Hope Springs Eternal: March 31st - April 3rd

Opening day finally arrives and we head into a 3 game series in New York against the Mets. The pitching matchups for the 3 games should be Mark Prior vs Tom Glavine, Carlos Zambrano vs Steve Trachsel and Kerry Wood vs Jae Weong Seo. Hopefully we can get the season off to a great start and take the opening series. By the way, my owner thinks I should finish around .500. Thanks for the confidence, boss.


Not much to say about game 1 as the Cubs just came out flat. Two errors by the defense, 5 walks by Prior and a 1-11 day by my 3,4 and 5 hitters and we can't do anything against Glavine and the Mets bullpen, losing 4-2. The lone bright spot was Damian Miller going 3-4 with 2 RBI.

Game 2 goes a lot better, with us evening our record at 1-1 behind a 7-1 victory. Carlos Zambrano goes 8 strong innings, scattering 8 hits over 8 innings, only giving up the one run while striking out 5. But Miller is the star again, this time going 2-4, with a 1st inning grand slam that put the Cubs ahead. He added a Sac fly in the 5th to give him 5 RBI on the night and 7 on the season. Not bad for a bottom of the order guy.

With an above .500 record hanging in the balance for game 3, usually sending out Kerry Wood is a blessing. At least it is when he can find the plate. And to his credit, he only walked two hitters during his outing. Of course, he only lasted 3 and 1/3 and gave up 5 runs. The Mets turned around and returned a 7-1 game on us, leaving us 1-2 to start the season. Not exactly where I wanted to start off the season, but it's early and we have a lot of baseball left in our tanks.

Next up is a series against the 2-1 Cincinnati Reds in Ohio. Clement goes against Chris Reistma in game one and I'll probably be sending out Mark Prior for game two against closer turned starter Danny Graves. Game 3 is undecided right now for me as Shawn Estes is scheduled to start, but I want to see how Zambrano is feeling and whether he can go on short rest. The Reds should be sending out Joey Hamilton, but that's a undecided as of now also.