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The crowd a Pittsburgh’s PNC Park figures to be bigger than normal when the Chicago Cubs' Paul Maholm pitches in his old haunt Saturday.

Maholm's presence, though, is just the sideshow.

“I was just informed that it’s fireworks night so on Saturday there’s a good chance there will be some fans there,” Maholm said.

For now he will pretend it’s not a coincidence the postgame festivities are paired up with his return.

“The fireworks are just for me, obviously,” he joked.

On his Twitter account, Maholm recently touted his return and said the responses from his former team’s fans were mixed. He isn’t sure what to expect and isn’t too worried about it.

He pitched well along the Allegheny River but wasn’t exactly a legend. The club had no glory days that will forever intertwine him with the fan base. He said the moment he will most remember from his Pittsburgh days was the club finding itself in first place near midseason last season only to fade away in a flash.

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HOUSTON – Jeff Samardzija isn’t the root of the Cubs’ problems like the statistics might suggest.

Eight Cubs pitchers have taken a loss during the club’s nine-game losing streak and Samardzija is the only one to lose twice in that run.

This losing trend is mostly about a struggling offense, though. Samardzija has actually been the least of the Cubs’ worries. He is 2-2 over his last six outings with a 1.82 ERA.

“I thought I battled with guy on base, put a couple of good swings on the ball,” Samardzija said. “I need to get a couple of quicker outs there (in the fourth inning) and get our offense back in the dugout. But I thought I battled and made some pitches.”

Even on the two-run triple from J.D. Martinez in the fourth inning, Samardzija got the result he wanted. David DeJesus appeared to make a sliding catch on the right-field line but Darwin Barney, also hustling on the play, knocked the ball from DeJesus’ glove. It was the only scoring play of the night for the Astros.

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HOUSTON -- For a pitcher who struggled with the mental side of the game this spring, starting Tuesday's game by allowing a home run and a ground-rule double appeared to be a recipe for disaster.

But Travis Wood proved that he is a different pitcher now, recovering nicely from his unfortunate start and showing that maybe that offseason trade with the Cincinnati Reds isn’t so bad after all.

Wood didn’t allow a hit for the remainder of his outing, but his sixth-inning walk came back to haunt him and the Cubs. After giving way to reliever Shawn Camp with that walk at first base in the form of Justin Maxwell, the Astros took the lead for good two batters later on J.D. Martinez's single.

It was the best outing the Cubs received from the spot in the rotation that was previously held by Chris Volstad before he was optioned to Triple-A Iowa last week. The Cubs have still lost all nine times that spot has come up in the rotation.

“Travis was great,” manager Dale Sveum said. “A leadoff home run and other than that he was really, really good. He kept the ball on his arm side all day, he kept it down and he had a really good changeup. It was 12 mph off his fastball with some good fade.”

There was also some impressive hitting from Wood, including a double off the wall in his first at-bat that made him 3-for-3 on the season. He lined out hard to left field in his only other at-bat on the day.

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HOUSTON -- In a perfect position to stop the Chicago Cubs' slide, Matt Garza only managed to pour gasoline on this brush fire.

The closest thing the Cubs have to an ace gave up a pair of three-run home runs and seven total runs over three innings as his night ended early.

It was easily his shortest outing of the season and this start, as well as a six-run outing April 18 at Miami, were the only times he has given up more than two runs in an outing this season.

“That was not Matt Garza pitching, it was strange,” manager Dale Sveum said. “So many off-speed pitches and breaking balls, it’s not the Matt Garza that I have seen for the first six weeks. I think he got out of whack somehow.”

Sveum made an early visit to the mound to encourage more fastballs and getting ahead in the count, but that only ended in a Chris Johnson home run.

“It was a bad meeting,” Sveum said.

Johnson’s home run came on a fastball, up and out over the middle of the plate.

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HOUSTON -- This time, Travis Wood will be able to unpack his suitcase.

