6 shutout innings for Zambrano upon return from DL

The Sun-Times told us that we could buy playoff tickets if Zambrano's start tonight went as one would hope. Well, buy those tickets. 6 innings, 4 hits, 0 runs, 2 walks, 5 strikeouts. I'd hold off on buying the tickets just yet, but the Cubs did extend their lead in the division to 3.5 games over the Cardinals. The Cubs won 2-1 as Fukudome hit a 1st inning home run and Soto added another one later on. Before we get into Zambrano's start a little bit, I read something over on Chicago Cubs Online earlier today and was reminding of something that I think should be pointed out here. On June 2nd the Cubs began a 7-game road trip to San Diego and Los Angeles. This kicked off a 32 game stretch where the Cubs played 23 away from Wrigley and also covered all 15 games the Cubs had against American League teams. Here was the schedule since June 2: @ SDP—3 @LAD—4 ATL—3 @ TOR—3 @ TBR—3 CWS—3 BAL—3 @ CWS—3 @ SFG—4 @ STL—3 They've played all but the final 2 of those games and are 16-14 in that stretch. I think most of us around here said all we needed to do over the next 32 was to play about .500. They've at least done that. These teams have played above .500 collectively. Since the Cubs played 6 against the Sox, weighting the overall winning percentage of these teams accordingly, these 32 games the Cubs against team that played .509 ball. 23 of the 32 on the road. So despite some recent struggles, I found this to be impressive. Zambrano did something tonight that I don't think we've seen since 2004, maybe a few times in 2005. He threw his fastball almost exclusively. You may recall when Zambrano was at his best in 2003 and 2004 he'd throw that fastball 80 or 90% of the time. I recall a complete game of his and it was later said he threw only a handful of pitches other than the fastball. I've been saying for a long time that Zambrano needed to go back to using his fastball as much as he did then. It's never too late so maybe Zambrano has decided to go more with it, or maybe he didn't have good feel for his other pitches or maybe the Cubs wanted to have him throw only a few offspeed pitches. I don't know. No way to know unless Zambrano talks about it and considering who the Cubs beat writers are, that's not likely. Zambrano threw 87 pitches, 53 of which were strikes. Of the 87 pitches, 74 of them were fastballs. One of the things you look at after a player comes back from an arm injury is velocity and Zambrano was consistently in the mid 90s tonight. It was probably the best velocity we've seen from him in a couple of years. His average fastball was 94.164 mph. Check this out. His average slider velocity was over 85 mph. That's tough to hit. The breakdown of velocity by inning is below: 1st: 93.913 2nd: 95.333 3rd: 93.467 4th: 95.533 5th: 93.879 6th: 91.79 Overall: 94.164 He did hit 94 or better in the 6th inning when he had to get those outs with runners on base, but it appears he tired after the 5th inning. Great start for Zambrano after 15 days without making a start. Excellent velocity. Relied on that fastball, which he should do more often, and was around the plate the entire game. He was only in trouble in one inning, the 6th, when there were runners on 1st and 2nd and 1 out. Glaus popped out and Zambrano got the next batter to roll to shortstop for the force out at 2nd. Pretty easy night for Zambrano who has been dominating the Cardinals his whole career. I'd hold off on buying those playoff tickets though.