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With a win tonight the Cubs have come within 2 games of the NL central leading Milwaukee Brewers.  The Cubs dominated the Cardinals tonight, winning 7-1 with Ted Lilly on the mound.  Ted Lilly’s record in his last 8 starts is 7-0,  6-0 in his last 6.  It is only a matter of time before the Brewers go into 2nd place in the NL central.

The story of today’s game was Ted Lilly.  He went 7.0 innings and gave up 6 hits, while walking 3 and striking out 2.  If you watch Lilly pitch, you can see his control is outstanding, he is hitting his spots and throwing good breaking balls. Lilly was an excellent pickup for the Cubs in the off-season, he could end up winning 17-18 games the way he is pitching.

But let’s not forget about the other starting pitchers, Zambrano became the first pitcher to 13 wins in the NL.  Could this be his Cy Young year? If anyone remembers, Zambrano made a prediction  at the beginning of the season that he would win the Cy Young and the Cubs would win the World Series.  Everyone laughed when he said that, and especially 4 weeks into the season, when Zambrano was 1-5 with an ERA close to 6.00.  Now the tables have turned and the Zambrano is leading the NL in W’s and the Cubs are creeping up behind the Brewers like a Bear about to attack!

It’s not just a couple players making big plays and leading the team, it’s a team filled with chemistry and A SHITLOAD of good players.  When I see the Cubs starting line-up I see 5 players batting around .300 or better. Lou has come into town and really made some noise.  Players have a hell of a lot of respect for the man and I think they know they have to play hard or go home.  We have already seen Izturis get traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Rookie Ryan Theriot take his position.  This is a good sign, last year I felt like the clubhouse atmosphere was to relaxed, kind of like Dusty’s attitude.  Couldn’t have a better man come into town then Lou Piniella.

The meltdown Lou Piniella had on June 2nd was the turning point of this season.  I was lucky enough to witness the madness of sweet Lou at Wrigley on that wild day.  It was the Cubs sixth straight loss and they were 9 games below .500, that not so elusive number (anymore).  My fellow Cubs fans and I all thought the Cubs were screwed just like last year, but we knew we had the right pieces of the puzzle.  Sure enough the Cubs went 18-8 in their remaining games in June and are now 14-6 so far in July.  Something just clicked that day.  Maybe the players realized that this man Piniella wants to win just as bad as they do.  You should have seen how red Piniella’s face turned that day, it stuck out like a giant red pepper from 150 feet away.  That day I was quite upset seeing a loss at Wrigley, but I look back and would not take back going to that game for ANYTHING! It was amazing!!!

GO CUBS… STOMP the BREWERS

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Pitchers, Good Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.