| « Dry, Crowded Trails at Palos (Finally!) | Cubs Deadline Moves: Who's Staying, Who's Going? » |
Cubs Thu Jul 21 2011
Reeling Cubs Done in By Sun, Phillies
If the Cubs are consistently good at anything, it's being bad.
They continued that trend Wednesday afternoon at Wrigley with a 9-1 loss to the Phillies. The game was virtually over in the first inning after Starlin Castro lost a ball in the sun which resulted in a 2-0 Phillies lead. That would be all they needed.
Philadelphia rookie starter Vance Worley did his best Cy Young impersonation against a beleaguered Cubs offense. Worley went eight strong, allowing one run on four hits with seven strikeouts to send the second-worst team in baseball to its fifth loss in seven games since the all-star break.
Of course Ryan Dempster didn't do himself any favors by giving up six runs in just three innings. Neither the offense nor the defense were of any help Wednesday. The offense went through five innings before registering their first hit and the defense continued its sloppiness. Even sure-handed first baseman Carlos Pena committed two errors on one play. This brings their streak to nine consecutive games with an error.
After the game Cubs manager Mike Quade went off on Castro and Darwin Barney for what he deemed a lack of effort. This is one instance where Quade was wrong. Throwing both Castro and Barney under the bus shouldn't have happened. This was the wrong time for Q to bash his guys publicly. If he was upset about the constant fundamental mistakes on this team he should've said something back in April and not in July when they are 21 games under .500 (39-60) and 14 back in the division race.
Instead of calling out two of the hardest working players on the team, how about calling out some of the veterans like Alfonso Soriano. For example, when Soriano doesn't hustle. That might've been the right time to do such a thing.
I believe as this season has rolled on Quade has slowly lost the handle on this thing. He unfortunately got a good opportunity with a bad team and at this point not much can be done with it. With all that has gone this season it will be interesting to see who the Cubs unload at the trading deadline and who still has a job at the end of the season.
Next week they head to Milwaukee, St. Louis and Pittsburgh, which could be a bloodbath of a road trip, but first, they wrap up this homestand with a weekend series against the Astros, the one team worse than them.
Who knows? Maybe they'll, oh, I don't know, win three games in a row.
