5/27 The Redbirds are coming

It’s almost June and the Cubs have yet to play their Central rivals, the Cardinals. St. Louis comes to town on Friday. Chicago entered Thursday’s game five games back.

“We’ve hung around,” Lou Piniella said. “Four or five games [back in the standings] isn’t much. It’s a question now of consistency. It’s a question of winning with a little more regularity and getting to .500 and over. Until that happens, there’s no sense worrying about the Cardinals or anybody else.

“If we can get ourselves to the point where we stabilize at .500 and slowly creep up from there, we can look to make some noise,” he said. “We have an uphill climb still. We have to keep playing and playing hard. We’re starting to swing the bats a little better. On defense, we’re second to last in National League on defense. We need to improve on that. The bottom line, we need to win more games.”

– Carrie Muskat