The Cubs got a quality outing finally from Coleman, but they just did manage to pull it out in a dramatic bottom of the ninth. Once again their brains and bats seemed to seize up as soon as they got a scoring opportunity. With the sole exception of that ninth inning when they followed the Pena home run with good, solid at-bats that culminated in Fukudome's game winning hit after he had worked the count to his advantage.
On Sunday, it was back to business. Dempster pitched a nice game. The Cubs showed an amazing lack of patience with Cueto, who was making his first start off the DL and was missing all over the place, especially early in the game. The Cubs insisted on hitting his pitches, though, with men on base. They left nine runners and Castro, who is just not looking like a potential superstar anymore, personally stranded six runners.
I think Quade knows what is wrong here to judge from his post-game remarks. At least he knows why Castro isn't hitting and presumably he can expand that analysis to include Byrd, Soriano, and Ramirez for sure, as well as Soto most of the time. These guys don't take pitches and don't work the count. Fukudome, who probably has less native talent than any of the aforementioned stars, always delivers a quality at-bat these days, and so, even though his production has come down from the stratospheric heights he achieved through early April, his controlled approach Saturday wound up winning the game.
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