My wife and I attended the game on Sunday against the Braves. It was very hot and humid, we were both exhausted from a day of hot and humid moving, so we decided to cut our stay at the ballpark a little short. Quite frankly it didn’t seem like there was a lot beckoning us to stay.

Watching the game, in person, I saw a few things that bothered me.

1. Aramis Ramirez has lost any sort of swing or rhythm in the batter’s box. He looked awful. His swings looked worse than Jae Kuk Ryu’s swings.
2. On the topic of Ryu… I felt bad for the guy. I think it was the third pitch he had thrown that Edgar Renteria planted in the seats. And it only got worse for the guy. He’s clearly not ready for the big leagues.
3. Which begs the next question. Why didn’t our old pal Dusty start Glendon Rusch instead of making all of these crazy roster moves to bring up guys who aren’t ready? We know Rusch isn’t the answer as the 5th starter but over his career with the Cubs he’s performed well in the spot-starter, long relief role (which he filled on Sunday when Ryu was lifted in the 2nd.

On the other side, I did see some positives. Well… let’s wait a little bit on that. Don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.

The Cubs did win on Monday against Cincinnati. Woody looked a lot better. A huge problem that’s beginning to rear it’s head (as it does every year at about this time on Dusty “led” teams), the bullpen. Their arms are getting tired and what was, at the beginning of the year, a huge strength for the Cubs, is now blowing games that the Cubs cannot afford to lose. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the series againts the Reds turns out. The Cubs send Maddux and Zambrano to the hill over the next 2 nights. That alone should be a good sign. It hasn’t been yet this year, but hope springs eternal.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 30th, 2006 at 6:29 am and is filed under Baseball, Chicago Cubs, MLB. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.