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Usually, teams enjoy coming home after long road trips, especially trips as unsuccessful as the Cubs' trip to St. Louis, Cincinnati and Philadelphia was.
But the Cubs are 12-19 at home. This probably portends a really bad season. Most Cubs teams do well at home, but the 95+ loss clubs of the last ten seasons all had losing home records.
It's rough to write this. But at 25-39 and continuing a rough portion of the schedule with the Brewers and Yankees coming to town, they may be looking at a 2-5 or, at best, a 3-4 homestand. The Cubs need to go 35-63 to avoid tying the team record for losses. The way things are going, there's no guarantee they can even do that.
I wish I had better news. But it is what it is.
If you have not yet heard, Kerry Wood has, as expected, been placed on the DL with the blister problem, retroactive to June 9. Jeff Baker has been activated, so the team is back to 12 pitchers.
Cubs lineup:
Castro ss, Barney 2b, Baker rf, Ramirez 3b, Soto c, Montanez lf, LeMahieu 1b, Campana cf, Dempster p
So evidently, the lineup was drawn out of a hat.
Brewers lineup:
Weeks 2b, Kotsay cf, Braun lf, Fielder 1b, McGehee 3b, Hart rf, Betancourt ss, Nieves c, Wolf p
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Maybe there's some hope here. Ryan Dempster pitched against the Brewers five times last year, with four wins and a no-decision and a 2.23 ERA. Granted, Dempster hasn't been the pitcher he was last year, so far in 2011. Brewers hitters are hitting .232 (57-for-246) against Dempster, and he's managed to hold Prince Fielder to a .250 average with two HR in 47 plate appearances.
Believe it or not, in a long-ago and far-away time, the Cubs actually won games. One of them was against Randy Wolf in Milwaukee on April 8. In fact, the Cubs beat Wolf twice last year, too. One of those was one of Dempster's wins. Geovany Soto and Jeff Baker both homered off Wolf on April 8. Maybe there's some hope here.
Today's game is on CSN Chicago and FSN Wisconsin. Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.
Baseball-reference.com game preview
Please visit our SB Nation Brewers site Brew Crew Ball. As always, be careful over there.
Today's first pitch thread will be up at 7 pm CDT and the overflow threads will post at 8 pm, 9 pm and 9:45 pm CDT. If you need more overflows due to extra innings or rain delays, post them in the fanshot section.
Discuss amongst yourselves.