Holding Back the Praise

I didn't want to comment after the Colorado series that the Cubs were playing some of their best baseball of the season. I wanted to see what the Cubs would do against the better teams in the league. Yes we are beating for the most part the teams we are supposed to beat, but the teams that are half way competing for playoff spots really give us a hard time.

The Cubs really need to start sweeping teams. Our nice little run gained us no ground on the Cardinals, in fact it has put us even farther back at 11.5 games. Now I know most of us have given up on winning the division but I sure would like to see the Cubs start beating the better teams on a regular basis and cutting into this Cardinal lead. The more we cut in the Cardinals lead the more wins we add to our lead on the Wildcard. I don't like saying we are a lock for the Wild card. If you start to play just for that you might end up losing that as well.

We will see what the Cubs have in the series against the Padres and Dodger's. The Cardinals series in July decided if we would win the division or not, these next few series will determine if we are a contender or a pretender. If we truly are the best team in the NL when healthy we should wipe the floor with these teams.

A few things I noted about the game was naturally the terrible base running. Alou had two pretty blatant ones. The one that got me upset was when Sosa hit the ball to SS and they were turning the double play, Alou didnt even attempt to slide to break it up, he just ran off to the side so the 2nd baseman could have a nice easy throw. You don't want to run the bases and slide Alou so you can help the team? Then screw you. The other one was when Sosa hit a line drive to the right fielder and Alou got doubled up off 1st base. Real smooth dude. Not that Sosa gets off the hook, swinging at fire flies up there.

I can accept being in a slump and not hitting, but base running mistakes and not hustling are things you can actively prevent. That is all on player. No one else to blame but himself.