Wood, who is already with the team in Houston, will be placed on the roster Tuesday and pitch against the Houston Astros. A corresponding move will be announced, which could be Welington Castillo (MCL sprain) going to the disabled list or pitcher Blake Parker going back to Triple-A Iowa.

It is already Wood’s second stint with the big league club this season after he was recalled before a May 6 game against the Los Angeles Dodgers and then sent down immediately afterward. He gave up three runs over six solid innings that day and the Cubs went on to a 4-3 victory.

That was just a one-and-done start, though, since Matt Garza was sick. This time he takes over the rotation spot left open when Chris Volstad was optioned to Iowa following his 0-6 start in eight outings, all Cubs defeats.

“Hopefully I can stick around for a while this time and if not, hopefully I can do what I can,” Wood said.

His plane ticket to rejoin the Cubs is open-ended, so if he doesn’t stick around he only has himself to blame.

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CHICAGO -- Casey Coleman wasn’t treating his relief outing Thursday as a rotation audition, he was too busy figuring out how to be successful coming out of the bullpen.

Called on in the third inning when Chris Volstad struggled from the outset, Coleman gave up just one run over four innings and might have set himself up for a start next week.

If Volstad is pulled from the rotation, Coleman and Travis Wood seem to be the club’s top two candidates to face the Astros in Houston.

“It’s was a tough situation but at the same time it’s pitching,” Coleman said. “I haven’t had a lot of bullpen experience so as soon as they told me I was in, it was in between innings so I was able to get in a lot of pitches. The guys down in the bullpen have been helping me out a lot.”

Coleman learned some tricks of the trade quickly like not worrying about all of your pitches, just to make sure to have your top two pitches ready to go.

While glad he was able to help against the Philadelphia Phillies, he sympathizes with Volstad.

“I know what that’s like,” Coleman said. “Last year I struggled quite a bit. It’s tough. In Chicago he wants to do well and he’s capable of doing well. He showed in spring training how good he really is. He’s going to figure it out soon, next start I would assume.”

Not if that start belongs to Coleman or Wood or anybody else the Cubs might call upon.

“Down there we know just know how everybody is capable of pitching in the big leagues,” Coleman said. “You have Travis Wood who has proven he can start in the big leagues. We have Rodrigo Lopez who has obviously had a great career and Chris Rusin, a younger guy who is dominating.

“Everybody knows that everybody is capable down there. We’re pushing each other and everybody knows they can pitch here. Everybody is feeding off each other. Also Randy Wells has dominated here with the Cubs.”

CHICAGO -- The Chicago Cubs coaches and front office will meet this weekend to determine the fate of struggling starter Chris Volstad.

The right-hander lasted just two innings Thursday against the Philadelphia Phillies and fell to 0-6 this season with a 7.46 ERA. The Cubs have been defeated in all eight of his starts.

President of baseball operations Theo Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer will now have direct input into what happens next.

As of his previous start at Milwaukee over the weekend, manager Dale Sveum said he would continue to give Volstad a chance to get out of his early-season struggles. He’s no longer offering that guarantee, a good sign that a change could be coming when that spot in the rotation comes up again next week at Houston.

“We will get together as a staff and talk to Theo and Jed and evaluate the situation, that’s for sure,” Sveum said. “We’ll see what our options are and go from there.”

The final straw for Volstad was giving up four runs in those two innings of work, loading the bases in both of those innings. He was replaced in the third inning by Casey Coleman.

“I had pitches out of the zone, walks in the first and second inning, it was just not good,” Volstad said. “We’ve been trying a lot of different things. You just have to keep working, though. There is no giving up or no quit. This is going to get better. You try everything.”

It might actually get worse for Volstad before it gets better since he could be removed from the rotation.

Coleman, who gave up just one run over four innings, is a candidate to start next week. Another candidate is Travis Wood, who picked up the victory at Triple-A Iowa on Thursday when he gave up two runs on five hits over seven innings.

