Friday, April 23, 2010

Series #6: Vegie Lasagna, Mr. Baseball and the return of Ted Lilly

Since we just saw the Brewers a little over a week ago, I won't go into much detail about them.

Not much as changed outside of the fact they absolutely manhandled the Pirates this week outscoring them 36-1 in the three game series.

Prince Fielder has been hibernating so far this season...he hit his first homer of the season yesterday in the Brewers 20-0 romp of the Bucs. Hopefully for the Cubs (and sadly for me) he will stay quiet for one more weekend.

Jazz bat with a jazz hand!

Ryan Braun, on the other hand, is leading the league in RBI right now. Casey McGehee is playing very well.

And don't forget about this guy:
It's ok to hate him again.

The Brewers come home today with a 4 game winning streak. The Cubs have lost 5 out of there last 6.

The match ups:

Tonight: Ryan Dempster goes up against Jeff Suppan. Suppan's only appearance this season came against the Cubs in the last game of the opening series at Wrigley. The Cubs hit him well. Unfortunately, the Brewers hit the Cubs' pitchers better as Samardzija and Marshall gave up late inning runs. Dempster has been solid this year outside of some control problems at the home opener.

Tomorrow:

"All shall love me."


Yes, the return of our lord and savior, Ted Lilly. I think it is completely unknown what we will get from Teddy, but it will be fantastic to have him back. Lilly has a career 3-2 record against Milwaukee, with an ERA well over 4.00...He's had some problem with them over his career.

The Brewers will throw Doug Davis on Saturday...(broken record) who tends to kill the Cubs with his slowball. He gave up 6 runs in 3 1/3 innings in Chicago a little over a week ago. In his last appearance against Washington, he was hit hard again. The truth is, Davis has been horrible so far this year. What a fine signing by the Brewers. Let's hope this trend continues.

Sunday:

Randy Wells faces Dave Bush. Wells is giving up a lot of hits, but teams aren't scoring against him. He has been wonderful at pitching out of jams this year. Dave Bush, who the Cubs have traditionally hit well, has pitched very well this season for the Brewers. He handled the Cubs fairly well last Wednesday and in his last appearance against Washington, he threw 7 shutout innings.

As usual, I expect a large number of Cubs fans to invade Miller Park this weekend. The Brewers fans have started to fight back a bit on this invasion...it has become more difficult for Cubs fans to get tickets to these Cubs-Brewers games.

Hopefully we can have a repeat of last week's series where the Cubs took 2 out of 3. The would be a good goal for this team. We've only won that single series...time to turn things around.

One last note, with Lilly being activated on Saturday, someone has to go...barring any injuries, I'm guessing Jeff Samardzija gets to go play for Ryno at Iowa.