Boxscore

The Cubs blanked the Padres and former Cub pitcher (twice!) Greg Maddux behind eight-plus innings from Ryan Dempster, who picked up his fifth win and lowered his ERA to 2.35. Now I’m confident that last stat won’t hold for the entire season, but what the hell? Dempster has only been an effective starter for one year in his mediocre career.

Looking at staty stats, his ERA when removing fielding from the equation is a bit higher, at 3.50, but that’s still more than a full run lower than his career mark. All I can figure is that he got quite a bit of rest working as a reliever the last few years. Of course, that lighter workload will undoubtedly come back to bite him and the Cubs by the end of the year.

As for the game, Dempster also drove in a run, which was all he needed. Derek Lee added a couple more, and Ryan Theriot chimed in one more.

The Cubs next host the Pirates and Tom Gorzelanny today at 2:20pm EDT, sending out Sean Gallagher to keep the winning going.