Not much has gone right for Volstad, who was acquired in the offseason in the trade that sent Carlos Zambrano to the Miami Marlins. He won a starting spot out of spring training, but for the most part he has been the victim of one bad inning in each start. On Thursday he struggled from the beginning.

Sveum said that Volstad’s confidence looks nothing like it did when he was earning his starting spot down in Arizona.

“I was a little more relaxed in spring, I think,” Volstad said. “I think I’m trying too hard, trying to do different things. Just a lot of forcing instead of letting my ability take over. I know it’s in there its just a matter of tapping into it and finding it at this point.”

The last time the Cubs lost a pitcher’s first eight starts was in 2006 when they lost Angel Guzman's first 10. Volstad matched Guzman’s 0-6 start that season. Going back to last season, Volstad is now 0-11 over his last 19 appearances, last winning a game July 10.

“There is just no life, no command in really any of his pitches,” Sveum said. “He couldn’t keep the ball down again, he couldn’t keep it in. It was not a real good outing at all for the situation we were in.”

MILWAUKEE -- With a day to think about it, the Cubs are still set on giving Chris Volstad another chance to prove himself as a starter.

Manager Dale Sveum confirmed Sunday that the struggling Volstad will take his turn again in the rotation this week. He is scheduled to next take the mound Thursday at home against the Philadelphia Phillies.

With Casey Coleman now on the roster, the Cubs could go to him to start, but that move isn’t coming this week anyway.

“You can do a lot of things,” Sveum said. “When are we going to (make a rotation change) that is another million-dollar question. But it’s funny how a guy has just as many shutout innings as anybody in baseball but his one inning isn’t one run, it’s three, four, five or six in an inning.”

One bad inning has been Volstad’s undoing all season. His most recent came in the sixth inning Saturday when he gave up five runs, four on a grand slam from light-hitting Edwin Maysonet. The defeat dropped him to 0-5 over seven starts with a 6.92 ERA.

“It’s the same old thing,” Sveum said. “How do you fix that is the question, obviously. The guy has so many shut down innings but just one inning each game is destroying him.”

MILWAUKEE -- Solving Chris Volstad’s habit of running into one bad inning per start will apparently start with fixing his slider, but isn’t limited to just that.

It’s been uncanny how one bad inning has upended most of Volstad’s starts this season and on Saturday against the Milwaukee Brewers, that inning came in the sixth. Edwin Maysonet gave the Brewers four of their five runs in the inning on a grand slam.

“The slider got him in trouble again,” manager Dale Sveum said. “That thing is something that we have to work on because it’s a pitch he needs but it’s getting hit too often and too hard. He was in a situation where he needed a ground ball and couldn’t get out of it and close that thing down again. It just got out of hand again.”

The slider might have started his problems, but the grand slam came on a fastball. A slider led to Jonathan Lucroy’s leadoff double and a changeup yielded a double from Corey Hart. Maysonet’s slam was his first home run of the season and second in his career.

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MILWAUKEE -- Being trusted to pitch in the late innings is an honor for left-handed reliever James Russell, but it doesn’t mean that the new role has made him forget about his dream.

Russell maintained Friday that he would still like to be a starting pitcher one day, but won’t push the issue with the coaching staff or front office.

“I’m still not over the whole starting thing quite yet, I don’t think,” Russell said. “It’s really pretty much up to them. Whatever they want me to do is what I want to do. But just, in the back of my mind, I think I can succeed at starting and do well and help our team out starting. If they think otherwise then that’s perfectly fine with me.”

Russell has watched with pride, respect and perhaps a tiny bit of jealousy at how Jeff Samardzija has made the transition from bullpen to starting rotation. But he swears that other than perhaps standing a little taller in meetings when the rotation is mentioned, he won’t openly appeal for a chance.

“I’ll let them decide,” Russell said. “I’m not going to say anything. Just keep my mouth shut and go about my business in the bullpen and whatever they want to do in the offseason or next year, whether it’s me staying in the bullpen or trying out for a rotation job then so be it.”

