Cubs vs Cards Preview

The Cubs are down in St. Louis for a three game series with the suddenly struggling Cardinals. The Cards lost three straight games to the now first-place Milwaukee Brewers over the weekend, and have now lost seven of their last ten games overall. The Cards have been hurt recently by injuries (but who has not in this division) to Chris Carpenter, Ryan Ludwick, and Rick Ankiel. Carpenter is set to return to the rotation on Wednesday night and Ankiel is expected to be available tonight. Carpenter scares me as a Cubs fan. He is arguably, when healthy, the best pitcher in our division. He has just not been able to stay healthy over the last few seasons. With him back in the rotation for the rest of the season, I expect the Cards to stay in the division race. On a side note: The Milwaukee Brewers after sweeping the Cards over the weekend have taken over first-place in the Division. They did however lose starting 2B Rickie Weeks for the season. Weeks was off to the best start of his young career and will be a major loss for their lineup, especially since he was their lead-off hitter, and every day second-baseman. Fiinally, other teams in our division are having to deal with major injuries to their key players.

Now to the Cubs. They split their weekend series with the Astros after Friday's game was rained out. I was unable to see most of their two games over the weekend since I had to attend my sister's graduation ceremonies at The University of Notre Dame, from Friday through Monday. But here is what I do know from the weekend: Randy Wells can pitch, he gave us 6 scoreless innings in his start on Saturday, he may just replace Sean Marshall in the rotation. I did see the final innings of Saturday's game and could not believe what I saw. Kevin Gregg looked awful (similar to Chad Fox) and almost cost us the game, luckily ND-guy Aaron Heilman came in to bail him out of a bases-loaded nobody out jam (I said a prayer while watching this). After Bobby Scales led off the bottom of the 9th with a walk (nice), Alfonso Soriano did what he was paid to do and drove him in to score the game winner (after a nice sac-bunt from Ryan Theriot). Also from that game: I was impressed to see Derrek Lee come up with a clutch RBI single and then my boy, Micah Hoffpauir, launched a 2R-HR to deep left field.

I did not see any of Sunday's game. What I do know is that Lee had a monster game with a HR, single, and a double. Way to go Lee! He has been hot over the last two games going 5-8 and raising his average up over the Mendoza Line to .226. I still expect more from him over the next few months, hopefully this is a sign of good things to come, and hopefully what we saw from him in the San Diego series last week was just an anomaly.

Tonight: Ted Lilly (5-2, 3.27 ERA) faces off against RHP Joel Pineiro (4-3, 4.17 ERA). Lilly is off to a good start this season and has been keeping damages to a minimum. He has given up a lot of HRs (9 which is good for 4th most in the NL). Lilly has given up few walks and has not had a lot of men on base for any of those HRs. He also has pitched a few games at Wrigley with the wind howling out this season. Lilly needs to be careful tonight against this Cards team, they can hit, but are hitting only .227 against lefties this season. Regardless, new Busch Stadium is a band-box/hitters park, where HRs are easy to come by, so Lilly will need his best stuff if he wants to win. As for Pineiro, I do not know much about him, except that he used to play for the Seattle Mariners, and his career has been saved by Cards Pitching Coach, Dave Duncan. Pineiro throws in the low 90s and is an average-at-best pitcher. The Cubs should be able to score a few runs against him tonight.

The Cubs have won seven of their last ten games and are 21-15 overall, which is the exact same record the 2008 Cubs had at this point last season. This shocks me. Mostly because of how impressed I was with last year's team and how un-impressed (at times) I have been with this year's team. Despite all of the injuries and poor play out of Lee, Milton Bradley, and Geovany Soto we are still in good shape and only two games out of first-place.