Wells has looked great in his first 4 starts, but thanks to the offense, is winless.

The Cubs have now lost 9 of their last 11 games. 5 players have been placed on the disabled list and fans are getting frustrated. The Cubs offense had another real tough game tonight against the Dodgers, leaving runners on and blowing opportunities in the 8th and 9th innings, losing the game 2-1. Lou Piniella skipped out on his post-game press conference and the fans are starting to let the Cubs players have it. There was one bright spot however, and its a very unexpected one. His name is Randy Wells.

When Wells was first called up in early May to replace an injured Carlos Zambrano, I'll admit I thought he was going to be a disaster. I wanted Jose Ascanio to get some starts, or Esmailin Caridad, or even Jeff Samardzija, who struggled mightily in his first stint with the big club this year. I thought Lou may have been relying too much on AAA numbers. Wells has proved me to be very wrong so far.

In his first start against the Brewers, he pitched 5 scoreless innings. He was not particularly sharp though, and had to get himself out of several jams. I wasn't really impressed by his stuff and figured his next time out he was going to get shelled. However, he looked even better in his next start against the Astros, throwing 6 shutout innings with a live fastball and a good ground-ball ratio. He continued to look good in his 3rd start against the Padres. He finally gave up some runs, but went 7 strong innings, with 7 strikeouts and a better breaking ball than I had seen out of him previously.

Fast Forward to tonight, Wells takes the mound against the team with the best record in baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Last night while chatting, Clapp and I both agreed we thought this was the night Wells was going to get his rude awakening in the bigs. I even told my Dodger-fan brother, that I expected them to light Wells up. Once again he proved us wrong. Wells looked very good tonight, going 7 strong innings, striking out 7 and allowing just 2 runs to the best offense in baseball. Of course for the 4th time in a row Wells pitched into hard luck as the cubs offense continues to struggle. his record now drops to a very undeserving 0-2.

So how has the 26-year-old rookie produced a 1.80 ERA so far this year? The key may be very simple: Throwing strikes. Lou Piniella has looked far and wide for anyone to come in to games and throw strikes this year. Walking opposing hitters has been the biggest problem with the cubs pitching staff this year. Wells has stayed aggressive and thrown strikes. He has walked just 7 batters in 25 innings and a couple of those were intentional.

So now the Cubs rotation is getting healthy. Zambrano is back and Rich Harden is expected to return from a mid-back strain very shortly. When he first came up, everyone expected Wells' stay in the 5-man was temporary, but that may not be the case now. Lou Piniella has already announced that Wells will stay up with the big club even when everyone is healthy, either in the bullpen or the rotation. The Cubs still have 5 very strong starting pitchers outside of Wells and that has been the very least of their problems this year, but don't be surprised if Sean Marshall is the guy that gets sent back to the pen.

The Cubs still have a lot of hitting talent and if they can ever get things turned around and win this division, they will have guys like Randy Wells to thank for keeping them in the race while they were putting 1 run per game on the scoreboard.

Get The Latest Blogfines Updates By Following Us On Twitter.