One of the most underappreciated players of the last 20 years. (AP Photo)

Atlanta ace John Smoltz became baseball’s first pitcher to win 200 games and save 150. And who better to achieve this feat against than former teammate Tom Glavine?

Smoltz pitched seven strong innings to earn his NL-leading seventh win of the season and No. 200 for his career.

The future Hall of Famer said the moment felt like “euphoria.”

It’s hard to believe that Smoltz, who just turned 40 last week, has been so incredibly consistent over his career. He’s always viewed as sort of the third wheel of the Greg Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz trio, which is unfortunate. If he’d pitched anywhere else from 1988 to 2002 (when Glavine left the Braves) he’d be considered one of the best pitchers of our era — which is what he deserves.

Glavine, meanwhile, failed to pick up win No. 296 despite his quality performance. When he reaches 300, the celebration will undoubtedly be much greater than Smoltz’s was on Friday.

Just, out.

Today, this question applies to the Cubs. But in general, it applies to just about every club.

A team’s best reliever should not be sitting on the bench when the game is on the line in the bottom of the eighth inning.

The Cubs had an 8-5 lead over Los Angeles when the Dodgers came to bat. Here’s the inning summary:

Things got a little out of hand. Anyway, let’s break it down.

As soon as Bob Howry loaded the bases, Lou Piniella turned to Will Ohman.

Piniella went with the left-handed Ohman to face the left-handed Andre Ethier.

If Piniella had bothered to check, he would have known that Ethier has no more than a 13 point split in his batting average and on base percentage against lefties and righties. In fact, in 2006, Ethier’s batting average was 53 points HIGHER against lefties.

(The blame for this doesn’t solely lie on Piniella — Grady Little then benched Ethier for Olmedo Saenz DESPITE that information.)

My results-oriented readers would say Saenz’s basehit was the result of good managing. Admittedly, Saenz’s splits are ridiculous against lefties, but if I were Little here, I would have been considering the extra-inning possibility and left Saenz on the bench.

But I digress. Len Kasper and Bob Brenly actually brought up a good point at this juncture of the game: Ryan Dempster is moving into the starting rotation soon, and Angel Guzman is expected to fill the closer role.

Why, then, did Piniella go with Guzman instead of Dempster!? Dempster could have held the lead, or at least salvaged a tie, and Guzman could have closed the game in the ninth — which is what Piniella will expect of him in the near future.

It’s this same insistence that closers must only be used in the ninth inning in close game situations that caused the Cubs to lose Friday night.

Let’s look closer. Guzman came in to face the pitcher spot, which Piniella knew was going to be Andy LaRoche, because he was standing in the on deck circle warming up.

Guzman is a righty, LaRoche is a righty, so this move seems to make sense, right? Wrong.

A quick glance at LaRoche’s minor league numbers indicate this (with admittedly small sample sizes):

vs lefty: .211/.273/.211
vs righty: .241/.318/.405

Now, like I said, those numbers are taken from his stats this year in the minors, which is only about 100 at bats. But also consider that his best comp, according to Baseball Prospectus, is Michael Cuddyer, whose splits this year are overwhelmingly better against righties (last year he was just slightly better against lefties).

Using the information at hand, switching to Guzman seems like a bad decision for whatever reason you choose to use.

Guzman threw the wild pitch, walked LaRoche, then gave up the tying basehit to Rafael Furcal.

It was nice to see Len and Bob actually disagree with a decision Lou made, or in other words, speak from their experience and do their job.

But it’s certainly a cause for concern that they’re noticing these things and the Cubs coaches aren’t.

Just, out.