X Marks The Dumbass

Ah, home sweet home. The Cubs opened up their 9-game homestand about as crappy as they ended their recent 8-game road trip. For the first time all year, Randy Wells has nobody to blame but himself. Well, maybe some terrible offense, dumb baserunning and laughable defense contributed somewhat. In a game full of just about everything, here's the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good: The Cubs offense exploded for 4 runs. O.K. That's not really an explosion but if they had done that on the recent road trip, that would've been good enough for six wins.

The Bad: Just about everything else. While they did score 4 runs, they did so on a measley 6 hits. Wells had his first bad outing of the year and the Cubs hitters struck out 12 times while only walking once.

The Ugly: Milton Bradley scored his first hat trick as a Cub. He made a terrible baserunning mistake in the 6th inning, running into an out at 3rd on a ball hit right at the thirdbaseman. In the 7th, he lost a flyball in the sun, but he topped it all off in the 8th. With two on and one out, Mauer hit a flyball to Bradley who caught it (hooray) and then turned around and flipped it into the bleachers (boo).

In all honesty, the bonehead play didn't hurt the Cubs today. The run that scored was going to score on the sac fly anyway and the other runner on base died there. Still, it's a play that could hurt the Cubs down the road. The Wrigley crowd really let Bradley hear it, and deservedly so. Bradley has admitted pressing of late and trying to do too much. Lou has said that sometimes players in slumps try to get it back all in one swing. I can't imagine that Bradley's brain cramp will allow him to settle down and relax now that the fans are even more upset with him then they were last week.