked bad doing it.  The Cubs were terrible in Florida, and played just like that in the playoffs and were summarily dismissed by the Diamondbacks in three games.

I like the fact that a far better Cubs team will be pushed down the stretch by teams who are in the playoff hunt (Milwaukee, Philadelphia, the Mets), are trying to hang on to playoff contention (St. Louis) or who are deluded (Houston).

Wittenmyer is freaked out by those 26 games with teams over .500, but unless Houston plays well this weekend against the Cardinals, it could well be that of the final 29 games, nine would be against teams under .500 and 17 against teams over. 500.  Big whup.

I’m getting tired of Gordy constantly sounding his human fire alarm about the Cubs.

Consider this:

The Cubs have a winning record against the NL East, the NL Central and the NL West.  The Cubs have the best home record in baseball, a winning record on the road and the best overall record in baseball.  Their Pythagorean record shows they’ve actually been unlucky and should be 85-48, the Brewers and Cardinals have both overperformed their Pythagorean record and should be 8 and 11.5 games out respectively.  The Cubs have a winning record in day games, a winning record at night, a winning record in extra inning games, a winning record against righthanded starting pitchers and a winning record against lefthanded starting pitchers.  They have a winning record against teams under .500 and a winning record against teams over .500.  They have the best record in the league in their last ten games (8-2) in their last 20 games (16-4) and in their last 30 games (23-7).

If the Cubs played a game under .500 the rest of the way, they’ll finish 97-65.  Milwaukee would have to go 20-9 just to tie.  The Brewers are playing their best baseball of the season right now and guess what their record in the last 29 is?  17-12.

To give you an idea of just how commanding the Cubs lead is, if they went 14-15 the rest of the way, St. Louis would have to go 23-5 to tie for the wildcard with the Cubs, assuming Milwaukee passed the Cubs for the division.

The Cubs lead the National League in runs scored and are tied with the Dodgers for fewest allowed.  Their absurd run differential of +190 is the biggest in the majors by more than 65 runs.  I have gone on and on, and I could go on and on for a lot longer.

So consider this.  Baseball Prospectus calculates the percentage that the Cubs will make the playoffs at 99.64%.

Only the Anaheim Angels have a higher percentage and they have a 15 game lead with 30 to play.

But consider that the Cubs have played so well this year, that their playoff percentage has been over 90 percent every day since the end of July, and has only been less than 90 percent for seven days since June 12.

The Cubs we watch every day are the best team they’ve had since 1935.  That’s right, there are people who are more than 70 years old who have never even had a chance to catch a glimpse of a Cubs team this good.

So why is Gordon always pissing into the tent?

Remember back in June when he predicted doom for the Cubs with his 101 reasons they wouldn’t win?

Well, when the Brewers got CC Sabathia he really freaked out.  Since the day the Brewers got CC they have gone 27-16, that’s pretty good.

The Cubs have gone 29-14, that’s better.

But I’m sure he’ll soldier on.  Being pale and trying to find a way to show how “objective” he is, by predicting failure.

And still being wrong.