Sveum shuffles the pitching deck after rainout
The way April went, the Cubs probably couldn't wait to get the month of May going.
That will have to wait, as Tuesday's night's series opener at Cincinnati was rained out after a delay of close to 2½ hours. No makeup date was announced.
Cubs manager Dale Sveum will alter things slightly with the pitching rotation. Jeff Samardzija, Tuesday's scheduled starter, will go tonight. The Cubs then will bring Ryan Dempster off the disabled list to start Thursday's day game.
Lefty Paul Maholm will get bumped from today to Friday's series opener against the Dodgers at Wrigley Field.
Tuesday night's lineup would have featured Blake DeWitt starting at second base for a second straight night over Darwin Barney, who is 1-for-12 on the current road trip as his batting average has slipped to .263 with a .306 on-base percentage.
Sveum also noted that DeWitt is 9-for-25 lifetime against scheduled Reds starter Bronson Arroyo, who will start today followed by Homer Bailey on Thursday. With that, Sveum added Barney would continue to be his regular second baseman.
Good riddance, April:
Regular readers of our Chicago's Inside Pitch baseball blog at dailyherald.com know that we look at baseball statistics extensively.
Check out the blog for all the latest details, but know that those April stats for the Cubs were as chilly as the weather.
On offense, the Cubs ranked 11th in the NL in runs scored, 10th in hits, 13th in OBP and slugging, 14th in walks drawn and dead last in home runs, with 9.
“New month, obviously, and the weather warming up and things like that will play into hitting more home runs,” Sveum told reporters. “Would we have more than we have now if the weather was different and the wind wasn't blowing in (at Wrigley Field)? Of course we would. At the beginning, we came across a lot of good pitching, and now it's leveled off. All that comes into play.”
Carrying all the load:
Speaking of home runs, first baseman Bryan LaHair has 5 of the team's 9 homers. That figures to 56 percent. The Cubs point out that the previous Cub to account for more than half of the team's home runs in a month was Sammy Sosa in August 2001 when he hit 17 of the club's 32 home runs (53 percent)
The Cubs have 1 home run each out of Darwin Barney, Ian Stewart, Geovany Soto and backup infielder-outfielder Joe Mather.
Still waiting to get on the board with home runs is Alfonso Soriano, who has an anemic hitting line of .237/.250/.263.