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A little (parting?) love for A-Gone

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Showing their familiar flair for scoring few runs, the Cubs went down in a heap 6-3 to the 'mighty' Milwaukee Brew Masters. Kerry Wood had good stuff tonight, but had a fair amount of trouble retiring the lead-off hitter in most innings.

Woody allowed the first Brewer to reach base in 4 of 6 frames. In both the first, second, and fourth innings, the leadoff batter reached base and subsequently scored. Moreover, in the fifth inning, Scott Podsednick reached on a single and then stole second. He would have undoubtably scored on Geoff Jenkins' double had Wood not picked him off second base a batter earlier. In fact, the only two Brewers to score against Wood that did not reach as leadoff men were Bill Hall and Ben Grieve who scored the old-fashioned way... by hitting the ball over the wall.

Despite pretty decent stuff, Wood took the loss with a rather ugly line: 6 IP, 5 (earned) runs, 7 hits, 2 walks, and 10 punchouts.

On the Offensive side of the ball, the Cubs left their bats at the hotel... again. They scored thrice, first on a Michael Barrett Solo shot in the second inning, and again in the seventh inning when Aramis followed a D. Lee double with his own single. In the eighth Alex Gonzalez lead off with a double, advanced to third on a Corey Patterson ground out, and scored from third on Todd Walker's sacrifice fly. Although the Cubs scored 3, they only had 5 hits and 2 walks (one of which, Kerry Wood, got picked off first). This offense can certainly be pathetic.

In Other News: Aside from moaning about the Cubs offensive woes again, its time for me to catch up on some observations I have noticed but not necessarily recorded lately.

• I don't really like Alex Gonzalez, but it is refreshing to watch him play defense. The numbers may or may not bear me out, but Alex Gonzalez looks much more solid at short than Ramon (or even the late, horrible, Rey Rey.) In tonight's game, he caught a pop-up in back of third that Ramon had been allowing Aramis to catch. I also enjoy watching Alex turn the double play... he and Grudz are definitely more comfortable than any other combination. Still I would love to see an upgrade at shortstop in the next three days.
  Orlando Cabrera -> not an upgrade
  Nomar Garciapparra -> upgrade!
• Aramis Ramirez has been slipping a bit. He committed his third error of the season on May 11th, and then didn't have another miscue until June 23rd. However, since then Aramis has had 5 errors in the 18 games he has played in since. Lets see: thats 3 errors in the first 71 games followed by 5 errors in 18 games... since the assumption is that Aramis' fielding struggles are mental, something needs to be done to refocus my favorite Cubs hitter... or maybe second. D. Lee is awesome.
• Chip Caray loves to tell his listeners how many '2 out' runs the Cubs have scored (171 as of before today's game). I'm wondering if all those '2 out' runs are because the Cubs are routinely getting 2 outs in the top 3 hitters before Alou, Ramirez, and Lee come to bat... as opposed to the Cubs inherent 'clutchness'.
• One of the reasons that Jim Hendry is such a great GM is that he is incredibly patient... however, can we please have a trade soon! We need a number two (or leadoff) hitter, so I propose this trade (talk-radio style). The Cubs ship Arizona prospects, New York receives the Big Unit, and the Cubs get Derek Jeter, and a few million... hey, it could happen. The Yanks could have Alex Gonzalez too if they need a shortstop.

Posted by Byron at July 28, 2004 11:59 PM | | |

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