It's not the way the Cubs want to head into the playoffs as they dropped their third of four games, losing the opener of their final series of the season, 5-1, to the Brewers. Even more disheartening was the way the bullpen blew another good outing from Ryan Dempster. Dempster struck out four and allowed only one run over five innings, but the Brewers bounced back for a run in the sixth and three off of Chad Gaudin in the seventh. The Cubs offense was as ineffective as the bullpen, scoring only one run (a Jim Edmonds solo homer in the second inning) off of Milwaukee starter Jeff Suppan. Also? Rookie stud catcher Geovany Soto left the game in the sixth after re-aggravating his sore wrist on an awkward swing. As for the Cubs' opponent in the first round, Lou isn't worried about the who so much as how the Cubs will play.
It doesn't matter to us. Whoever we play, we play. I saw where the Phillies won, I saw where the Mets lost, I saw where Milwaukee won...For us, right now it looks like the Dodgers. We'll know by this weekend, I guess. We've just got to play whoever we play but we have to play better than tonight. It won't matter who we play if we don't play better than we did tonight.
The make-up game with Houston, stemming from the series interrupted and displaced by Hurricane Ike, has been tentatively rescheduled for Monday afternoon at 1:05 p.m. but since the Astros have been eliminated from the playoffs, the game has no effect on this year's playoffs and will likely not be played.