Darn! I have both teams making the playoffs. It’s still early.
Cubs are doing much better now, but Lester has been terrible.
And Joe Maddon may be too cute by half in batting the pitcher 8th instead of 9th just about every game. It really bit the Cubs in the posterior yesterday, when he batted Lester (a pitcher one would expect to go deep into the game, and who never has gotten a hit in the Majors) 8th, right behind personal catcher David Ross, and ahead of 2B Jonathan Herrera.
The Cubs scored twice in the first and had runners on the corners and two out with Ross up, but Andrew Cashner pitched around Ross and walked him, and then easily retired Lester. And in the third, Ross again came up with runners in the corners (later second and third, since Castro stole second) and two out, and while Cashner went after Ross, he didn’t give him too much of the plate and walked him again, and then struck Lester out on three pitches.
It would have been a completely different ballgame had Lester been hitting ninth instead of eighth. I hope that Maddon reconsiders his new gimmick, which makes more sense when your starting pitcher is a Jason Marquis (who can swing the bat, and is unlikely to go more than 5 or 6 innings) than a John Lester.