The 3rd place Milwaukee Brewers invade Wrigley Field tonight to take on the Cubs in the 1st game of a 3 game series. Note that the Cubs are 4-6 in their last 10 games but did win their last 2 against their crosstown "rival" White Sox.
Doug Davis (9-4, 4.44 ERA) takes the mound tonight looking for his 10th win again Carlos Zambrano (4-4, 4.27 ERA). Watch and shake your head as Dusty Baker allows Zambrano's pitch count to get close to 130 (!). Davis has gotten good run support in several of his outings (thus the very solid W-L record) but a closer look reveals quite a bit of inconsistency for Davis. Hopefully he brings his A game tonight as Zambrano can be hard to hit at Wrigley.
I've been liking the Yost top-5 hitters lineup of
Clark
Weeks
Hall
Lee
Overbay
and I hope to see that continue. One question tonight will be whether we see Hardy at SS (likely) with Hall at 3rd, or Helms at 3B with Hall at SS... since Zambrano throw right-handed and Yost seems to play Helms against lefties, will likely see Hardy at SS and Jenkins in right-field. No doubt Prince Fielder will be used in a pinch hitting role at some point.
Note that Zambrano has an 8.10 ERA in June including his disasatrous effort vs the Crew on June 22nd. He'll be wanting to reverse that but he had better not try to get a fastball past Carlos Lee...