Dempster Has Great Outing Against Marlins Despite Marmol, 2-1

The Cubs are playing the Marlins as I write this piece. However it is necessary to comment on yesterday's game, July 15, between Florida and Chicago. It was the first game since the All-Star break for the teams and the Cubs won. Ryan Dempster performed well and got the win despite a failure by Carlos Marmol who has lost his job as the key closer' -- at least for now.

Alex Ruppenthal has posted an article at MLB.com titled "Dempster's dominant effort leads Cubs to win."

The win gave Dempster, (7-6, ERA 4.68) the nudge needed to break the .500 mark. He has been pitching well and making up- for a tough opening of the season.

You may recall that in Dempster's last start he got into it with Cubs' Manager Mike Quade and made a public display of his anger by throwing his hat and glove after being pulled in the fifth inning.

It would seem that Dempster came back with the intention of proving something and that he did.

However Cubs' fans can take little solace in the victory. The Cubs were only able to score two runs and Carlos Marmol, their ace reliever stumbled once again. In fact Manager Quade had to bring in Sean Marshall to complete the win because Marmol was in danger of losing the game after Dempster's great effort.

As a result of his woeful results, Marmol will be given several days off to work on his pitching.

It is good to see the Cubs get a one-run victory -- they have been doing poorly in that area. However they are supposed to be a power-hitting team yet they routinely cannot score many runs.

I predict that soon we will begin to get the "Let's build for next year" mantra. After all the Cubs are still sporting several injured pitchers and have some dissension on the team and, they are already 11.5 games behind the Pirates.

Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Cincinnati are all within three games of one another. This is the one thing that protects the Cubs from losing more ground.

It will also prevent them from catching up.

References:

MLB.com Website, Alex Ruppenthal, "Dempster's dominant effort leads Cubs to win"

MLB.com Website, "Ryan Dempster Statistics"