Harang Tops Zambrano As Reds Take Two of Three from Cubs

By: kevinhill

For the second day in a row, the Cubs seemed in a funk.  Errors, again by the pitcher, lackluster hitting, poor baserunning, you name it.  The result is the first series loss of the season.  The Cubs, held scoreless yesterday, stayed that way today through six innings.  They didn’t touch home plate today until the sixth inning.  They only did it once that inning and didn’t bother to do it again the rest of the game.

Zambrano battled and kept Chicago in the game going seven innings and leaving with only a two run deficit.  The bullpen was beat around though, and the game got out of reach.  But let’s not dwell on the details of a poor game, let’s look at highlights from today…the off field moves.

Lou had a talk with Milton Bradley.  The sterilized version is “hey, you can play again when your 100%.”  Now I know he isn’t 100%, but I bet from Lou it sounded a little more like “if the best you can muster is three strikeouts and dogging it to first base when you finally do make contact, your ass is on the pine!”  According to Len Casper, Bradley will be dropped to sixth when he returns.

Another surprise was that Lou juggled the lineup, going away from the strict righty lefty rule.  While it didn’t work today, it makes me think we can see Ramirez moving up in the order soon.  Today he still hit fifth, with Theriot taking the second spot and bumping Fukudome to third.  I still contend he needs to be hitting fourth on this team.

The final move was the return of Jeff Samardzija from Iowa.  While his performance doesn’t look good on paper, he throws a fastball with way more life than anyone except maybe Carlos Marmol.  As Bob Brenly told stated, he can just aim for the chest protector and let the ball move where it may.

I see a lot of griping on Twitter about the Cubs play.  It isn’t near as bad as they would make it out to be.  We are only a game behind last year’s pace at this point.  The Cubs head to St. Louis and if they take two of three in this “what have you done for me lately” world, the tweets will be about the imminent World Series in Chicago.

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1 Comment

  1. Most fans understand the baseball season is a marathon…many games, many moons, many ups & downs. No question the Cubs played poorly the past two days, but that’s no reason to get Twitterpated in April!!!

    Comment by Bullpen Brian on April 23, 2009

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