I'm not going to spend a great deal of time on last night's game; a light-hitting, painful debacle that the Cubs lost 3-0. The short story is that the Cubs got a real nice effort from Ryan Dempster, and pretty much nothing from anyone else in dropping their fifth straight. Actually, you could have saved yourself about an hour, just by checking out after the fifth-inning home run by Ty Wigginton. Seriously, the game was all but over after that, as the Cubs could no nothing against Randy Wolf -- yeah, that Randy Wolf -- who went the distance. Fortunately, few places in places get an offense off the skids quite like Great American Ball Park, where the Cubs go for a three-game set against the Reds starting Friday.
In the meantime, perhaps we can talk about a few more interesting topics, such as:
Could we be thanking the Mets after the season?
About the only the only things keeping quite a few Cub fans from jumping off the nearest building is that the Mets swept the Brewers -- in Milwaukee. This maintained the Cubs 4.5 game lead in the division this week, and if you can couple this with a good series against them September 22th - 25th at Shea, I'll personally forgive them for '69. Maybe Santo will too.
Speaking of the Brewers, the final word is in, and it's no to the CC no-no. I say good. I give baseball credit for not going out of their way to pad stats, which many expected them to do. And shame on the Brewers. I've seen that play six time now. I defy you to find a scorekeeper who scores that any differently, unless there is an actual throw involved.
Where's Carlos?
This whole thing is starting to sound like "Where's Waldo?" According to numerous reports, Carlos Zambrano all but disappeared yesterday, and missed his scheduled MRI, which has been moved to today. No appointment, and no appearance at the ballpark. I'm waiting nervously, but I'm wondering if he knows it's something bigger than we hope, and just wanted to deal with it personally first.
Kevin Hart has been called up in the meantime, to replace Sean Marshall in the bullpen. They say it's to help a tired pen, which seems funny to me in September. What? Minor leaguers aren't tired after playing 130 games or so?
Rich Harden
As if the thought of losing one top-tier starter isn't bad, there's now a game of he is/he isn't going on with Rich Harden, who say he's got no health issues to speak of. Lou says different. Me? I'm not concerned. I followed Rich Harden just close enough to realize that he'd be babied like a newborn by the Cubs; at least for the rest of this season. Honestly, if the Cubs can string together a few wins, I could easily see him not pitching more than about 15 innings the rest of the way. And if he needs an unofficial 15-day DL, couple with la ight workload to get ready for the playoffs, so be it.