Hanging By A Thread
Derrek Lee is the ultimate veteran and especially so when it comes to answering certain questions. Lee , who had 3 hits on Monday night, fielded a couple of obvious questions after the Cubs 11-5 loss to the Astros. The first one was do you think you are still realistically in a pennant race? The answer was, "It's the only way to go about it. Anything can happen. A 10 game lead can shrink quickly to 5 and a 5 game lead down to zero" Well not many people in this city really believe that and likely not many in the Cubs club house either.
The trading deadline is coming up a week from Saturday and Lee was asked if anyone is bothered by all the rumors. "I don't think there's a guy in here who thinks about that and most players are good at blocking that stuff out and concentrating on baseball" I'm not so sure about that either as it would only be human to let the rumors get into your head hearing them so often.
Carlos Silva is likely not going anywhere not with so much money left on a contract and he was terrible Monday night. Silva allowed 7 hits and 5 runs in just 1 inning of work. The bullpen wasn't much better as the game was lopsided early and throughout.
Offensively the Cubs got 3 hits from Lee and home runs from Tyler Colvin and Aramis Ramirez but this game was over not too long after the first pitch.
