Cubs 11, Mariners 0

In Postgame by berselius32 Comments

OSS: Crushinated.

Three+ up:

  1. The Cubs offense went to work on Mariners starter Marco Gonzales, who came into this game with a solid 2.80 ERA in seven starts. They batted around and scored six runs in the second inning, chasing Gonzalez and continuing to beat up on his replacement. Baez alone had six total bases in the inning, thanks to a homer and an RBI double. They also drew three walks in the inning, two of them with the bases loaded.
  2. The Cubs offensive explosion overshadowed what was a great start by Jon Lester. Lester struck out eight and walked just one over seven shutout innings. He also allowed just one hit, a humpback liner that Ben Zobrist lost momentarily in the lights. Lester had no-hit stuff against the lineup that has scored the most runs in baseball this year. Of course, they’ve played the most games in baseball as well, but not by that many more (just two more than the Astros).
  3. Rizzo, Baez, and Contreras all homered in this one, and I had to double check that the Cubs only hit three. Somehow it felt like they hit seven in this game.
  4. Dillon Maples struck out the side in ninth inning mop up duty. More importantly, no walks!
  5. Coomer shared a story from the Cubs off-day which was one of the most off the wall I’ve heard in a while. He, Len Kasper, and some other Cubs-affiliated folks were hanging out at Eddie Vedder’s house on Monday and had an axe throwing contest. I hope for Thoyer’s blood pressure’s sake that there were no players there.

Three down:

  1. Despite the offensive explosion, not everyone was in on the fun. Albert Almora was 0-5 with three strikeouts and was the only Cubs player with a significant negative WPA.
  2. The Cubs have yet another off day tomorrow. Joy. Looking forward to that midsummer stackup.
  3. The Natinals can’t get their shit together and the Cardinals won yet again.

Next up: The Cubs kick off a three game series at Wrigley against the Cardinals. It’s hard to believe the Cubs have had only two in-division series so far this year.

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  4. dmick89

    That’s 7 off days already, isn’t it? It’s only May 1st and they had a rainout so that leaves only 10 remaining off days. That sucks.

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  10. WaLi

    WaLi,

    The story hit close to home. I had to deal with something similar but luckily it worked out. We have boy/girl twins and when my daughter was about 13 months old she had bad fevers which we kind of attributed to an ear infection and didn’t think much of it. But then she was just super lethargic. We brought her to the ER and they that maybe it was a urinary tract infection or something, no big deal. Nothing came up in those tests so they did some blood work, my wife stayed with my daughter and I went home to be with my son.

    I get a call from my wife a few hours later that my daughters blood tests came back abnormal (I think her hemoglobin was really low) and they had to admit her and do some more tests. A little bit after that they decided to take her to Peoria children’s hospital in the middle of the night because they were more equipped than our small town hospital was, so they needed me to bring the carseat to go in the ambulance. Something you never expect to hear.

    My wife was with my daughter and I had to be with my son so she went to Peoria and I stayed back. We arranged to have her mom fly up from Florida to help since this was getting serious all of a sudden. Anyways while in Peoria she was admitted into the pediatric intensive care unit in the St. Judes wing. They did a bunch of blood tests, bone marrow samples, and ultrasounds to try to figure out what was going on. The doctor came back to us and mentioned how he’s narrowed it down to one of three things. It’s either a virus that we don’t know about, leukemia, or a rare disease called Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), and that they were waiting on the blood marrow test results for confirmation, but hopefully it comes back that it’s leukemia.

    Well the test results came back and all the indicators pointed towards HLH. The treatment for this is to pump your kid full of steroids and hope that suppresses the HLH, then if that doesn’t work try to find a bone marrow donor. We stayed in the hospital with my daughter for many days and I had to go on medical leave from work while family watched my son at home. Those days to weeks in the hospital were rough. Holding down your daughter while she is spaced out on ketamine so they can install a PICC line is nothing any parent should have to do. Waiting every 4 hours to hear from the doctor for new blood test results. Seeing my once happy daughter get grumpy, not eat, or even smile due to the steroids. She ballooned up and eventually gain more than twice her starting body weight. We did our best not to look up the diagnosis on Google and just trust the doctor because we knew the diagnosis wasn’t good based on all the family and friends reaction when we told them our daughter had HLH. But like Rich Hill, we were also feeling relieved we had a healthy boy at home as well (he came in and out of the hospital but my daughter’s immune system was low due to medication so didn’t want him spreading germs).

