Well, that was a waste of time.

No, not Rich Harden's effort in the Cubs' 2-0 loss to the Diamondbacks, continuing Bank Holding Company Ballpark's reputation as a Cub house of pain -- the Cubs are now 13-26 there, and that doesn't include the two playoff losses there last year. I wasted my time staying up to watch; it was a fairly quick game at two hours and 18 minutes, ending by 11:00 pm CT, but ultimately a dissatisfying loss, another one where I shut the TV off immediately after Aramis Ramirez grounded out to end the game.

Harden was magnificent. He mixed his pitches up well, had excellent velocity, and probably could have (and considering Bob Howry put the game further out of reach in the 8th, probably should have. Told you I don't trust Howry!) thrown another inning, having reached 112 pitches, but walked only two, and you know how I sometimes say "one bad pitch"? That was literally true for Harden last night -- he got a pitch up on D'backs RF Alex Romero, and he homered, the first of his major league career (which consists of all of 65 at-bats). Harden had no-hit stuff last night and until Romero's HR, I thought he had a shot at one. He's now thrown 12.1 innings as a Cub, allowed six hits and a walk and one run, struck out 20 -- and has a no-decision and a loss to show for it.

Meanwhile, the Cubs were hitting Randy Johnson. No, really, they were -- hitting fly ball after fly ball right at people, and Chris Young did make a couple of nice running catches. I kept thinking one or more of those fly balls had to fall in, but they never did. The Cubs' only two hits were a leadoff single by Jim Edmonds in the 3rd, and a leadoff single by Reed Johnson (what's with that Fu Manchu, buddy?) in the 4th. Harden laid down a nice sacrifice bunt to advance Edmonds to 2nd, but he was stranded... and that was it till the 9th, when a leadoff walk and an error put runners on first and second with nobody out. But D-Lee hit into his 20th DP of the year and A-Ram, in a huge slump (2 for his last 30 and down to .271), ended it with the groundout. Those guys have got to step up with Alfonso Soriano out, and they haven't. Randy Johnson is now 13-0 lifetime vs. the Cubs, and this is likely his last regular season start against them; according to Len & Bob, the only other pitcher in history to have at least ten career starts vs. the Cubs without a defeat is Sal Maglie, who pitched for good Giants and Dodgers teams in the 40's and 50's when the Cubs were mostly bad. Give Johnson credit -- he was sharp last night and made the pitches he wanted to make. He's not what he used to be (when Johnson made his ML debut on September 15, 1988, Rich Harden was not quite seven years old), but for one night, he recaptured some of his past brilliance. One more historic note: Rich Harden is now the first pitcher in Cubs history to record ten strikeouts in each of his first two starts with the team.

Really, if Lou wants to jumpstart this offense, he'd forget about the plan to have Soriano head to Tucson (where there is a chance of rain tonight) where Iowa is playing tonight, and just have him activated and start in LF in Phoenix. Instead, here is Lou's brilliant idea:

"Tuesday Time Change. No Batting Practice."

After watching another night of meager offensive production -- this time against a 44-year-old former power pitcher using the Cubs for his personal Hall of Fame pass -- Piniella said he's taking the bats out of his hitters' hands before the game again.

Well, who knows? Maybe it'll work. In any case, perspective: the Cubs still lead the NL Central by two games even though they have now lost four of their last five. And in those five games, they have allowed twelve runs, so the issue isn't with the pitching staff -- they've been good to outstanding over those five games. Except for the outburst on Sunday, the Cub offense has been mostly missing in action... and a lot of that is because of missing Soriano. Including the June 11 game when Soriano was hit (because he played only one inning of that game), the Cubs are 17-17 since he went down; they were 2.5 games ahead on that date and 2 games ahead now.

Get Soriano back. Today. Don't waste more time. He's needed.

Just before Ted Lilly stroked his RBI single up the middle, I said to Howard, "Man, he has about the worst swing I've ever seen." Howard agreed. Lilly had fouled a couple of balls off and flailed rather wildly at the pitches, looking like he had never stepped in a batter's box before.

