The Chicago Cubs will look to salvage a series win Sunday, after missing an opportunity to go up two games to none on division foes the Cincinnati Reds on Saturday at Wrigley Field.
Chicago fell behind 5-0 early, but stormed back to tie the game in the bottom of the seventh inning before closer Carlos Marmol gave up a two-run double to the Reds' Drew Sutton in the top of the ninth. It was the Cubs' first loss in their last five games, and dropped them to 41-28 on the season at home.
Today, left-hander Ted Lilly will take the mound for ...
For an inning or two Saturday afternoon, the Chicago Cubs could smell their fifth straight win, which would have tied their season high. Instead, the Cincinnati Reds beat them 7-5 after a two-run rally in the top of the ninth against Cubs closer Carlos Marmol.
The Cubs fell behind early, when three Cubs' errors gave Cincinnati a pair of unearned second-inning runs. Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, and Ryan Theriot each made miscues during the nightmare inning, and neither of the two runs allowed in that frame by starter Randy Wells were earned.
Wells struggled, allowing three more runs in the Cincinnati third. Lee ...
I learned a long time ago not to take this game too seriously. I learned that, more times than it will ever reward your faith, this game will break your heart. I learned that when they say you fail seven out of 10 times in this game, they don't just mean hitters. They mean everyone, and everything. And so, naturally, I learned one more thing:
I learned to take more joy from three wins than pain from seven losses.
So even though I am a stathead, a man very much in love with the numbers, a cold and calculating bastard of a baseball fan, I ...
For the third consecutive year, the Chicago Cubs have gotten sparkling performances out of their starting rotation. Even with injuries to each of the top four slated starters, and inconsistent play from Carlos Zambrano, Ryan Dempster and Rich Harden, the team's starters have been their strength: Chicago leads the league in quality start percentage, at 61 percent, and Chicago's relievers have entered with a lead the fourth-most times of any team in the league.
Those statistics look all the more impressive when placed into context. The starting corps has had the luxury of five or more days' rest only 55 times, 15th in ...
The Chicago Cubs won their fourth consecutive game Friday, beating Cincinnati 6-4 in the opener of a three-game weekend set at Wrigley Field. Starter Rich Harden lasted just four innings, but got help from the Cubs bats, as Geovany Soto homered and Aramis Ramirez went three-for-three.
Despite another rough outing in which he surrendered three runs in one inning of work, Cubs reliever Jeff Stevens earned his first career victory. Stevens, who turned 26 last Saturday, now has a 9.72 ERA in seven appearances with Chicago this season. Stevens will try to work out the kinks this winter, as he figures to step ...
At least one unprecedented Cubs streak will end this year.
Chicago will likely finish this season second or third in the National League in strikeouts. That means that, barring an unforeseen rash of strikeouts by what will be predominantly inexperienced pitchers down the stretch, someone other than the North Siders will finish atop the NL strikeout team leaderboard for the first time since 2001.
That's eight consecutive seasons; no other team has recorded even seven straight years as the top strikeout pitching team in the league since the ridiculous 16 consecutive such seasons recorded by the Brooklyn and L.A. Dodgers from 1948-63. ...
A good Hall of Fame doesn't just collect the best of the best. That's why we all think Ron Santo belongs in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Santo is not an elite player, not one of the true greats of the game's history, but he exemplifies, no embodies what baseball should be all about. He hustled; he had fun playing the game; he showed intensity, even fire. And he also did everything well on both sides of the ball.
In light of the notion that any given entity's Hall of Fame should contain those people who embodied its essence ...
The Cubs have a dilemma.
As the offseason approaches, General Manager Jim Hendry faces a number of difficult decisions about the future of his team. The 2009 team has a number of weaknesses, and the ability to throw money at the problem, even if he indeed has that ability, will not count for much.
Some of the additions he will need to make to make the Cubs competitive in 2010 will be by subtraction.
Among these, the most intriguing, and perhaps most important, is the question of how Hendry will address the Cubs' logjam of corner outfielders, and the subpar outfield defense that ...
Chicago Cubs shortstop Ryan Theriot stole his 17th base of the season Wednesday, during Chicago's 8-5 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates in Pittsburgh. The theft was also the 80th of Theriot's career, in this his third full year of Major League ball.
Theriot has attained a firm standing as the number one fan favorite over the past three years, if only by default: each of the other logical candidates has fought injuries and inconsistency. Theriot's intensity, hustle, and exciting style have endeared him to a fan base that prides itself on its personal ties to Cubs players, even if everything from the ticket ...
Milton Bradley and Sammy Sosa have more in common than their uniform number.
Bradley, who this winter signed a three-year, 30 million-dollar deal to patrol what was once Sosa's domain in right field at Wrigley Field, came to the Windy City amidst persistent murmurs about his incendiary past, as well as his fragility over the past three seasons or so. He immediately had to answer questions about how he thought his presence would affect team chemistry, and about what had prompted so many of his past explosions.
During Spring Training, however, as Bradley proceeded to win over the clubhouse and hit over .400 in ...
« Previous Page
