Blame the offense... or The Riot?

There goes the perfect season, I guess.

The Cubs really did seem to play pretty well. Limiting the opponent to two runs in nine innings is a good thing. Dempster was quite fine in his start, and Heilman and Cotts each had one good inning. The problem was, Lou asked each of them to pitch two. That gave Cotts a difficult situation when he came on in the ninth, and a similarly tough scenario for Gregg in the 10th.

Of course, Lou was forced to ask too much of his relievers because the offense had trouble getting going. While it is inevitable that the offense has a collective night off every so often, there was one play that stuck out as the "Doh!" moment of tonight's game.

Milton Bradley got himself into a good hitter's count in the 8th inning while Ryan Theriot was on first base. Ryan subsequently attempted to steal, and was caught. I personally would have liked to see MB get a chance to hit from the 2-0 count (furthermore, isn't 1-0 a bad count to run on? Expectin' fastball, aren't ya?). A well-struck ball might have given us the lead there. Oh well.

A close game tonight, well played on both sides. I'm not too worried about it, aside from Geo's shoulder. Let's go and get a series win Wednesday night.