Results tagged ‘ St. Louis Cardinals ’
A week recap, Soriano calls out team
I wish I had my dedication to my blog like others who have them. Work is starting to get busy; I guess that’s a good sign considering the economy. I guess I’ll do a week in review.
The Cubs have been sucking, that basically sums it up. 10-9 is intolerable.
I’ll start with the Cardinals series at St. Louis this past weekend. The Cards destroyed us, and proved that they are the better team so far this season. If they keep it up they’ll steal the division from the Cubs. It’s kind of pointless to say what happened in each game since anybody could easily look up box scores; however I have great thoughts of the game. As a Cub fan I’ll tend to use words like “great” “excellent” “outstanding” for stuff that really isn’t so “great” “excellent” “outstanding” but just good.
So, on Saturday’s game Sean Marshall curveball looked great, excellent, and outstanding. No, really it had some drop. What bothered me was I think he could have been more dominant. Here is an example:
Marshall had a 0-2 count on Pujols. Now instead of using the third pitch as a set up pitch, he started to work off the plate. Back the piece off. What Marshall should have done was throw some heat up and in, he crowds the plate, which is one of the many reasons why Pujols is so dominant. So Marshall should have thrown up and in, and then his curveball that was working effectively should have been his fourth pitch. Marshall ended up getting him out, but still, it showed me that Marshall has fear.
What else, what else. Fukodome is still being dominant, had an awesome game on Sunday helping us pick up the victory in St. Louis, unfortunately the Cardinals took the series. He went 3-5 with 5 rbi.
Oh, on Sunday the Cardinals drilled Soriano in the head, so obviously it was Pujols turn to take one, and he did take one. It was a perfect way to handle the situation without the umpires getting involved and issuing warnings after Soriano was intentionally drilled. Let the players handle the situations themselves.
Currently the Cubs are in the rubber match today with the Diamondbacks. Fell asleep in like the sixth inning during Monday night’s game, oops, damn west coast games. Chicago wound up losing that one anyway.
I caught last night’s game at the bar with some buddies. Zambrano almost hit a cycle! Big Z is the definition of helping his own cause when he pitches. I don’t know why Lou doesn’t move him up in the batting order when he pitches. Come on, the Cubs could sure use his bat.
A funny note about Zambrano:
He was taking some groundballs to shortstop the other day. With the Cubs as banged up as they are and their lack of depth on the bench it’s sad to see the ace of your staff get some fielding practice in at shortstop.
Look at that, a perfect way into a rant about the Cubs injuries.
Marmol, Ramirez, Bradley, Lee, what do all these names have in common?
ALL OUR INJURED.
Is this a reflection of the athletic trainer? If so, maybe its time to be finding a new trainer. These players are all vital to the Cubs success this year. Well, all except for Lee. Bradley actually came back last night and managed to scrape together two hits, leaving him a ******** three on the season, woo hoo. But in all seriousness the Cubs have to take a look on why these key players are hurt, excluding Bradley from his injury plagued career.
Oh by the way, Rookie of the Year, Geovany Soto his having an awful season. Somebody has to get this kid going. I wonder if the World Baseball Classic has anything to do with this. I heard this scouting report says to run all day on him.
In today’s Chicago Sun-Times a usually quiet Soriano actually called out his team. Heres the link: http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/cubs/1549148,CST-SPT-cub29.article
Some key quotes that I liked from Soriano:
“We’ve got to go out and fight. We’ve been giving the ‘W’ to the other teams, because from what I see we’re not fighting to win. We just play nine innings, and what happens, happens. We don’t play nine innings and try to get wins. The last two years, I saw more hunger to win.”
It’s great to see a star and key player who is having a hell of a season to call out his team. I’m glad he sees a sense of urgency to this horrible start by Chicago.
Well this went longer than expected; hopefully Dempster comes through today and get the Cubs back on roll with a series victory. Sad thing is I could keep going on, looks like I wont miss nearly a week again!
Neil Cotts Watch:
Still on the team. :/
Rain, rain go away
Well at least the Cardinal fans should be thankful; their team was about to be embarrassed on national television on ESPN to a huge loss to the Cubs, but thanks to rain the game has been postponed till July. Saint Louis would have dropped three in a row to Chicago, giving us sole possession of first place in the NL Central, and obviously losing the series to us.
The Cubs have tomorrow off as well, so two days rest will do some good, they have to play 20 straight games starting Tuesday against Cincinnati. This should help the bullpen, and give players like Soto and Bradley a bit more rest.
