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The St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs will play yet another rivalry series over the weekend at Busch Stadium. Full schedule and probable pitchers below.
Carlos Zambrano has never successfully avoided speaking his mind, and following the Chicago Cubs' sweep at the hands of the St. Louis Cardinals, in which Albert Pujols twice beat the Cubs with walk-off home runs in extra innings, he was typically verbose. "We play like a AAA team," he said, also lambasting the pitch selection issues that led to Ryan Theriot getting a slider, instead of a fastball, from Carlos Marmol in the ninth inning. Theriot doubled to tie the game and blow the save for Zambrano, who had allowed just one run.
"We should know that Ryan Theriot is not a good fastball hitter," Zambrano said, "we should know that as a team," and that's especially true considering Theriot spent parts of six seasons with the Cubs before moving on to the Cardinals in the 2010 offseason.
Zambrano is 5-2 this season with an ERA of 4.23. In 11 years with the Cubs he's 121-76 with an ERA of 3.53 and 1494 strikeouts; he's signed through 2012 under the terms of a 2008 deal that promised him five years and $91 million.
It's not a great day to be Mike Quade, newly non-interim manager of the Chicago Cubs. Saturday he didn't intentionally walk Albert Pujols in the 12th inning of their game against the St. Louis Cardinals, and Pujols took a golf swing at a Jeff Samardzija pitch, seemingly out of the strike zone, to give the Cardinals a walk-off victory. The result: Sunday, Mike Quade said he couldn't get any sleep after the loss, but that Sunday was a new day and he would be sure to deal with Puiols differently—which might mean being more aggressive or less aggressive, depending on the situation.
On Sunday Pujols homered to beat the Cubs again. The slugger's season-long dormancy apparently lifted just in time to make Quade, who had Rodrigo Lopez in to pitch against Pujols in the suddenly tied game, look terrible for a second day in a row.
Cubs fans are likely to be less forgiving than I am, but Quade was in an incredibly awkward position both days. You might not want Albert Pujols to beat you in extra innings, but with the Cardinals lineup currently featuring a number of players who you wouldn't want to beat Jeff Samardzija or Rodrigo Lopez, what's to be done about pitching to a guy in the worst slump of his career who will nevertheless proceed to hit three long home runs when it counts?
It took two walk-off home runs from Albert Pujols in extra innings, but the St. Louis Cardinals were able to sweep the Chicago Cubs over their weekend rivalry series at Busch Stadium Sunday, with journeyman swingman Rodrigo Lopez the latest victim of a resurgent Pujols. Chris Carpenter threw nine excellent innings but was left with a no decision; Fernando Salas picked up the win, while Lopez took the loss. Former Cub Ryan Theriot, down to the last strike of the game for the Cardinals, hit a double off closer Carlos Marmol in the ninth inning to tie the game and erase the win for Carlos Zambrano.
Pujols, who had hit just two home runs in all of May, hit three on Saturday and Sunday for the Cardinals, who improve to 36-25 with a two-game lead over the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central. The Chicago Cubs fall to 23-34 with the loss, in the cellar with the Houston Astros after the sweep.
Albert Pujols's OPS heading into Saturday's game against the Chicago Cubs was just .761, but after he finally hit double digits with his 10th home run of the year Friday it looked like things were about to turn. Sunday morning his OPS is .808, and thanks to a pitch from Jeff Samardzija that was bad but not quite bad enough the Cardinals had a 5-4 win over the Cubs. Pujols homered twice, doubled, and drove in four runs to pace the Redbirds, who also got an RBI from re-resurgent Lance Berkman. Carlos Pena homered for the Cubs, who threw six scoreless relief innings at the Cardinals before Pujols connected.
Eduardo Sanchez, who threw two perfect relief innings with two strikeouts, picked up the extra-innings win; Kyle Lohse, the Cardinals' starter, went 5.2 innings and was dogged by hits despite striking out five with no walks allowed. Former Cub Ryan Theriot bumped his hitting streak to 18 games, while Matt Carpenter, the Cardinals' rookie third baseman, doubled and made an outstanding diving stop in his debut.
