Randy Wells wasn’t terrible today, he just wasn’t getting any calls on the periphery of the zone. And, if you know Wells, he absolutely has to get those calls, or he’s not going to have a good, long day. He was fortunate to give up only two earned runs. The Cubs had a scare when Starlin Castro took a Johnny Cueto fastball off the elbow, but he stayed in the game.
The Cubs came back from an early 2-0 lead to tie the game in the bottom of the 5th inning, only to give those two runs right back in the sixth. And I mean give – the Reds scored both runs without the benefit of a hit. The Cubs’ bats were good enough to get lots of opportunities, but not good enough to take advantage of many of them.
Alfonso Soriano had a particularly frustrating, but typical, Soriano at bat: he comes to the plate in the 7th with the bases loaded and one out. The batter before him walked on five pitches by a reliever who’d just come into the game. What does Soriano do? Naturally he hacks away at the first two pitches he sees, and then strikes out on a low and away slider that never even sniffed the strike zone.
The Cubs get enhanced today, but, if they’d loss, you could have done the same thing to the Reds…