Now, About That Hitting...

What a bunch of whiners. Rick Morrissey, Mike Downey, Phil Rogers, Jay Mariotti and Barry Rozner ALL get it wrong. They blame the Game 1 loss to the Diamondbacks on pulling Carlos Zambrano after 6 innings and 85 pitches in a tie game.

So, pulling a pitcher with a history of histrionics and cramping due to dehydration from a game in a warm weather city to bring in a pitcher who had been lights out for months is a mistake?

Give me a break.

If there's blame on Lou it's minimal. You could fault him for not taking out Z half an inning earlier when the Cubs had the bases loaded and two outs. But that would also be wrong because Z had the best at bats of anyone on the team last night.

You could also give some blame to Lou for batting Jacque Jones second. I understand you want a lefty in the slot. So bat Floyd there. Bat Felix Pie there. But not Jacque. The fewer at bats for him the better.

No, the game was lost last night by the top five guys in the batting order. Alfonso Soriano, Jones, Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez and Cliff Floyd combined to go 1 for 20 with a walk, one run scored and 8 strikeouts.

1 for 20? They could have started Alfonso Curran, Janet Jones, Peggy Lee, Hector Ramirez and Heywood Floyd and not done much worse. Brandon Webb is good, but not that good. He was in trouble more often than could be expected and the Cubs did nothing with what they were given.

This remained a game that the Diamondbacks needed more than the Cubs. The worrisome part is that the offense looked more like May than September. They better get back to September tonight or October is going to be very short. That's the issue, not Lou's decision to pull Zambrano.