Mister Ken over at Will's place has a humorous post dotted with his current annoyances. Ken is feeling less creative lately, resulting in him being left with only his annoyances. For me, I don't get annoyed when I'm not feeling creative, I just get boring. On the other hand, I do get annoyed easily, though certain things tend to trigger states of annoyance especially quickly.

1) lack of sleep
2) people eating my ingredients while I'm trying to cook
3) the Cubs losing close games they could have won

Trigger number three is why I didn't post about Monday's game. Christian summarized my frustrations very succinctly yesterday; one of the great benefits of co-authoring is that sometimes the other guy can write when you're too annoyed to do so. Macias has had a few surprisingly nice games for us, so I'll give him a pass. Or rather, I'll just redirect my anger towards Wendell Kim.

Look, it's nice to have a little feel-good bundle of smiles on the team, but Kim has proven time and again that he is an awful third-base coach. He is tangibly negatively affecting the outcomes of games for the Cubs. He hurts.

Trigger number one, above, is why I missed last night's game. Recognizing that I was in a state of perpetual annoyance because I was really, really tired, I took a nap as soon as I got home and plum slept through the game. I didn't even discover the team had won until this morning; after waking from my nap last night, I refused to check the score to the game, lest I would be up all night because of Trigger Three -- a close loss.

No fear. According to reports, Clement pitched well, the Cubs escaped more Rolen madness, and Derrek Lee continued his hot June. Lee is now hitting 333/379/593 this month, powered by 4 doubles. Over the past three years, June has been Lee's best month (1.005 On-base Plus Slugging), so hopefully this surge will continue. Despite what appeared to be early woes in Cubbie blue, Lee actually performed at virtually the same level in April and May that he has in the past few years:

        2001-2003   2004
           OPS      OPS
April     .741      .744
May       .747      .782
June     1.005      .972

Aces are wild in a few hours, with Prior and Morris battlin'.