Chicago Sunday Baseball

Thoughts regarding the Cubs and White Sox games today:
- Randy Wells is awesome. He's got a 1.86 ERA in 6 starters this season filling in for Rich Harden. He, once again, had a great outing Sunday, spreading 7 hits over 6 2/3 innings and only giving up 2 runs. And, once again, the Cubs bullpen (Marmol) blew it for him. Even though my allegiances lie on the other side of town, I hope that the Cubs finally give this guy some solid support because his stats deserve it. Oh, he also went 1-2 from the plate and scored a run today to boot. (Also, a great story on how he made it to this point by Buster Olney)

- Carlos Marmol should be demoted not to the minor leagues but to a park district league. The guy has been absolutely aweful. He walked the only 2 batters he faced today and one of those runners scored to tie the ball game. This was the 4th time in the last 7 games that he has walked 2 batters in an appearance (none of which have lasted more than an inning).

- The Cubs had a runner on 2nd base with 1 out in the 8th, 9th, and 10th innings and failed to score on any of those opportunities. Timely hitting is going to be necessary if the Cubs decide to make a run for the division this year.

- The Bartolo Colon Experiment should really be over by now on the South Side. Colon (3-5 this year) gave up 8 hits and 5 earned runs in 5 innings of work. The more important stat though is that only 4 of those 8 hits stayed in the park. While we all hoped that he would return to his 2002 form when he went 20-8, this is just plain not the case. It also doesn't help that his career ERA is 4.08. Thus, he clearly needs get decent run support (4/5 runs) to be in line for a win. And with the atrocious offensive numbers for the White Sox this year, this doesn't really seem like its going to happen.

- One of the lone bright spots of the day was Alexei Ramirez's 3-run homerun in the 5th inning. He was expected to be a major contributor to the White Sox offensively this year and has been pretty inconsistent. Maybe this will be a turnaround game for him? We can only wait and see.

- Gordon Beckham still remains hitless in his major league career, going 0-4 today. Many touted him as the savior of the White Sox. That is ridiculous. The guys is still really young, and while it's great that he has had much success to this point in this career, he is now seeing the best talent he has ever faced. Thus, it's clearly going to take time to adjust to that. I'm happy to see that he is at least getting up to the plate aggresively and looking to put the bat on the ball (not just watching himself strike out (only 2K's in 10 ABs)). He put good wood on the ball in the 8th and nearly got his first career hit and RBI but was robbed by a nice diving catch by Indian's CF Trevor Crowe.