The Cubs played pretty well Saturday night and managed to pull out a scrappy 5-4 win in 10 innings. I still hate that all right-handed lineup and really all it produced against the lefty is home runs by Soriano and Castro. Lee, despite the hit in the tenth - rather a cheap hit - is not producing at all and no team is going to consistently score runs when their third hitter is that bad, not to mention four and five. Byrd is now in a bit of a slump and Ramirez is just unaccountably bad.
Anyway, once they got the lefty out and into the Rangers' bullpen, good things happened when Colvin, Fukudome, and Fontenot got to hit against a right-handed submariner. Lou finally got to use his optimal pitching rotation of a solid starter (in this case Wells), Marshall, and Marmol.
Sunday's lineup was even stranger than Saturday's. I don't like using a catcher as a DH for one thing. What if your starting catcher gets hurt; you end up losing the DH. Actually, they did wind up losing the DH when Fukudome hit for Soto in the 9th, but by then it did not matter.
However, the Cubs did get off to a good start with a couple of scratch hits, good base-running by the Cubs matched to sloppy defense by the Rangers, and a long ball by Soriano who is getting into another hot streak.
Silva will keep you in the game, although sometimes you wonder if he is fooling anyone or he is just on a lucky roll. Today he did not have his best but he did scratch out 5+ innings. This, however, presented a problem for old Lou in that he felt he had to use Grabow and then Howry to get to the reliable part of his bullpen. As usual, they failed for the most part to add on to the lead, and they dodged a real bullet with these two sorry excuses for major league pitchers. Marshall put out the fire in the 7th and got the game to the closer Marmol. These two guys' arms are going to fall off before the All-Star Game if things don't turn around soon.
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