Looking at the big picture of the second half, this isn't so bad.  I said before the Cards series started that we'd do well to get out of these 11-game sequence going 6-5.  I didn't expect we'd get four of those wins against St. Louis, but I still hold to my original belief--it's rough to be three games back three days after reaching a tie atop the division, but if we've hit a rough spot now, we were unexpectedly streaking only five days ago.

In other words, one of the next two games would make me happy.  With Rich Harden going tomorrow, it's a little silly to set the bar higher.

Today's matchup is a pair of pleasant surprises (for their teams, anyway): Ryan Dempster and Manny Parra.

Game time is 7:05 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

Now, a word about visitors during the Cubs series.  When I woke up this morning, I was surprised to see nearly 200 comments that had been added to the game thread after the first pitch.  Some of them were reasonable, but a whole lot of them were BCB regulars arguing about Cubs fans about who is and isn't trolling.

This is stupid.  By now, we know full well that in a series like this, fans of the other team will show up.  Some of them are obnoxious, others aren't.  If they're obnoxious, IGNORE THEM.  As they say, don't feed the trolls.  I don't want to see another 30 comments that say, "you're a troll."  That's just as bad as trolling itself.  If you ignore them, they'll go away--often literally, since the other mods and I aren't shy about banning folks who clearly aren't here to play by the rules.

If you want to have a chat about the game or the season or whatever with a Cubs fan visitor, be my guest.  If you're a visitor, and you're civil, I hope that we treat you more or less like everybody else--plenty of sarcasm without too much vitriol.  (Yeah, we aren't all that nice to each other sometimes, either.) 

Frankly, I was more disappointed by how some regulars acted in the thread last night than anything else.  Let's all be mature adults here, even if some of us aren't adults, and some of us don't have much practice. 

Go Brewers!