Lilly victimized by shabby offense and shoddy defense

After a miserable six-game road trip on which they struggled to score runs, played poor defense and didn't have enough pitching, the Cubs finally got back to Wrigley Field ... and had the exact same problems.

Ted Lilly held the Marlins hitless and walkless through five innings, but Starlin Castro's second error of the game opened the sixth inning and opened the door for the Marlins' first run. Lilly allowed three runs of the earned variety in the seventh after the Cubs had re-taken the lead, and that, as they say, was that. Though the Cubs outhit the Marlins, runs were hard to come by. Soriano had the team's only real good day at the plate with three hits--all of them line drives to left field--and both runs batted in. In the Cubs' last eight homes games, Soriano is 11-for-24 with 12 RBI.

But in the team's last six games overall, taking out the 14-run outburst on Friday, the run totals look like this: 2, 2, 1, 2, 3. Ouch. Unless you're the 1995 Braves, that's not going to win you a lot of games.

And neither is a shortstop who makes three errors per game. What the heck got into Kid Castro yesterday? He made bad throws on two routine grounders and booted another one. He was so upset about the fielding error that he decided to let Hanley Ramirez run to second, adding a mental error to his physical one. Castro now has four errors to go along with his four hits. I thought the defense was already part of the package! I know there's a step up involved in the transition to the major leagues, but routine throws aren't a whole lot different at Wrigley as opposed to Tennessee.

But, even if that unearned run doesn't cross the plate, the Cubs still lose 3-2. You know how sometimes people say "There's just no quit in this team"? Well, there doesn't appear to be any start in this Cubs team. Or at least no consistency. They're like that 1972 Ford Ranchero out back--it'll start every now and then, but when you need to get your pregnant wife to the hospital because she just went into labor, that better not be your only option because chances are it's not going to start, and you're probably going to be delivering that baby yourself.

The Cubs' record of 14-19 is starting to look kinda, you know ... bad. I know what will make us feel better: Let's make fun of all the NL teams with records worse than the Cubs'. Like the Houston Astros. Ha, those stupid Astros, they're so terrible.

Damn, that's it. The Astros are the only team in the National League worse than the Cubs.

Well, the offense can't keep this up, right? After all, they're fifth in the league in average and fourth in OBP. They're 10th in average with runners in scoring position, however. Not only do the Cubs have too much talent to keep playing this way, they're also hitting too well to keep scoring such low run totals. All it takes is a few clutch hits or a long ball every now and then.