Series Preview: As of this writing, the Cubs have a couple of games remaining in their three game set at home against the Brew Crew. They stand at 16 – 10 before the outcome of those games, a half game against the Cardinals. So, they might come in as the Division leaders, or in second place.
They are expected to be the class of the Division, and they have showed some flashes of that so far this year. Two unproven MLB level players have done well in the early going. Koskuke Fukudome and Geovany Soto are both batting above .300 and have OBPs above .400. In fact, the Cubs have six regulars that have OBPs above .375. They will be a huge test for the Cardinals pitching staff, the most talented offensive team that they have faced all season. If the Cardinals expect to do well in this series, they need to keep the Cubs’ offense contained, and the Cardinals need to bash the back end of the Cubs rotation. Another exciting installment of the best rivalry in baseball. [Yea, I am biased. So sue me.]
Here are the pitching probables for the series:
May 2nd – Rich Hill (1-0, 3.79 ERA, 1.42 WHIP) vs. Adam Wainwright (3-1, 2.79 ERA, 1.01 WHIP)
Hill is coming off a five inning no decision on the road against the Rockies in a game the Cubs rallied to win. In every outing that he has had, he has been tough to square up. Hill’s problem has been his lack of control that tends to compound his problems, elevates his pitch count, and leads to short outings. Wainwright is coming off a complete game victory over the Astros in which he allowed three solo home runs during a 126 pitch outing. He does get an extra days rest due to the off day on Thursday, but still look for him to be on a reduced pitch count of between 90 to 105 pitches. Let’s hope that he is sharp, as in the past he has had some rough outings against the Cubs.
May 3rd – Ted Lilly (1-4, 6.46 ERA, 1.50 WHIP) vs. Kyle Lohse (3-0, 2.36 ERA, 1.17 WHIP)
Ted Lilly has been a big disappointment so far this year for the Cubs, though he has shown signs of recapturing his 2007 form in his two outings. On the face, it would appear that this would be a mismatch, but it will depend on which Lilly shows up for the Cubs. Pujols has been tough on Lilly in the past, look for him to be in the middle of things if the Cardinals are going to take this game. Lohse rebounded from a tough outing at Miller Park with a solid six inning effort against the Astros for his third win of the year. However, some of the Cubs are touting huge, I mean huge, numbers against Lohse. He will need to be on top of his game in order to combat that.
May 4th – Jason Marquis (1-1, 4.45 ERA, 1.62 WHIP) vs. Todd Wellemeyer (2-1, 4.14 ERA, 1.19 WHIP)
Jason Marquis returns again to Busch III and the Cardinals are looking to reverse last year’s trend of not getting to him early and often. Marquis was 3-1 against his former mates, much to the dismay of Cardinal nation. Marquis is coming off a roughing up at the hands of the Brewers, taking the loss after giving up five earned runs and 10 hits while only working five innings. Look for the middle infield to consist of Izturis and Miles in this one, as both are hitting over .400 against Marquis. Wellemeyer had his second straight outing of six innings pitched while allowing 4 runs. I would gladly sign up for that right now. There is not much of a track record of the Cubs versus Wellemeyer, so this will be a crap shoot as to how he might perform against the Cubs.
May 2 – Chicago 3 St. Louis 5
I certainly hope that Jason Isringhausen bought Skip and Adam the biggest, most expensive steak he could find at about 11:30pm on a Friday night in the 314. More on that later.
Boy, how good is Adam Wainwright? Wainwright lowered his ERA to 2.60 on the season after limiting the Cubs to four hits and one walk over six and a third innings pitched while punching out 5 little Cubbies. Including in those mixture of hits was at least one broken bat flare by the “Big Z”, or Zambrainless as I like to refer to him. Tony opted to pull Wainwright after only 85 pitches in the 7th. I thought he might let him finish out the 7th, but I also had speculated that they would get him out early based upon his last outing, 126 pitches in a complete game effort over Houston.
Sweet Lou did not have the same problem to deal with for the Northsiders. He pulled Rich Hill after 27 pitches in the first inning, 17 of which were balls. He was pulled after walking Yadi Molina with two outs and the bags juiced, forcing in the first run of the ballgame. Sweet Lou will certainly get some second guessing on this one, taxing his bully by bringing them into the game in the first. Would Hill have retired Cesar Izturis, the next Cardinal hitter in the lineup? Who knows, but given that Izturis was certainly the weak link in that lineup last night, why not let Hill try to work out of the jam against him? Now he is faced with Ted Lilly heading to the bump after a quick turnaround, and if Lilly does not have it, Sweet Lou will have some arms dragging by the time he gets to Sunday’s ESPN broadcast.
Adam Wainwright’s lead off double in the 2nd led to the Cardinals 2nd run, and Alphonso Soriano, putting on his best little leaguer performance in LF, essentially handed the Cardinals an additional run in the bottom of the 7th with his two fielding gaffs. An overlooked part of that inning was the failure of Troy Glaus and Ryan Ludwick to at least advance the two runners from first and second. That cost the Cardinals a run when Molina’s “ground rule double” bounced into the stands.
Leading 3 -1 heading into the 9th, Izzy came on for the save. A fastball running inside supposedly caught Reed Johnson on the arm. To me, it looked like it hit him on the hand as he was checking his swing, which, I have always thought, is that the hand is part of the bat in those situations. Be that as it may, Izzy then made Daryl Ward look foolish on a curve ball and it set the stage for Johnson on 2nd with one out.
