Brief Setback

Column A  Column B

                                                     Zambrano       1-hitter

                                                     Lilly                9 strike out game

                                                     Dempster        Lose to the Brewers

                                                     Marquis          No-hitter

If you were to see these two columns listed above a few days back and asked to try and match up one from one column with a selection in the other, in predicting what would happen to the pitchers in column A this week, would you have guessed correctly?  I don’t know that I would have.  I may have initially thought Zambrano would throw the no-hitter but then ultimately decide against choosing him because it would seem too obvious.  I may have then figured Lilly contributed to the one-hitter and given the no-hitter to Dempster (because why not and…) seeing that I would assume out of the four of them it would be Zambrano who’s outcome was heavily strikeout based.  Even with a sore shoulder, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt against the other three when it comes to striking out opposing batters.  Which of course would then leave Marquis to lose to the Brewers.  While this game would be more fun with no losses in column B as options, after tonight’s game I would unfortunately have 2 out of 4 correct.

It didn’t take long for the Brewers to jump out in front and once they got comfortable there, they held on to the lead for the entire game.  If you think Dempster had a lot to follow with Z’s no-no and Lilly’s combined effort on with the one-hitter, how do you think Marquis must’ve felt?  Especially with the ‘magic numbers’ falling fast lately, the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone again with tonight’s game, Dempster’s outing in addition to Z’s and Lilly, PLUS the fact that Houston lost which left the Cubs to only do their part in winning all three games in order to take the division against the Brewers by the end of this series.  Unfortunately Marquis got lit up and had no support from the Cubs’ hitters..even despite the fact that Sheets left early with tightness in his forearm.  Shouldn’t be too serious so good for Sheets, but the fact that we couldn’t step up against the Crew’s bullpen?  C’mon…that’s ridiculous.

The Cubs better keep playing hard and take no game lightly even with an eight game lead.  It was like they hardly showed up tonight when it came to the bottom of each inning.  The Brewers and Cardinals are fighting for their postseason life in the Wild Card race and of course until the Cubs’ magic number does actually hit zero, there’s always the chance of some miracle finish by one of them to steal the division.  So no more messing around.  Let’s take care of the Brewers tomorrow and get it down to two.  Then, let’s do what we have to do against the Cardinals and wrap it up at home this weekend.  We make it to October and there is going to be plenty of drama to go around I’m sure.  Let’s keep the September drama to a minimum shall we?  I think that sounds like a great plan.  Harden’s up to finish off this series with the Brewers tomorrow afternoon.  Let’s hope he carves out his own multiple choice/match game answer with ‘none of the above’.  That way, even though it might end up being mighty ugly, at least it won’t result in a loss and we can get that magic number officially down to two.  GO CUBS GO!!!