Hopefully by the time Tuesday does come around Neil Cotts will no longer be a member of the team. He came in yesterday’s game with zero outs, with the Cubs only up by a run in the seventh. Then Cotts proceeds to walk the freakin first two batters. Luckily Lou put Marmol in the game to get the Cubs out of that mess to retire the next three. Pinella left Marmol in the game too long and eventually gave up a run, and then the game went on to extra innings. Of course with my boy Ramirez hitting a walk off homerun two run bomb in the 11th inning 7-5.
On Fridays game Soriano came through with a game winning homerun in the eighth to give us the win 8-7. It’s good to see guys like Soriano and Ramirez come through late in ball games, especially to give us the lead when we really need them.
But anyway I’m calling for the Chicago Cubs organization to cut Cotts of the team immediately.
Lou should refuse to put Cotts in the game and send a message to general manager Jim Hendry that the team needs some lefties in the bullpen. Every time he puts Cotts or Heilman in the game I just know something horrible will go wrong. If the Cubs didn’t have Marmol they will have one or maybe two more losses.
It’s sad to see a team with high expectations only have one reliable member in the late innings to pitch.
I hate umps
I’m not one to complain about umps, they have a pretty hard job to do. Well in today’s loss to the St. Louis Cardinals Home Plate Umpire Larry Vanover really screwed up. But umps get paid for being right, well at least they’re supposed to be right, right?
Not in this case: Bases loaded, full count, Bradley at the Plate, and Soriano on deck. 3-2 curve ball, waaaaay inside. Apparently it was a strike, at least to Vanover. Major League Baseball needs to review his call and suspend him after they see that he made the wrong call. Vanovers call went on to cost the Cubs the game.
Here is how we lost to bad decision making by Vanover:
- Obviously the bad call he made, could have walked in a run to give us a run one lead, but instead called Bradley out to give us two outs in the inning with the bases juiced.
- The next at bat Soriano popped out to deep left, could have been a two run lead with two outs.
- Fukodome would have been at the plate, his bat has been hot. Fukodome could have either struck out, popped out or hit in a fielders choice to make the third out, or he could have really broke loose and give us at least a three run lead, we lost by three runs.
You suck Vanover, you suck.
My first game of the season and four games with the Cards
So I was at my first Cubs game of the season yesterday, talk about cold. On the way to the game one of the news radios stations said it was going to rain. Luckily it didn’t. On top of that I wasn’t feeling very well, the seat next to me ended up having chunks of hot dogs on it, if you know what I’m saying. Had to get the usher to come and wipe it off. People probably were thinking “typical drunk Cub fan” but I wasn’t drinking.
The Cubs were horrible yesterday. The 5-2 loss to the Rockies is an embarrassment. If the Cubs sucking means that Derrick Lee actually plays well, than I rather have Lee play like crap all season if it means the Cubs play well. Good old logic and reasoning class right there.
I thought Rich Harden was going to have at least 20 K’s yesterday. That first inning he was dirty with striking out the side. I really thought I would finally witness history after all the ball games I go to. Low and behold he ended up having his pitch total jacked by the third inning. I remember I saw he had about 70 pitches during the third. While I was at the game I told my dad that it looked like Harden was tipping his pitches, the batters looked like they all knew what was coming off of him. When I got home I told my friend and she said that Len and Bob (Cubs play by play and analysis) said the same thing about him maybe tipping his pitches. At least I know that I’m not that much of a baseball idiot if the 2001 Diamondback World Series Champion manager thought the same thing.
According to a Cub blog I frequent Aramis Ramirez apparently was supposed to be in the lineup yesterday but I guess his back is “still stiff”. Ummm, how long does it take for a stiff back to heal? I suggest Ramirez better step up and play today’s game against the Cardinals, or he’ll be on my sh*t list.
Speaking of that Hillbilly team from St. Louis, we better sweep that four game series against them. As of late this rivalry hasn’t really lived up to expectations. When the Cubs are bad, the Cardinals are good, and so on. Actually in fact, I can’t really remember if this has ever been a heated rivalry like the Yanks/Sox or Giants/Dodgers. Its pretty much a friendly rivalry, Cardinal fans are knowledgeable about their team, unlike other teams fan bases.
Here’s to four “W” flags flying high against the Cardinals the next four games.
chicagosportfan1983
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