    We were about a day away from ordering a bone marrow transplant when we got good news. The bad numbers that kept going up stopped going up. Her liver stopped getting bigger. The steroids look like they were working. After a few weeks we were allowed to leave the hospital, but still had to continue the medication. The first thing we did was went to go see the best specialist in the country at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Dr. Michael Jordan.

    We and the Dr. in Peoria had been in touch with him since there are so few cases in the U.S. so he already knew about our daughter. We were able to have him perform genetic testing on my son as well since there was a chance he could be diagnosed, although not likely since he already didn’t get it, but he could also to be a potential marrow donor if he didn’t have the HLH genes. After a few trips to Dr. Jordan and our doctor in Peoria, they told us we could begin to ween her off steroids. After being off steroids if she could make it to two years old without any negative test results and any lengthy high fevers/lethargic periods like we experienced before then she’ll be free and clear for life.

    Every fever and runny nose was stressful, but she made it through them with no issues. She was weened off steroids and the other medications with no issues. She made it to two years old and we were relieved. She is now a happy five year old excelling in kindergarten and knows no better except for the small scar where her PICC line was. We are thankful for the nurses and doctors in the small town we were living in to send our daughter to Peoria and for the Dr. in Peoria though who just happened to attend an HLH training a few months before taught by Dr. Jordan, because if we went to a different doctor that never even heard about HLH things could be different.

    TL;DR: Off-days suck.

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  11. Ryno

    WaLi,

    That sounds terrible, but at least everyone is OK now. And you guys probably have a much healthier perspective.

    Two things:

    1. I didn’t know true fear until I became a father.
    2. Kids should never get sick or hurt.

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  13. andcounting

    WaLi,

    Jesus, that had to be scary. We just took our 1-year-old daughter to Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis this weekend for the same symptoms. Fever, low hemoglobin, super fussy and lethargic. They believe they have it pinpointed as a dietary complication (too much calcium from milk preventing iron absorption causing anemia) but it was not pleasant going through all those blood draws and IV and catheter placements and waiting and waiting for results. So thankful for the people who know how to treat this stuff.

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  14. Ryno

    andcounting,

    It is, but at least the Hills were able to love their little one before they lost him. My wife and I lost a little guy at nearly 30 weeks. The hardest part for me was holding him after the delivery and wishing I could’ve given him just one hug. He was (and is) so loved, but he never got to experience it.

    I bet Rich Hill’s decision to “give up” was hard, and he probably struggles with it all the time, but it was the right choice. Enjoy every second of joy that you can.

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  15. Ryno

    Ryno:
    andcounting,

    I bet Rich Hill’s decision to “give up” was hard, and he probably struggles with it all the time, but it was the right choice.

    This was one of the hardest parts about the Hill story for me. Even though it was the right choice, making the decision that ultimately led to the death of their child has to weigh on them at times. Probably on those days when they wish they could have one more day with him…

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  18. WaLi

    Ryno,

    Ain’t that the truth. I’ve done a lot of stupid shit and never really been scared of flying or driving down the road or anything, but now with kids it puts a whole another perspective on things.

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  19. WaLi

    In baseball related news (since I guess this is a baseball blog), Brewers are almost a .500 team and the Cubs could be in 1st place after this weekend if the Cardinals lose today vs Strasburg.

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  24. Author
    berselius

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  27. dmick89

    SK,

    That’s not the first time I’ve seen images like that in Davenport. I’ve seen it much worse than that, but I definitely remember the images of the ballpark like that.

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