Seeing Red...: April 4th-April 6th

If you would have told me that the Cubs would hit 3 homers in the first game of this series, I probably would have asked how many runs we won by. However, if you had told me that my starting pitcher would walk 6, give up 3 homers and only throw 49 of 100 pitches for strikes, I definitely would ask if Shawn Estes stole the uniform of Matt Clement. Sadly enough, neither on of those was correct as the Reds walk away, literally, with a 9-5 win. Sosa, Grudzielanek and Choi provide the homers, with Sosa and Grudz going back-to-back in the first to provide Clement with a 2-0 lead. But a 3-run homer by Adam Dunn in the bottom of the 1st erased it and going back-to-back himself with Russell Branyan in the 3rd pretty much iced the game for them. Not a great game by any means. Oh yeah, that homerun by Sosa was #500 for his career. Congrats Sammy.

Before game 2, I decided to go ahead and pitch Shawn Estes instead of Prior or Zambrano, opting now to try and get them the rest instead of throwing them out there. Prior wasn't ready to go, which is a little disappointing since it was on his normal rest, so let's hope this doesn't become habit forming, as going with a 6-man rotation is not something I have in mind. And starting Estes wasn't really that bad of a move. He pitched mediocre, which is really all I expect out of him and besides Zambrano, pitched the best of my 5 starters right now. And that's bad. Of course, I say mediocre, because he only gave up 4 runs in 6 innings. One less run and it would have been a quality start. Still a loss, since we went down 4-2, but almost a quality start nonetheless. By the way, if you've seen my offense, could you tell them I'm looking for em? Thanks.

A 12-4 victory in the final game of the series saves us from being swept by the Reds and provides for some interesting numbers. Let's go beyond the boxscore shall we? The 4 homeruns hit in the game are almost as many as we had all season (5). Sosa goes 3-4 to raise his batting average to .217 and the 8 runs we scored in the 7th inning is 29% of all the runs we had scored all season. Coming into this game, we had scored a total of 16 runs.

Up next is Montreal in Chicago which marks opening day at Wrigley Field. Maybe some home cooking is exactly what the team needs to get on it's winning ways. Montreal comes in with a 4-2 record and throws Javier Vasquez, Zach Day and Tomo Ohka at us. We'll be countering with Zambrano, Wood and Clement. I smell a sweep!