The Cubs Week in Review (9-10)

After being outscored by the lowly Mets 18-12 and losing 3 of 4 in the series, the Cubs traveled to Milwaukee over the weekend and swept the Brewers, outscoring them 25-4. Back in the beginning of the year I wrote:

“The Brewers problem is they have no pitching. I mean, it's bad. Gallardo should have a good year and Wolf is average, but after that- yikes. Good luck with alllll that.”

The Cubs faced the “Good luck with alllll that” portion of the Brewers rotation this weekend and Cubs hitting was cured, at least for 3 days.

Here is how the Cubs offense has progressed in the past week:

HITTERS: APRIL 19/APRIL 26
Fontenot- .321/ .295
Baker- .313/ .216
Soto- .308/ .366
Fukudome- .306/ .333
Hill- .300/ .353
Lee- .282/ .227
Soriano- .263/ .300
Nady- .250/ .214
Byrd- .244/ .338
Theriot- .235/ .329
Colvin- .235/ .333
Ramirez- .170/ .139

I didn’t add Chad Tracy to the list, because come on. Unless Aramis takes a dive on his shoulder again, he’s not going to be seeing too many at bats. Plus, I’m still not convinced that he isn’t really Morgan Spurlock with cleats on:



We can see that our 2B are starting to come back to reality, but now the two catchers have the highest batting averages on the team. Soto seems to regain form, at least hitting wise. He probably hasn’t been this skinny since grade school. If Soto can stay above .300 this season and knock in some runs… good things are ahead. Marlon Byrd has been the Cubs best hitter over the past week. Fukodome still knows it’s April and unfortunately, so does Lee. Ramirez doesn’t know the season has started yet. Soriano has been a pleasant surprise. Theriot had a great series against Milwaukee and Tyler Colvin is hitting well enough to get traded for some bullpen help.

Let’s check in with our pitching since a week ago as well:

PITCHERS: APRIL 19/ APRIL 26
Dempster- 3.15/ 2.60
Zambrano- 9.45/ 7.40
Lilly- DL/ 0.00
Silva- 0.69/ 0.95
Wells- 2.92/ 2.49
Gorzelanny- 1.93/ 2.40
Marshall- 2.25/ 3.72
Marmol- 1.35/ 0.93
Grabow- 7.71/ 8.10
Berg- 6.23/ 4.50
Russell- 0.00/ 2.84
Samardzija- 16.20/ 18.90 (IOWA)
Gray- 9.00/ 5.40
Caridad- 13.50/ 13.50 (DL)

Overall, the pitching has gotten better. I guess that isn’t necessarily saying too much, but the starters have continued to pitch great. And Lilly’s back and looked great in his first start. Grabow somehow was able to raise his ERA. He was supposed to be one of the guys you could count on. Whoops. Assuming that Grabow gets back to being a serviceable reliever and Zambrano does well in the set-up role, things are looking better.

As for my prediction on Samardzija:
“I would not be surprised if Samardzija doesn’t make it through the day without taking a bus back to Iowa.”

Well, it took four extra days to get that done.

So far, things are shaping up pretty much like we expected. The Cubs record looked worse than how they were really playing a week ago, and hopefully this 3 game win streak is a sign that they are getting back on track. The Cubs open a home stand against the improved Nationals tonight. We’ll see how things carry over but it will be pretty disappointing if they are unable to take 2 of 3.

Disappointing, but not necessarily surprising.