On Friday the Cubs lost their third game in a row, and for the third game in a row, they did it in ridiculously frustrating fashion. All I'm reading about in regards to this game from fans and the media alike is Milton Bradley. The Cubs outfielder lost track of how many outs there were and threw the ball into the right field bleachers after catching a flyball, tried unsuccessfully to advance to third base on a play fielded by the third baseman in front of him, and lost a flyball in the sun that fell for a single.

The plays were extremely annoying and the first two I mentioned inexcusable, absolutely. With the amount of outs being displayed on many scoreboards viewable from the playing field, the players reminding you how many outs there are after every out recorded, and just the fact that you should be always be aware of what's going on in the game, that should never happen. Never. And the baserunning play, that's fundamental baserunning you're taught in Little League. However, I have a hard time placing too much blame on a guy that was pretty much the only player on the team to hit the ball with authority yesterday. It doesn't excuse his play, it just shows how pathetic the rest of the offense was.

Kevin Slowey's a good pitcher that is 9-2 on the season and 24-14 over his career, with a solid career 4.20 ERA pitching in the American League. Do you know why he's good though? He throws strikes. He's walked just 44 batters in 299 2/3 innings now in his career. To put that into perspective, Carlos Marmol's walked 28 batters in 29 innings this year.

Slowey had however allowed 99 hits in 78.2 innings on the season. He gave up 12 homers in that span, including 3 longballs in 4 2/3 innings last week at Safeco Field in Seattle, a pitcher's park. So you'd figure that while the Cubs might not score many runs, they'd at least string together a a lot of hits and likely leave the yard a time or two. Wrong. The Cubs got 4 hits in 6 innings against Slowey. The lowest amount of hits he'd given up in a game this year was 6 prior to Friday. He also struck out a season-high 10 batters in those 6 innings.

I understand that the Cubs got 3 runs which actually rose Slowey's ERA, but they should've had twice that many runs off the Twins' starter. He was throwing meatballs, fastballs and hanging breaking balls right down the middle. And as the Cubs had the previous two games and most of the 2009 campaign, they either popped the pitches up, grounded out weakly, or swung through them, with the last of those being the case for 10 of the 18 outs against Slowey on this day.

It's infuriating. I'd like to think it's just a bunch of players going through a slump at the same time, and that's actually what I've thought leading up to the last few days. However, I'm getting worried that with a few of the hitters it's their approach at the plate and their failures to make adjustments, most notably Ryan Theriot.

Theriot angered me more than anybody yesterday, and that's been the case in many of the recent games. In the last 2 games, he's 0 for 8 with 5 strikeouts. He's become a completely different hitter, and it seems the 5 home runs he hit in the first couple weeks of May have gone to his head. He was a sensational #2 hitter in 2008, and a major part of the Cubs' success. He hit .307 with a .390 on-base percentage, walked 73 times, and struck out just 58 times. Right now he's batting .278, with a .341 on-base percentage, 18 walks, and 36 strikeouts. His 58 strikeouts last year were a career-high, but also came in a career-high 661 plate appearances. He's going to shatter that strikeout total this year.

Theriot's trying to pull everything for a home run now, and he hasn't seemed to realize that a huge reason he was hitting all of those home runs was because teams were pitching him inside. This was because in previous years, he'd just shoot everything up the middle or to right field, and that's more difficult to do on pitches inside. So now they're throwing back outside again after he showed he has the ability to drive the ball on the inner half of the plate, but he thinks that he's a power hitter now, so he's whiffing on those pitches that he would've taken to right field last year.

I know some will say, "Well Theriot has the highest OPS of his career and the highest home run total...", if he could keep it up, that's great, but he won't. I'd much rather have last year's Theriot than the one that's been a .250 hitter with just 1 homer since his powerful May 1-13 stretch.

Kosuke Fukudome was pathetic yesterday as well, sporting the Silver Sombrero with 3 strikeouts in 4 at bats. He's 7 for his last 40, which is a batting average of .175 after a great start to the season. It's looking eerily similar to last year.

Teams have made adjustments on how to pitch to Fukudome again, and again, he looks lost. He's taking the pitches down the middle and swinging at the breaking balls in the dirt or the fastballs in his eyes. He's spinning out again on pitches instead of staying on the ball and driving it to left field. These were the same problems he had in the second half last year. I'm very worried.

Look, I know that Bradley's been probably the main culprit for the Cubs' struggles this year and made a couple gigantic gaffes yesterday, believe me. I'm just saying that while everybody else goes on and on about his game, the Cubs' failure yet again to do much with hittable pitching was lost in the hoopla, and easily bothered me the most. It's becoming quite a worrisome trend and things need to turn around soon. I fear that with Theriot and Fukudome at least, we're not going to see adjustments made and these aren't just slumps they're in.

Theriot, Fukudome, and the rest of the struggling Cubs will get the chance to get it going against 23-year-old rookie pitcher Anthony Swarzak today. He's allowed 12 runs in his last 13 2/3 innings, and 17 hits over that span. He's sure to serve up a fair amount of meatballs. Will the Cubs finally drill a bunch of those pitches and score some runs? Right now, I'd be less surprised to see Bradley get a standing ovation at Wrigley.


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