Albert Pujols homered Friday night in support of Jaime Garcia. It was his 10th of the year, and his first in June after hitting just two all May. Mired in a season-long slump that has his OPS under .800, Pujols has his fans looking for just about any reassurance they can get that the team-carrying version of Pujols is lurking somewhere in the Cardinals' surprisingly successful 2011 season. The home run, his hundredth at Busch Stadium 3, isn't a classic Pujols shot—he gets out in front of an off-speed pitch and pulls it 383 feet into the left field stands—but after that barren May it's his second in five games, which is good news.
The Cardinals have, to date, been saved from Pujols's slump by the startling return to form of Lance Berkman, who back in the mid-aughts served as Pujols's primary slugging foil in the National League Central. But it's difficult to imagine Berkman—as well as his backups, Jon Jay and Allen Craig—keeping up their unbelievable paces. And when the time comes for those guys to regress to the mean, it'd be nice to see Albert Pujols paying them a visit on the way up.
A week after self-destructing against the Rockies, St. Louis Cardinals ace Jaime Garcia showed no rust in dispatching the Chicago Cubs, allowing just one run in eight innings while striking out a batter an inning in the opening of the latest chapter of the Cardinals-Cubs rivalry. Lance Berkman and Albert Pujols homered for the Cardinals, who got six runs on nine hits, four of which went for extra bases. Ryan Dempster (4-5) took the loss for the Cubs, who fall to 23-32 on the season; outfielder Lou Montanez doubled in a run in the loss.
Garcia, who picked up his sixth win, lowered his ERA—which had hovered under two before the blow-up in Coors Field—to 3.05 with the performance, which was the fifth time in 12 attempts that he's thrown seven innings or more and allowed one run or less. At 3.94 he's nearly doubled the strikeout-to-walk ratio that led to his brilliant rookie season while maintaining the low home run rate that was the key to his success.
Saturday the Cardinals will send Kyle Lohse, making an early case for comeback pitcher of the year, out to the mound against Randy Wells.
The St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs, rivals since the St. Louis Hegelians were torn apart in the 19th century by Chicago's rise to prominence, I think, will return to Busch Stadium for another rivalry series that promises to involve a lot of mostly-for-fun backslapping and namecalling, at least while all parties concerned are sober. Jaime Garcia and Ryan Dempster get the call in game one on Friday night at 7:15 PM; Garcia's scheduled start was pushed back a day by Kyle McClellan's injury and Lance Lynn's emergence, which is likely just fine for a pitcher who was roughed up, to say the least, in his last start against the Colorado Rockies.
Saturday afternoon (3:10) Kyle Lohse and Randy Wells will take the mound. Lohse continues to make an outstanding comeback from fascial release surgery; he's 7-2 with an ERA of just 2.13. Wells, who's spent much of 2011 on the disabled list, is 1-1 with an ERA of 5.40.
In the series capper, the deans of the rivalry will take the mound as Carlos Zambrano comes up against Chris Carpenter. Neither ace is up to his best stuff in 2011; Zambrano at least has the wins, at 5-2 with a 4.23 ERA, while Carpenter's solid peripherals are masked by a 1-5 record and a 4.52 ERA. The game takes place, in grand rivalry tradition, Sunday afternoon at 1:15.
Ryan Theriot Doubles To Tie Cardinals-Cubs Finale
Ryan Theriot, who rankled Chicago Cubs fans when he joked that he was "finally on the right side" of the Cardinals-Cubs rivalry, was instrumental in the St. Louis Cardinals' sweep of the Cubs on Sunday, hitting a two-strike, two-out double against Carlos Marmol to send the game into extra innings. Theriot, who has a 19-game hitting streak, pulled a slider down the left field line to score Tony Cruz from first base. After the game, Carlos Zambrano seemed less than pleased by the pitch selection, suggesting that the Cubs, of all teams, should know Theriot is not a fastball hitter.
Theriot, whose double was just his 10th extra-base hit of the season, inspired Baseball Nation's Carson Cistulli to add #therioted to the hashtag dictionary, which is only appropriate for when you're beaten by a former utility infielder who is now playing for a rival. Theriot was 4-14 with two doubles in the series, scoring three times and driving in the one run, his 21st of the season. He's hitting .300/.346/.347 in 53 games with the Cardinals after a career begun with the Cubs, who at one point started Theriot and LSU teammate Mike Fontenot in the same infield.
Jun 06 9:15a by Dan Moore