Hope you like pitching!

Scores in the Cubs' sweep of the Dodgers at Wrigley this week: 3-1, 3-1, 2-1. This is only the second time this season the Cubs went more than two games in a row scoring fewer than four runs in each, but the only other time (a five-game stretch from May 4-9 that went 3, 3, 3, 0, 3 for the Cubs), they were just 2-3 in the span. Even though the bullpen was a bit shaky and had to constantly extract itself from jams, you have to like three games of one-run ball from the staff. Dempster was solid if unspectacular on Monday, Gallagher was great on Tuesday - could he please give us seven innings of four-hit ball on a regular basis? - and Zambrano deserved better than a no-decision tonight, although he threw a lot of pitches (130, to be precise - his most since throwing 136 [!!] in a 2-1 complete game win over the Phillies on May 8, 2005). His command wasn't great, although the strike zone from the home plate umpire also seemed a bit inconsistent.

The reason I like this sweep as much or more than any other series the Cubs have won is it demonstrated an ability to win some close games, and some low-scoring games, and some games where they trailed late. Monday's game the Cubs went up 2-0 in the first and hung on, but on Tuesday they went down 1-0 in the fourth and looked to be doing nothing against Hiroki Kuroda, but in the seventh they scratched out three runs by putting runners at the corners with one away, then getting an error, a single and a double. Then they held on for dear life as Marmol had one of his worst innings of the year, walking two and loading the bases with one out before getting out of it. Is he starting to feel those 33 innings in 53 games?

And then tonight, one of the worst games of the year for eight innings. The Cubs don't usually hit Derek Lowe terribly well - remember his one-hitter in 2005? - and today was not an exception, as he went seven allowing just four hits and just one guy to get past second (and this was Soriano in the first inning). Then Broxton - who helped blow it last night - came on and mowed down Johnson, Hoffpauir and Soriano in the 8th. Fortunately Saito couldn't find the plate in the 9th, although the Cubs should have won it in regulation but only got a sac fly out of a bases-loaded, one-out situation. Fortunately the Dodgers dug up Chan Ho Park recently, and he came on for the tenth, giving up a double to the suddenly very sparingly used Mike Fontenot. Up came Soriano, and as Bob Brenly predicted that they wouldn't pitch to him with first base open, they did in in fact pitch to him, and Soriano watched a tailor-made 2-1 inside fastball go past for a strike... only to flare the 2-2 breaking ball down the left-field line, scoring Fontenot and winning the game.

So, which Cubs team do you like better? The team that scores in bunches but can have inconsistent pitching, or the team capable of winning every game 3-1? Certainly you have to like the ability to win tight games in a playoff-like atmosphere (night game, chilly, good team, crowd pumping), but I would love it if baseball's highest-scoring offense could be a bit more consistent. Would you believe that even at 32-21, the Cubs are three games under their Pythagorean projection? It's because they score a bunch in one game and then much less in the next two, and suddenly they've lost the series despite outscoring their opponents. In fact, the Cubs have only been outscored by the opponent in four series all year (going 0-3-1 in those series), but they've lost five series in which they've outscored the opponent (going 9-5 in those series). In other words, the Cubs are barely above .500 in series wins despite outscoring their opposition by 84 runs this season. The most recent example, of course, was the weekend series in Pittsburgh, started with a 12-3 thumping and ended with two games frittered away and lost in extra innings by a run apiece, meaning the Cubs were +7 run differential for the series but lost a game in the standings. That's gotta stop happening. And if it means winning every game 3-1... that's fine by me.