A Homely Return Home: Cubs Lose to Florida, 4-2
The Cubs lost for the sixth time in seven tries as the Marlins scored three times in the 7th inning to overcome a 2-1 Cub lead and go on to win 4-2 at Wrigley Field.
You wouldn't think a team could pack so much failure into a simple 4-2 loss, but well...
The good:
- Ted Lilly held Florida hitless into the sixth inning and wound up allowing 5 hits and no walks through seven innings
- Alfonso Soriano raised his average to .340 with three more hits, including a double; he also drove in both Cub runs
- Soriano gunned down Hanley Ramirez when Ramirez tried to score from second on a single by Jorge Cantu in the 8th inning
- Geovany Soto reached base two more times, on a single and the 23rd walk he has accepted this year, and his OBP for the season remains around .500
The bad:
- Though Florida starter Nate Robertson came into the game with an ERA a shade under 5.00, Cub hitters did little against him—just two runs and seven hits over Robertson's six innings—and they did nothing against three Marlins relievers after Robertson left
- Starlin Castro made three errors; one led to Florida's first run and another saw him boot a ground ball hit by Hanley Ramirez, after which Castro lackadaisically retrieved the ball, allowing Ramirez to scamper all the way into second base
- Lilly fell completely asleep twice (I mean that metaphorically, not in a Ken Griffey sort of way), allowing Chris Coghlan to take a running lead on his way to stealing third base in the 6th, and then again in the 7th, when Cody Ross got a running start off of third base before scoring on the front end of a perfectly executed double steal
- Coghlan's double off of Lilly in the 6th inning, which ended Lilly's no-hitter and his shutout, was Coghlan's first extra-base hit in 105 at-bats this year
- Aramis Ramirez struck out two more times and were it not for a wind-blown popup single, he would have gone 0-for-4...again; Ramirez is now hitting .163
The defeat leaves the Cubs a season-worst five games under .500 at 14-19. They're now 6 1/2 games behind the Cardinals and just 3 games ahead of the last-place and NL-worst Astros.
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