Braves 5, Cubs 0: The thesaurus recap

Courtesy of thesaurus.com, here are some words to describe Tuesday’s 5-0 Cubs loss to the Braves.

Awful

abominable, alarming, appalling, atrocious, deplorable, depressing, dire, disgusting, distressing, dreadful, frightful, ghastly, gruesome, grody, gross, grungy, harrowing, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrific, horrifying, nasty, offensive, raunchy, repulsive, shocking, stinking, tough, ugly, unpleasant, unsightly

Pathetic

deplorable, distressing, feeble, heartbreaking, inadequate, lamentable, meager, miserable, paltry, piteous, pitiable, pitiful, poor, puny, rueful, sorry, useless, woeful, worthless, wretched

Terrible

abhorrent, appalling, atrocious, desperate, dire, disastrous, disturbing, dreadful, fearful, frightful, ghastly, gruesome, harrowing, hideous, horrendous, horrid, horrifying, loathsome, odious, offensive, poor, repulsive, revolting, rotten, serious, severe, shocking, unfortunate, unpleasant, unwelcome, vile

All right, I see we’re starting to duplicate some words here, so that ought to be enough.

What else can I say about a game where the lineup resembled a split squad from Mesa, due to injuries to Kris Bryant and Javier Báez that we hope won’t keep them out too long, although Bryant would have batted in the top of the eighth had the Cubs not gone out 1-2-3:

Here, have one good thing about this game: Trevor Williams matched a career high with eight strikeouts [VIDEO].

With the offense moribund, though, Williams had no margin for error, and so Ronald Acuña Jr.’s 481-foot home run off him was all the scoring the Braves needed. Williams allowed one further run. His outing of five innings, two runs wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good enough, either. During the broadcast Boog and JD started talking about the number of starts across MLB that had gone at least seven innings, and that figure (at least before Tuesday) was 12 percent. For the Cubs it’s still zero percent in 23 games, and the Cubs have only six starts of those 23 where a starter has gone even six innings. Williams, in fact, is the only Cubs starter to pitch at all in the seventh inning, two batters into the game against the Brewers April 5 at Wrigley Field.

This... this just isn’t going to work if the Cubs hope to contend in the weak division that is the NL Central, where they currently reside in last place, four games out of first place.

Back to this stinker of a game for a moment, the Cubs weren’t likely to erase a 2-0 deficit in the ninth, but Brandon Workman made sure it wasn’t 2-0 with an appalling bottom of the eighth in which he allowed three hits and two walks, one of the latter forcing in a run. I felt like I was watching Sunday’s game again.

Thanks are due to Jake Marisnick and Nico Hoerner for their singles, for without them, the Cubs’ current streak of not being no-hit might have ended at 797 games.

We move on. There’s another game tonight. Kyle Hendricks will try to right his own sinking ship. Huascar Ynoa, who the Cubs absolutely pounded at Wrigley Field, will start for the Braves.

Game time Wednesday is 6:20 p.m. CT. TV coverage will be via Marquee Sports Network, and there will also be a broadcast on FS1 (no blackouts). Today’s game preview will post at 4:30 p.m. CT.