Heading West

By only winning 3 of their last 6 against supposedly inferior competitors, the Cubs have their work cut out for them the next 6 games. The goal here is to go 3-3 against the Dodgers and Cardinals with a preference for at least two of the wins to come in Busch Stadium III. The Dodgers are ripe for picking having just lost two of three to their coastal rival Giants scoring a total of four runs in the series.

With Greg Maddux, Carlos Zambrano and Sean Marshall slated to pitch, taking two seems a minimum expectation.

Now that the Felix Pie talk has come from Dusty Baker himself, one can only see this as a slight nudge at Jacque Jones. No one really believes that Jones could be benched, but Pie's hot start makes anything possible. With any luck, Jones will take the message like a man and not start trying to overdo it like he says he did last year.

If he tries to overswing at everything, one can only hope that he pulls his "butt muscle" (as Ron Santo so elegantly call it) and let's Pie "Pipp" him.

Pie Charting 2006 - #1

               AB  R  H  BI   AVG
Pie, Felix CF   4  0  2   2  .350 - 2 2B 

He's tracking for about 98 strikouts and 60 walks in a 600 AB season. Very nice for a small sample, and an improvement over his history.

Elsewhere in the Cubs system:

                  IP  H  R  ER  BB  SO    ERA
Aardsma, David   2.0  0  0   0   0   3   0.00 - S (2)
Hill, Rich       7.0  4  1   1   1  10   1.38 - W (1-0)