The Trials of Sweet Lou...

Series Recap—Dodgers vs Chicago (NL)

5/25: Dodgers 9, Cubs 8
5/26: Cubs 4, Dodgers 2
5/27: Dodgers 2, Cubs 1 (11 innings)

All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not a Cubs fan. This must've been torture watching these games. In the first game, DeLo pitched great, left with four run lead, and then watched Beimel, Brazoban, and Broxton absolutely implode, giving up seven in in the seventh. But then the Cubs much less vaunted bullpen decided to follow suit in the eighth, and the Dodgers scored four, with no runner ever advancing more than one base. Station to station all the way. It was like the conga line in the old Bugs Bunny cartoon. Meanwhile Seanez steadied the ship, and Saito finished out for the save.

Hendrickson gave up two quick homers in his start, and a couple more runs later, while Carlos Zambrano demonstrated why he's a number one starter. The Dodgers did get a couple of runs towards the end, but too little, too late. I need to look at Hendrickson's numbers again. He was looking so good there for awhile, that while it was hard to expect it to last, it's equally hard to believe it might have all been luck. He's still not as bad as he was last year

The rubber game saw Wolf and Rich Hill dueling for six scoreless innings apiece (game scores of 69 and 67, respectively), then turning it over to the pen (Ruh, roh, Lou). The Cubs took a lead in the eighth on three consecutive singles off Seanez. Ethier got a PH homer off of Eyre in the bottom. There's a nice deconstruction of the inning focusing on Little's moves versus Pinella's here. The game went into the 11th, when the Dodgers won the game without an official at bat. Ramon Martinez, down 0-2, worked a walk. Betemit walked, too. Sweet Lou made a pitching change. Then Lucille basically got picked off second, but while Michael Barrett was throwing to second, Martinez lit out for third instead, and made it. The Cubs then walked Furcal intentionally to get to Juan Pierre, hoping for the weak groundball to the infield. It was all for naught, though, because Carlos Marmol then hit Pierre on the knee with a pitch. Martinez scores, ballgame over. Rob McMillin had this terrific commentary on the game over at 6-4-2.