And then, suddenly, with runners on first and second, Reed Johnson having been intentionally walked by Dan Haren to get to Lilly, Ted sliced a ball through the infield to score the Cubs' first run and score Mark DeRosa, who had doubled with two out and no one on (love to see that!), to tie the game. Alfonso Soriano hit the next pitch down the left-field line for a double, scoring Johnson, and as it turned out, that was all Lilly needed in the Cubs' impressive 3-1 win over the Diamondbacks. I'm not sure where Lilly learned to hit -- he hit only .137 in 2007 -- but he's now 3-for-11 this year (.273) with a double and two RBI.

You could call this a "statement" game if you wish, but it may be too early to say that. Remember, though the D'backs have looked great in posting, before today, a 23-12 record for the best mark in the major leagues, a year ago at this time the Brewers were 24-10 and a lot of you were wailing, "The Cubs will never catch those guys!" And yet, they did. And though Arizona is playing well, today the Cubs and Lilly and Carlos Marmol and Kerry Wood shut them down.

Lilly was outstanding -- he mixed up his pitches really well and struck out ten while walking only two and allowing only three harmless hits. OK, let's call it two harmless hits (one of which, a triple by Stephen Drew past a diving Johnson, might have been caught by Felix Pie if he had been out there), because the first one was a HR by Chris Young in the first inning -- and I was so glad to not see Lilly slam his glove down as he did in the NLDS last October. In the last ten games Young has played against the Cubs (the six regular season games last year, the three in the NLDS and today), he has homered five times. Enough, already.

Fortunately, Lilly shut down the rest of the D'backs lineup, and left it to Marmol and Wood. Marmol caught a break in the 8th when, after allowing a leadoff single to pinch-hitter Augie Ojeda, he struck out Eric Byrnes while Ojeda tried to steal second. The throw came in over DeRosa's head and he had to leap to stop it from going in to CF. The umpires correctly ruled that Byrnes had interfered with Geovany Soto and thus Ojeda was out. No other D'back came near to getting on base after that, and Kerry Wood threw nine pitches, all strikes, in getting a 1-2-3 ninth for his sixth save, after Derrek Lee had hit his ninth HR to give a little more breathing room.

The crisply played game (two hours and 31 minutes) was played in crisp weather more suited to the last time the D'backs were in Wrigley Field, last October 6 (when it was 85 degrees), an official temperature of 46 at gametime, with a wind blowing in. That didn't stop the HR of either Young or D-Lee, though, and I'm sure most of the crowd of 40,236 (probably about 5,000 no-shows today) appreciated the fast pace. I know I did, along with fellow BCB readers mrcubsfan, ihatethecards, and Drew in attendance in the bleachers. Mrcubsfan and ihatethecards introduced me to a man who said his last trip to Wrigley was sixty years ago when he was fourteen years old, to which I said: "It's about time you came back!" And he got to see a nicely played win on his return, too.

Just like that, this team that looked so sloppy on the road the last couple of weeks played a sharp game today. It is possible to have a very successful season playing, say, .600 ball at home (that'd be 49 or 50 wins) and .500 on the road -- do that and you've won 90, which would likely give you the division title. This one snaps a five-game losing streak against Arizona (including the NLDS) and I'm sure the players are happy to have that proverbial monkey off their backs. And with Lilly, Ryan Dempster and Carlos Zambrano all throwing well, can we stop stressing so much about the starting pitching?

Remember: tomorrow's game is on Fox, and the starting time has been set at 2:40 CDT. I'll post a list of cities tomorrow in the game thread -- double bad news: it's only going to 37% of the country and the announcers are Kenny Albert and Mark Grace. (Ugh.) Incidentally, I had to visit the men's room and the timing had it during the 7th-inning stretch. There's nothing stranger than hearing the disembodied voice of Mark Grace coming through the men's room speakers while visiting the troughs. Or maybe that's strangely appropriate, I don't know which.

Finally, I see that a couple of you posted game threads in the FanPost section -- and I'm not sure what happened to the main page posts. If someone could quickly summarize in the comments, I'd appreciate it.