Three up, three down: A look at the Cubs, May 30 edition

It was a rough week for the Cubs. They started out well by taking two from the Mets, then lost four games in a row in every possible way you could imagine, then Marcus Stroman saved the day and hopefully put the team back on the winning track with his one-hit shutout Monday.

Let’s look at who’s hot and who’s not, and the first “who’s hot” should not surprise you.

Three up

Marcus Stroman had two excellent outings

In addition to the one-hitter, Stroman threw eight strong innings against his former team, the Mets, last Wednesday at Wrigley Field.

That’s 17 innings over his last two starts with five hits and two runs allowed, three walks and 11 strikeouts. (0.471 WHIP, 1.06 ERA over the two starts.)

Here are Stroman’s postgame remarks after the one-hitter [VIDEO].

Mark Leiter Jr. continues to impress

The Cubs have just six saves this year. Only the woeful A’s (four) have fewer.

Two of those saves are credited to Leiter, who threw 3⅓ hitless innings last week. He retired all 10 batters he faced, four by strikeout, and posted one of those saves, against the Mets last Wednesday.

Overall this season Leiter has 32 strikeouts and just six walks in 21⅓ innings. Keep up the good work!

We’re a bit short this week, so the third spot goes to Patrick Wisdom

Seriously, most of the Cubs had awful weeks, both at the plate and pitching-wise, so I’m going to give the third “three up” spot to Wisdom, who is 3-for-6 over his last two games, hit a pair of homers Sunday and drove in all five runs in the Cubs’ loss to the Reds.

Wisdom has 1,083 plate appearances as a Cub. He’s hit 67 home runs. That ranks 46th in Cubs franchise history. If he hits 16 more — which would give him 30, and he might do better — that would move him up 10 spots to tied for 36th with George Altman.

Here’s a look at Wisdom’s first homer Sunday, which went 424 feet [VIDEO].

Three down

It’s time to end the Michael Fulmer show

Fulmer has made 24 appearances this year. He’s allowed runs in nine of them and multiple runs in six, and that’s way too many for a guy who was generally thought to be the anointed closer before this season began.

Put another way: In order to get his ERA to even a “reasonable” 4.00, he would have to throw 19 consecutive scoreless innings. I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen. In Saturday’s game against the Reds, Fulmer helped ruin Jameson Taillon’s outing by allowing a home run that gave the Reds the lead on the second pitch he threw.

When Codi Heuer is ready to come off his rehab assignment, the logical thing to do would be to DFA Fulmer. Fulmer is making $4 million this year, no buyout, it’s not that much money to eat.

Ian Happ could probably use a day off

Happ hit .167/.276/.208 (4-for-24) over the last week with 10 strikeouts. The last game he didn’t play was April 23 against the Dodgers. Yes, there’s an off day this Thursday, so maybe giving Happ Wednesday off, so he’d have two days of rest, might help him.

Miles Mastrobuoni is not a MLB player

Mastrobuoni got three starts this past week and at-bats in two other games. He went 1-for-11 with four strikeouts. Yes, he walked three times, but even that gave him just a .286 OBP over the week — and yet, David Ross put him in the leadoff spot Monday.

The FO and Ross seem obsessed with “gotta have him because he hits lefthanded.” Well, yes, he carries a bat and stands in the left-hand batter’s box. “Hits” isn’t really happening — Mastrobuoni has a .479 OPS in 51 PA.

Bring David Bote back. He could not possibly be worse.