"Hmm, that's odd," I thought to myself as I checked out the major league scoreboard, "Reds beat the Cubs 1-0? At Wrigley? Who pitched for the Reds? Arroyo? No. He pitched yesterday. And if he pitched yesterday, Harang pitched the day before. So then who did pitch?" I clicked the box score, "Kyle Lohse? Eight shutout innings? Four hits? TWELVE strikeouts? Damn." Okay, maybe I should be a bit easier on Lohse. He's actually been pretty good this year through three starts. Still, the actual truth is that he was probably only the second best pitcher at Wrigley Field today. Ted Lily struck out ten Reds in his six innings of two hit ball. He only walked one batter, but unfortunately for him his walk of Brandon Phillips coupled with Phillips stolen base and Jeff Conine's single lead to a run scoring and that provided the margin of victory for the Reds, making Lily the hard luck loser.
Lost in the shuffle of this one will be Ryan Theriot's big day for the Cubs. He stroked three of their four hits off of Lohse (all singles) but never even advanced past second base as the heart of the Cubs lineup, Jacque Jones, Derek Lee, and Michael Barrett, went 0-for-10 with five strikeouts. The absence of Aramis Ramirez, who sat out his second straight game with lingering wrist problems, was a little more than conspicuous. Of course, had Ramirez been playing Theriot would have been on the bench, so maybe I'm a bit off base here.
