Wins and boo birds at Wrigley

The Cubs are unbeaten at home, now 4-4 on the season and everyone inside and outside of the dugout seems happy, but one of the Cubs isn't catching any fan love--and he's having trouble with fly balls, too.

The Cubs beat the Brewers 7-6 today, getting a bit of a streak going after beating the Brew Crew 9-5 in Monday's home opener. Today, they came back in the eighth from being down 6-3, with Ryan Theriot and Kosuke Fukudome coming up with the big run-scoring hits. Theriot had a huge day, going 4-5 with two stolen bases, Fukie added two hits and three RBIs, and Jeff Baker continued his mini-tear witha pair of hits. Also, slumping Geovany Soto had his first homer of the year, which reached Waveland Ave. Carlos Marmol was unhittable for the second straight appearance and got the save.

But, the boo birds were out, too, for Alfonso Soriano, who made two more bad plays in left field, bobbling a ball, which allowed Rickie Weeks to get to third after he doubled, and later completely misplaying a ball at the wall so that it bounced back past him toward the infield. Judging from the crowd reaction, you would have thought he had a chance to catch it, but I think every time he does something wrong now, fans imagine Sam Fuld or Tyler Colvin doing someting graceful and acrobatic to make the play that Soriano messed up.

Making matters worse, Lou Piniella, per his new policy, pulled Soriano on a double-switch late in the game, which gave the crowd a good, long opportunity to let Soriano know what they think. I'm definitely not a fan the albatross power hitter, but found it kind of sad and slightly unnecessary, particularly after Soriano had scored the first run of the day for the Cubs after doubling earlier in the game.

Soriano seemed to have a pretty level-headed attitude about the whole thing after the game. With the size of his contract, he's not trade bait, so hopefully he can keep his chin up.

Off to Wrigley tomorrow for some summer weather and another matinee.

Weekend update

After their first weekend of play for the 2010 season, both are teams are 2-4, with line-ups on both sides of town still struggling mightily. The White Sox actually did manage five runs Sunday, the most either team has managed since the Cubs scored five in a hopeless effort back on Opening Day.

The Sox got a nice surprise from Andruw Jones Sunday in the form of an eighth inning game-winning hit that kept them from losing their fifth in a row and getting swept by the Piranhas. Paul Konerko had a two-run homer to continue his tear, and the Sox got solo shots from Mark Kotsay (finally make Ozzie look good for sticking with him) and Gordon Beckham, but Jones' pinch-hit single may have been the brightest moment for this team since Game 1.

Mark Buehrle also was good enough in holding the Twins to four runs over eight innings, keeping a somewhat taxed bullpen off the field.

The win came after a frustrating 2-1 Saturday loss in which a gutsy performance by Freddy Garcia's was wasted. The Sox had a number of scoring chances, but couldn't manage timely hits, and all the recent talk of aggressive base-running backfired at one point when Alex Rios, after his lead-off double, was doubled off of second on a fly ball out.

The Sox head north for a series in Toronto early this week, and it seems unlikely they will find their hitting touch in a dome (damn domes...), but at least they won't have to face Roy Halladay anymore.

The Cubs really should have won all three games in Cincinnati, yet they leave losing two out of three, and when they don't get sabotaged by their own bullpen, they can always count on Alfonso Soriano's clumsy fielding to do the job. On Sunday, Soriano's fumbling of a catchable fly ball in the seventh inning--while not extending the inning, since it would only have been the second out--changed the karma of a game in which Tom Gorzelanny had pitched very well.

After Soriano's error, and with the bases now loaded, Lou Piniella decided to take his anger out on Gorzelanny, removing the lefty for... another lefty, Sean Marshall. Still, Marshall has been dominant this past week, and we've been hoping he'd get the call more often, so the change wasn't a complete surprise. In any case, the karma had changed for the Cubs, and what we got next was a pure bad luck play in which a possible double-play grounder deflected off Marshall's glove and brought in the tying run.

The Reds scored two runs an inning later, and three runs is just too much for this Cubs team. The Cubs didn't do much hitting against rookie starter Mike Leake, with Kosuke Fukudome collecting three of the Cubs' five hits, but they didn't need to, as Leake awarded them seven walks. Still, except for an RBI single by Derrek Lee, the Cubs did nothing with the free runners. The worst was a waste of a bases-loaded, no-outs situation in the first inning. So maybe a little of the bad karma was there from the beginning.

Saturday featured the Cubs' second win of the season and a nicely modulated performance by Carlos Zambrano, who fell behind early 3-0, but didn't implode, and kept the Cubs in the game until homers by Soriano, Fukudome and Jeff Baker brought them a 4-3 lead. Carlos Marmol was at his unhittable best un the ninth for the save, but Zambrano was most impressive. With the obvious exception of his no-hitter in 2008, I've rarely seen get tougher to hit and more calm as a game has gone on. It was an especially nice recovery after his Opening Day horror show.

Home opener for the Cubs tomorrow against the Brew Crew.