Astros and Brewers Series

Things have come down a little to Earth for Mike Quade. His team has played .500 ball for the last week, losing two of three to the Astros and taking two of three from the Brewers. The slight letdown has not been due to the pitching, which has been pretty decent, especially against the Brewers where it was outstanding.

The problem really has been the offense, which has been in a pretty steady funk since Ramirez was hurt. I read where Ramirez was undecided about exercising his player option for 2011. The Cubs are in deep trouble if he doesn't come back, but then again so is he because nobody is going to pay him $14.5 million after the last two seasons. Ramirez has become over time something of a fragile player. Assuming he comes back next year, and there is no reason to suppose he will not, the Cubs would do well to find a backup 3B. that backup isn't, by the way, the totally one-dimensional Jeff Baker, no matter how well he hits left-handers.

But back to the recap, Coleman was very good in his Sunday start and OK in his previous start, a game the Cubs were lucky to win on the Soto homer in a sloppily played game. Actually, play was sloppy for both sides throughout the series. Silva was pretty shaky in his start, but he had not pitched in a while. Wells was mediocre.

The Cubs continued their offensive funk throughout the Brewers series. They had the game in hand Friday night mainly due to Zambrano's dominance, but they were the beneficiaries of some really dreadful defense by Milwaukee, as well as some solid clutch hitting by Zambrano who had three hits as well.

The best news was the Zambrano and Dempster starts. Both pitched very well, and Zambrano was absolutely dominant on Friday night. I thought that Ken Macha, the Brewers manager, rather confirmed an earlier observation in this blog that Z has changed his style, becoming more of a pitcher, since his return to the rotation.

"You know what? I thought earlier in the year, [Zambrano] threw harder," said Milwaukee manager Ken Macha. "Tonight, I thought he had more movement and he didn't throw the ball as hard. He threw 90-91 [mph], but he was cutting the ball, he was sinking it. He threw several curveballs 70 mph. I talk a lot about having that slowness, being able to control the bat speed, and he did that."

I recall that when Sweet Lou banished the guy to the bullpen it was so that he could recover his velocity. Could he have been wrong again? No way, fans. Piniella was always right. Well, if only they had fired him when they should have, there might have been a more interesting and promising finish to the season than there is now.

People are still mumbling about trading Z, but, to my mind, the guy for all his faults is just capable of being so good, you cannot give that away. Arguably, Zambrano has been the best pitcher in the NL since his return. Maybe they should send the whole team to a shrink.