Weekend Recap: Human Pitching Machines

Aside from a surprisingly dominant Friday, this was not a particularly satisfying weekend series. Looking at the stats the morning after, it's worse than you might expect, all things considered. We're the flipside of the Cardinals pretty thoroughly - 3-7 overall, 22nd in MLB in batting average AND OBP, and also sporting a pathetic .342 slugging percentage. Even looking ahead to Dempster's next start, you've got the depressing fact that our best-performing pitcher is 0-1.

But hey, only four games back!

Line Items:

- So Jeff Samardzija either had one hell of a bad inning with runs to spare or he's back to being Regular Samardzija.

- I really thought Paul Maholm was a good pickup in the offseason for a year that we weren't throwing wads of cash about. For a 6-14 year, his 2011 was statistically solid - a 1.294 WHIP, an ERA just north of three and a half. All this was apparently a freak occurence, because he is fucking awful. He's leading the league in both earned runs and hit batters. Is it even worth watching a game he's starting? I know what a terrible box score looks like by this point.

- Lendy Castillo's clearly not ready to contribute to even our bullpen, but why let that keep us from anchoring him to the 25-man roster all year? Rule 5 is weird.

- If I were wondering how the Cubs were doing, and I turned on the TV and saw Rodrigo Lopez, I would immediately know it was a multi-run deficit. If he's in the game, it's a given that shit has gotten clearly out of hand.

- Ever take to the Twitters on a Cubs/Cards day? I swear the Cards fans are just smashing their greasy palms on whatever pre-paid Nokia phone the Kum N Go was marking down that week.

- Ryan Dempster faces the Marlins on Tuesday. Almost forgot he was an All-Star starting pitcher for them back in the day. But of course the story will be on Ozzie Castro and his evil socialist agenda. The man's been through so much, I bet he can't wait to get back to embarrassing himself in completely apolitical ways.