The Cubs came into Wednesday’s game with 18 errors, a .178 team batting average and 11 straight losses.
Then things got really ugly.
Colorado’s Roger Bailey pitched the first complete game shutout on the road in Colorado history. The Cubs had five hits and made three more inexcusable errors in a 4-0 loss.
“We thought it had gotten as bad as it gets,” manager Jim Riggleman said. “It hadn’t. And now it has. It has to get better. When it’s as bad as it was today and your record is 0-12 and you played your worst game of the year in your 12th game of the year. . . . We already had been aware that we dug ourselves a deep hole. We had seen progress. Today the progress went backwards. That should be a kick in the pants to anybody who already wasn’t feeling a kick in the pants.”
So are some lineup changes in order now?
“We don’t have changes to make,” Riggleman said. “We have some necessary roster moves we have to make, but in terms of personnel, it’s just not there to be done, really.”
Hard times: Riggleman said the players and he should be “ashamed” of the way they played.
Are they?
“It was just an ugly game,” Brian McRae said. “You’re going to have those over the course of the year. We had one today. It just looks a lot worse when you haven’t won a ballgame. We had five or six games like that last year when we didn’t do anything right.”
Riggleman also said it was the worst game he had seen.
“I’ve seen lots,” McRae said. “I don’t rank ’em.”
Mark Grace, who was in the WGN-AM radio booth giving color commentary during Wednesday’s loss, agreed with Riggleman.
“Unfortunately, I had a bird’s-eye view of the ugliest game I’ve ever seen,” Grace said.
How difficult was it to critique his teammates?
“There wasn’t one thing good to talk about,” he said. “You try to stay as positive as possible. I didn’t bury any of my teammates or anything, but I’m also not going to insult people’s intelligence and tell them we’re playing good baseball. We’re 0-12 for a reason. We’ve played lousy baseball.”
The team is feeling the pressure as the streak heads to New York.
Bookend bloopers: Two plays that exemplify the Cubs’ ’97 season:
No. 1: Tyler Houston drops strike three, runs after Larry Walker to first and lets Quinton McCracken score to make it 1-0.
“It was a weird play,” Houston said. “I went out after the baserunner and it happened. It was alert baserunning and I may have screwed up.”
No. 2: Brooks Kieschnick’s throw to cutoff man Kevin Orie in the sixth short-hops Orie and bounces off his glove, sending in McCracken from third to let Colorado grab a 3-0 lead.
“I could have just rolled it in there and (McCracken) still wasn’t going to go home,” Kieschnick said. “I threw it a little harder with some sink on it. I don’t have any excuses. I just made a bad throw. I was trying to get it to him quick, but got under it and threw a two-seam sinker and short-hopped him.”
Cubs files: Riggleman has tried three players in the No. 3 hole since Grace went down with a hamstring injury. Shawon Dunston (four games) Ryne Sandberg (four games), Brant Brown (one game) are hitting a combined .182 in Grace’s spot with four RBIs in 33 at-bats. . . . Andres Galarraga fractured a bone in his left hand when getting hit by Kevin Foster on Tuesday and will be examined in Denver on Thursday to determine how long he’ll be out.
