Week 24 awards: Suddenly, Cubs are road warriors

The Cubs are now 17-7 under Mike Quade, but here's the number I'm more impressed with: 12-3. That's the Cubs' record on the road under their new manager; they were 27-38 on the road under Piniella. They struggled away from home last season as well, and it's nice to finally see some consistency when it comes to the home/road split.

It was the Cubs' first perfect week of the season, one that included their longest winning streak of the year (six) and their first three-game sweep in St. Louis since 1988. They beat Garcia, Wainwright and Carpenter to accomplish the latter feat, which is amazing given that those three had never lost back-to-back-to-back starts this season, and the only other time two of them lost in back-to-back games was against Milwaukee last month.

The Cubs are guaranteed to have a winning record against the Cardinals for the year, which is actually nothing new: they've taken the season series with their rivals five of the last six years (55-39 overall).

I don't think Quade deserves all the credit for the September turnaround, but he certainly does deserve praise for a job well done. It's nice to see the youngsters--and the few veterans on the team--putting forth effort and showing that they'll have at least a modicum of talent to work with when the calendar turns to 2011.

Ryno of the Week: Choices, choices. Over the course of the week, the Cubs outscored their opponents 39-12 and every starter got at least one win. We even had a Shark sighting as Jeff Samardzija made his first two starts of the year and is suddenly 2-1 on the season. But Randy Wells posted one of the team's best starts of the year in his return home (he's from Belleville, near St. Louis): 8 IP, just five hits and one earned run, and no walks, the first time he's avoided any free passes since August 2.

Honorable mentions: Casey Coleman, Carlos Zambrano, Ryan Dempster, Xavier Nady, Geovany Soto

Goat of the Week: I hate to be mad at anyone during a six-game winning streak, but Blake DeWitt was 3-for-17 this week and is now batting .234 as a Cub.

Dishonorable mention: Marlon Byrd