Baserunning mistakes. A reliever coming in and throwing five straight balls. An outfielder doing a spin-o-rama on an easy fly ball.
It was all there Wednesday night in the Cubs’ stunning 7-6 loss, their fourth straight and 11th in 15 games.
“When you play chicken-bleep baseball the way we’ve been playing, afraid to make a mistake or just offensively having bad at-bats in big situations or making bad pitches in big situations, that stuff is going to pile up,” Mark Grace said. “You have to take the bull by the horns. You have to have the (guts) to go out there and do your job. For some reason, we haven’t been doing that the last couple of weeks and we’re finding ourselves getting in deeper and deeper (trouble).”
Hook time: Cubs manager Jim Riggleman doesn’t appreciate any implications he tends to pull his starters before they’re finished, but he did it again Wednesday and paid the price.
Starter Mark Clark was in control after eight innings and had retired 11 of 12 batters from the fifth through the eighth to protect a slim Cubs lead. But Clark’s pitch count reached 119 after eight innings and Riggleman managed on auto-pilot again, bringing in closer Rod Beck to pitch the ninth.
Beck had not appeared in a save situation since June 15 against Milwaukee, so Riggleman wanted to get Beck some work. The move backfired when Beck gave up a single to Deivi Cruz and a monstrous two-out, two-run home run to Bobby Higginson to tie the game 6-6 and send it into extra innings.
After converting his first nine save opportunities, he has four blown saves in his last 12 chances, including two potential victories for Clark.
Asked if he considered letting Clark start the ninth, Riggleman replied “no” without any further explanation.
Orie watch: Kevin Orie had three more hits on Tuesday and is hitting like he owns Triple-A pitching, but that won’t be enough to merit a promotion back to the Cubs.
Riggleman said Orie won’t be called up to help bolster the Cubs’ suspect bench.
Catch-22: Tyler Houston had singles in his first three at-bats after coming off the disabled list to start at catcher on Wednesday. But he also was picked off at first and easily thrown out at home trying to score from first on Jose Hernandez’s RBI double in the sixth.
Riggleman promptly removed Houston and inserted Scott Servais, but said he planned the move beforehand because Houston wasn’t ready to catch nine innings.
Riggleman said Houston will be put into the catching mix to see if he can win the job that Servais apparently has lost, at least on a full-time basis.
“There’s an opportunity there,” Riggleman said. “We’ll see who gets it.”
Long shot: Lance Johnson will begin hitting off a batting tee on Thursday in his attempt to make a second-half comeback with the Cubs. Still no word on whether Johnson will have to miss most of the rest of the season with his hand injury, which has sidelined him since April 28.
