Quade: ‘We’re not ready to beat the Reds’

Carlos Zambrano and the Cubs looked ready to take that next step Monday night.

But in the end, they made manager Mike Quade sound prophetic.

After a 3-5 homestand against the Reds, Cardinals and Giants, the Cubs opened a tough road trip at Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park.

Zambrano looked to be cruising into the sixth inning, and his mates had staked him to a 4-0 lead, with 2 coming home on Carlos Pena’s homer in the top of the sixth.

But Zambrano hardly knew what hit him in the bottom of the inning as the Reds chased him with 7 runs on the way to a 7-4 victory.

After striking out pinch hitter Miguel Cairo to start the inning, Zambrano could not retire any of the next six batters. Scott Rolen’s double over the head of flailing left fielder Alfonso Soriano ended Zambrano’s night, and Marcos Mateo kept things going by giving up a homer to Jonny Gomes after uncorking a wild pitch.

Maybe we should have figured.

“You talk about the homestand,” Quade told Keith Moreland on the WGN radio pregame show. “We found out a lot. We’re not ready to beat the Reds and the Cardinals yet. We’re not playing well enough to do that. As the summer goes on and we get better and we get healthy and the rest of it, I’d like to think that we’re right there with them.”

The Cubs are now 17-22 and 6 games behind the first-place Reds in the NL Central. And realistically, it doesn’t look like any amount of work is going to help.

This one even had Quade addressing his players after the game.

“You get beat, you get beat,” Quade told reporters. “But we’re beating ourselves way too much, and we’ve got enough issues competing as it is without beating ourselves. When I see that, if I’m going to lose sleep, I’m going to have my say before I do, that’s all.”

And the Cubs were up to their old tricks, going 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position and failing to score in the first inning against Homer Bailey who walked the bases loaded with one out.

So what to do? The Cubs might as well keep going with the kids. Darwin Barney had his third straight multihit game by going 3-for-4 with an RBI. He’s now batting .345 with 18 RBI. That RBI total puts Barney ahead of such notables as Pena, Aramis Ramirez and Marlon Byrd.

Along those lines, it’s hard to figure why catcher Welington Castillo was called up last week to replace the injured Geovany Soto. Castillo has started only one of the five games since coming up.

The Cubs also got some bad news about another of their youngsters. Pitcher Andrew Cashner, who has been on the disabled list since April 8, will undergo another MRI on his right shoulder after suffering from tightness in Arizona. Cashner has a strained right rotator cuff, and it’s unlikely he’ll be back any time soon.

Also after the game, the Cubs optioned struggling outfielder Tyler Colvin (.113 average) to Class AAA Iowa. No corresponding move was announced.