It was fun for a couple innings. Kinda, anyway. Alec Mills looked great early on, and, you know, it’s not even that he looked bad by the time he was getting bounced. It was just a lot less fun.
Specifically, the Cubs gave up five runs in the 4th inning – I say “Cubs” not “Mills,” and I say “gave up” not “Cardinals scored – because it was a comedy of errors (three of them, including two by Javy Báez on back-to-back groundballs) that did most of the damage. I think only one ball left the infield that entire inning. Mostly, Mills looked like a guy who should be sticking in the rotation for a while. It was the crap around him that caused most of the discomfort.
Keegan Thompson gave up a couple homers in his two innings of middle relief. Dillon Maples was scoreless in his inning of work, throwing strikes and getting four groundballs (albeit with spin rates down 300(!) RPM from earlier in the season before his injury (and before, you know, the other stuff)).
Offensively, it was some squandered big-inning opportunities and a Patrick Wisdom homer. Wisdom and Rafael Ortega had nice games on the whole, though Wisdom did contribute to the lofty error total.
