Cubs, Brewers looking for some relief

It's not just the Cubs who are trying to piece together a bullpen.

Look around baseball. Seemingly every team is trying to make something work after the sixth inning.

The Milwaukee Brewers proved that Monday night as they let the Cubs back into the game in the ninth inning before holding on to win 7-5 after entering the inning up 7-3.

The irony was that on a night when Milwaukee relievers just couldn't throw a strike, closer John Axford got Cubs free-swinger Starlin Castro on a fastball right down the middle on 0-2 for a called third strike to end the game with the bases loaded.

So we'll give the Cubs credit for not quitting while noting three Milwaukee relievers threw a total of 40 pitches in the ninth.

“We had a nice last inning there and had a chance to win the game,” said Cubs manager Dale Sveum, whose team fell to 1-3. “We just came up a little short.

“Axford, the last two days, hasn't had much command, and we were pretty patient. (Darwin) Barney had a great at-bat (a walk) to get to Castro, and I think Castro just got caught looking breaking ball on the last pitch and got a fastball by him.”

The Cubs' bullpen had its own issues. Starting pitcher Chris Volstad could not extend the Cubs' streak of quality starts to 4 as he lasted 5 innings, giving up 5 hits and 3 runs.

His main problem was running up his pitch count to 87, with 63 after the first three innings.

“That first inning kind of got me,” he said of a 24-pitch inning in which the Brewers took a 1-0 lead on a sacrifice fly by ex-Cub Aramis Ramirez. “I just wasn't in the zone enough in the first inning. They were fouling off some pitches. I felt like I got better as the game went on.”

Sveum talked before the game of getting his relievers some work. He did so, and with mixed results. Shawn Camp (0-1) gave up 5 hits and 3 runs in 2 innings. Rookie Lendy Castillo, making his major-league debut, hit a batter and gave up a hit and a run in two-thirds of an inning.

But lefty James Russell looked just fine in his season debut, working 1 scoreless.

On offense, the Cubs got their first home run of the season, a drive into the left-field basket by Barney, hardly anybody's choice to hit the team's first homer.

“I might have put my salary on I wouldn't,” the second baseman said. “But it's good, I guess.”

First baseman Bryan LaHair crushed a 420-foot homer onto Sheffield Avenue in the second. “I definitely got all of that ball,” he said.

But the Brewers out “small-balled” the Cubs, with a pair of successful squeeze bunts, one suicide and one safety.

So while the real victories have been in short supply, the Cubs are taking solace in the fact that they've been in every game.

“We're going to fight,” Volstad said. “We're right there. I think the players are showing that. We're not a team that's ever going to give up. Fight to the end.”

bmiles@dailyherald.com