Back up a minute to let me rant on something. The Cardinals essentially let Johnson take second by playing behind him while Ward was batting. I really detest this move. I mean, what if after Johnson was allowed to take second, Mr. “My name will never appear in the same sentence with the word speed unless there is a “does not have any” appears in front of it” Ward hits a tailor-made double play ball right at the second baseman? No double is in order because Johnson is standing on second. I guess that is why I am posting this and not in some dugout somewhere.
Anyway, back to the scenario, and you just had that feeling, given Soriano had made those gaffs in LF. 3 Straight cutters later and the game is tied on a two run bomb. Now, to me, Molina should share in some of this blame IF he called for all three cutters. IF Izzy shook him off, that is another matter. But how in the world, after throwing two good curves to Ward, does Soriano NOT get a steady diet of the off-speed stuff when he looked absolutely lost on the breaking stuff in his two prior at bats? Especially in that situation? Don’t get it.
Kudos to Ron Villone, who picked up the win, for bailing out Izzy in the 9th and pitching a solid 10th and 11th inning. He was able to save at least two guys [Springer and Reyes] for duty today.
In the bottom of the 11th, Aaron Miles did his thing with a lead off single, advanced to second on a wild pitch by Chad Fox, was sacrificed to third by Brendan Ryan, and brought home on a walk-off bomb by Skip Schumaker, who saved Izzy’s bacon with the blast.
The biggest question going on with the Cardinals? What is wrong with Izzy? We know that he was worked a lot during the first three weeks of the season (appearing in 12 of the Cardinals first 24 games). That was the initial prognosis to his latest struggles. However, he was just coming off a nice 1-2-3 inning on 13 pitches against the Reds on Wednesday and had an off day in-between. Izzy says it is execution with his cutter. No shit? Here is the thing, though. He has a Major League fastball. We saw it last night when he was hitting 92 on the gun with his 4-seamer. He also possesses a Wainwright plus curve ball. If the cutter is not working, he has other quality stuff that he can work the hitters with. Is he hurt? Tough call, and hopefully Izzy learned something from 2006 that he cannot let himself and his teammates down if he is hurting. There are other options available and if a DL stint would help, he needs to speak up. Otherwise, he needs to not fall in love with the cutter, especially one that is not working.
I hope those steaks tasted good, Misters Wainwright and Schumaker.
May 3 – Chicago 9 St. Louis 3
Well, it was one of those that was essentially over in the blink of an eye, the hunter mercilessly put its prey out of its misery swiftly.
But this event came as a complete surprise, because Kyle Lohse had breezed through the first three innings against the visiting Chicago Cubs, and it appeared that the Cubs’ hitters would have a tough time during a very bright day at Busch III figuring out Mr. Lohse.
But then came the 4th innings. The brutal 4th inning for Cardinals’ fans. Lohse lost his edge very quickly, missing location on pitches to Fukudome, Soto and Fontenot badly that lead to run scoring doubles for Fukudome and Soto and a crushing 3-run home run by the non-slugger that is Mike Fontenot. [Interesting side note, as I watched the Fox Sports National telecast, their graphics actually flipped the score from 3-0 Cubs to 6-0 a pitch before Fontenot hit the home run. Was the "fix" in? ;-o ]
The Cardinals never mounted much of an offensive attack against Ted Lilly, just a couple of solo home runs by Yadi Molina and Albert Pujols and a run scoring double by Ryan Ludwick. Pujols has expanded his strike zone on a couple of different occasions in the first two games. I know he wants to make something happen, but the problem is these types of situations haven’t been ones where you see him taking the ball the other way to right, but trying to pull the out of the zone outside pitch. I know that the Cardinals have not been the best in hitting with runners on and in scoring position, however, I think AP still needs to maintain his patience at the plate and accept those walks. If he starts to press, I think that flows downhill to the rest of the team. Yesterday broke an eight game streak in which AP drew at least one walk, and the team’s record over that stretch was 6 and 2 with the two losses both being the one run variety.
The series heads to a rubber game on Sunday. Hopefully Wellemeyer can limit the damage from the Cubs offense and the Cardinals can figure out how to get to their old pal, Jason Marquis.
May 4th – Chicago 3 St. Louis 5
Todd Wellemeyer was wild on Sunday night. However, he also was stingy with the hits, allowing only three over his five innings pitched, and he walked away the winner to push his season record to 3-1. The Cardinals finally figured out their old teammate Jason Marquis, touching him for five earned runs in just five and one third innings, pushing his season ERA over 5.00.
Timely hitting got the Cardinals on the board in the second on four consecutive hits by Wellemeyer, Cesar Izturis, Skip Schumaker and Adam Kennedy. That answered two runs by the Cubs in the top of the second on consecutive doubles by Geo Soto and Reed Johnson, and a sac fly by the NL’s ultimate hot dog, Alphonso Soriano. Nice to see Alphonso raise that average to .173.
The Cardinals tacked on two more when Marquis walked Adam Kennedy on five pitches and had to face Albert Pujols, who smashed a double down the third base line to score both Kennedy and Izturis who was on with his second hit of the game.
Izzy pitched a 1-2-3 ninth and looked mighty good doing it, setting down the top of the order in Soriano, Theriot and Lee, with Lee on a punch out to end it.
The Cardinals took two out of three from the Cubbies and moved to 12 and 7 versus the National League Central. The Cardinals also possess the second best record in all the Majors. Now onto the eight game road trip.
