box Cubs rise to 22-32 Cardinals tumble to 34-21 POTG: RP SUPER Roberto Novoa (3 IP, H, BB, K; batting 2B, RBI) Runner Up: CA Michael Barrett (3 H, 2 R, BB! evading the law for one more day), 1B Phil Nevin (HR, 2 R, 2 RBI, thrilled to be back in the NL), 3B … Continue reading “Game 54: Cubs 8 – Cardinals 5”
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Cubs rise to 22-32
Cardinals tumble to 34-21
POTG: RP SUPER Roberto Novoa (3 IP, H, BB, K; batting 2B, RBI)
Runner Up: CA Michael Barrett (3 H, 2 R, BB! evading the law for one more day), 1B Phil Nevin (HR, 2 R, 2 RBI, thrilled to be back in the NL), 3B A-RAM (Grand Slam), RF Jacque Jones (3 H, 2B, RBI, BB!), SS Ronny Cedeno (2 H, part of 3 DPs)
(Pujols getting hurt affects everything, everywhere and everyone to such a magnitude where it’s pointless to even speak about it until we know the whole deal, or at least as much of deal as we’re ever going to know. Suffice to say, 34-21 and 11.5 GB look a lot less secure.)
If this is the start of the Greatest Cubs Comeback EVER, then I think we all know one thing to be absolutely true:
Baseball MUST be fake.
There’s no way the Cubs win the 14 inning and this game as part of a run to end all runs unless there’s heavy scripting involved. Glendon Rusch doesn’t deliver on a bail out start and the Cardinals don’t look like little leaguers in the field unless someone’s working off a script.
I’m not complaining about this development. I’m just thinking the people in charge should keep it a little less improbable if they don’t want the conspiracy theories to sweep the nation!
What was predictable was Williamson being used for the save, Williamson being ineffective, and one of our possible Trade Bait guys goes on the DL, thus killing most of his value for the rest of the season. (They should’ve just used Howry to start with, though the FOX TV guys were saying he was only good for a batter or two – maybe that’s why he did what he did.) The other interesting bullpen usage was Novoa being stretched to three, which probably means Ohman wasn’t available unless something went horribly wrong, so it was Novoa versus the world. Roberto should get some sort of medal for his bullpen/game/season saving performance here.
The comeback didn’t surprise me – though the timing annoyed me, and maybe we’ll get that when I talk about the other game I saw today – and me and Mike were messaging back and forth about 5-1 and 7-1 not being enough with Rusch involved. Glendon was just average today, which is great for him this year, and the Cubs just sorta got lucky that Mark Mulder wasn’t on, on a day he couldn’t get any help from the pen and got killed by his own defense. It was a bad day to have a bad day.
Let me remind you, at the moment where he’s hitting 301/339/530, I was rooting for Jacque for no good reason way before everyone else. And we can all agree disavow this when he goes back to 270/300/450.
We scored 8 runs with no Walker and 0-9 from Pierre and Neifi at the top of the lineup. See, it’s fake.
It’s Maddux vs Marquis tomorrow – because Kerry’s TOTALLY fine and surely going to be A-OK NUMBER ONE!!!!! come Tuesday and needing *8* days of rest between starts is certainly nothing to be concerned about (unrelated: Vegas has taken the “how many more starts will Kerry make as a Cub” pop bet off the board) – and if the Cubs can pull out just one more win, everyone’s turning the corner on this team. It’s not a 180 until they get back to 500, but we’d call something of a 45 degree turn; still much to do, but they’re moving in the right direction.