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The Cubs are 2-7 so far on this longest road trip of the 2011 season. Actually, that's two games better than a lot of people thought they'd do before the trip began; there were some here who thought the Cubs could lose all 10 games on the trip.
The worst the Cubs have done in recent years on a road trip of this length is 1-9; they lost all but one game of a trip to Cincinnati, St. Louis and Milwaukee from Sept. 11-20, 2000, near the end of a dismal season where they lost 97 games. In 1997, the Cubs (who finished 68-94) lost all seven games of a trip to Colorado and Atlanta, and in 1954, when trips were longer, they went 2-11 on a trip to Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, New York and Milwaukee (that team went 64-90). That last one was bookended; they won the first and last games of the trip, sandwiching them around an 11-game losing streak.
So a loss today would not make this the worst road trip in Cubs history. But it's bad enough. And you can see from the above where this year's final record is probably heading. (And there's more possible historic badness after the jump, regarding today's starting pitcher.)
Cubs lineup:
Fukudome RF, Barney 2B, Castro SS, Pena 1B, Ramirez 3B, DeWitt LF, Colvin CF, Hill C, Davis P
Phillies lineup was not available at the time of posting. You can add it to the comments if you find it.
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Doug Davis last pitched against the Phillies on August 20, 2009 when he was with the Diamondbacks. He gave up five runs in five innings. That pretty much looks like most of his starts as a Cub so far. There have been only three pitchers in Cubs history who have gone through an entire season winless with as many as six losses: Angel Guzman in 2006, Dave Smith in 1991 and Dick Drott in 1960. A loss today would drop Davis to 0-6. Such is the 2011 season.
Roy Oswalt pitched twice against the Cubs in 2010, both while he was still with the Astros. He threw seven shutout innings at Wrigley Field on April 17 and got a win, but the Cubs hit him pretty hard in Houston on June 5 and defeated him. Tyler Colvin and Aramis Ramirez hit home runs that day. Home runs. I remember home runs.
Today's game is on WGN and WPHL-17 in Philadelphia. Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.
Baseball-reference.com game preview
Please visit our SB Nation Phillies site The Good Phight.
Today's first pitch thread will be up at 12:30 pm CDT and the overflow threads will post at 1:30 pm, 2:30 pm and 3:15 pm CDT. If you need more overflows due to extra innings or rain delays, post them in the fanshot section.
Discuss amongst yourselves.