He certainly doesn’t have any complaints about his current duties. He hoped to be able to pick up some of the slack in the late innings after the departure of Sean Marshall to the Cincinnati Reds and he has been worthy of that.

And now with Carlos Marmol out at closer he could even pick up some ninth-inning action, but Rafael Dolis has done the closing over the last week.

“It shows they have confidence in me,” he said. “That’s what you want. You want to be that guy that everybody wants in there and the guy they count on late in the game. It’s a big confidence booster and makes you feel good inside, too.”

Just getting the chance to start one day would also give him that good feeling inside. He would even be willing to follow the Samardzija program and arrive to Arizona three months ahead of spring training.

“If that’s what it takes then I’ll do it,” Russell said.

How does one explain the emergence of Jeff Samardzija as one of the top pitchers in the National League after the new Chicago Cubs starter struggled to hang on for years?

“He has been the most improved pitcher in the game from last June until right now, ” said one of the top scouts in baseball, who works for a National League East team. “It starts with fastball command and a consistent arm slot and ends with four pitches he can throw for a strike.”

Samardzija was slow to develop due to the organization’s need to have him pitch out of the bullpen during Lou Piniella’s years as manager. At this point of his career the sky may be the limit as to how good a pitcher he could be.

Cubs manager Dale Sveum concurs that his ascension began last summer.

“No doubt about it, because I saw it on the other side of the fence (as a Brewers coach ), when we faced the Cubs the later part of the season, I said, ‘Wow, this is a whole different guy,’” Sveum said. “Even our hitters who are quality guys in Milwaukee said this was a whole different animal than before.”

Give the kid from Indiana credit for working through other people’s doubts about his baseball ability and desire. He has shown his dedication to making himself a ballplayer after signing a $10.8 million bonus out of Nortre Dame, where he was more known as an All-American football player than a pitcher.

Samardzjia started his work at winning a rotaton slot in the majors with a vision and a lot of hard work that began last fall in Mesa, Ariz. and is finally paying off.

CHICAGO -- Thanks for the solid effort Travis Wood, now sit back and await your fate.

Despite Wood’s solid debut in the Cubs’ rotation Sunday, he might be sent back where he came from. Promoted immediately before Sunday’s game, he could find himself on the way back to Triple-A Iowa today.

What the left-hander did in the interim was show that his spring-training troubles are behind him.

Wood went six innings for the Cubs in place of a sick Matt Garza and gave up just three runs on three hits. After giving up a two-run home run to the Dodgers’ Juan Rivera in the third inning, he closed out his outing by retiring 11 consecutive batters.

“It felt good,” Wood said. “Pitches were working. I had some unfortunate walks that I don’t like and left a pitch up that Rivera ended up hitting out of the park but I kept them close, we battled back and ended up winning the game.”

With Garza rejoining the rotation Friday and Wood now unable to pitch in any capacity for about four days, the Cubs are expected add a piece to the roster they can use now. The Cubs figure to be looking for a middle infielder like Adrian Cardenas, who is currently on the 40-man roster and hitting well at Iowa.

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The illness that will cost Matt Garza his start on Sunday may give Chicago Cubs officials some pause as how to proceed next.

Travis Wood has been recalled from the minor leagues to start in Garza’s rotation slot, however trying to decide what to do with Saturday’s starter, Chris Volstad, may be a more important issue.

Volstad has not won a game in six starts this season and in 17 starts going back to July 17, 2011. Lack of support has been a problem for Volstad both with the Cubs and his previous team, the Marlins.

The question that the coaching staff must take to management is: Would moving Volstad to the bullpen for now make sense with Wood’s ascension back to the major leagues?

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CHICAGO -- A left-handed starter worked well for the Chicago Cubs against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday, so they will give it another try in Sunday’s series finale at Wrigley Field.

Lefty Travis Wood will get the start in place of Matt Garza, who is said to be suffering from a flu-like virus that has swept through the Cubs clubhouse in recent days. Also affected was recently demoted pitcher Scott Maine, as well as utility man Jeff Baker, who hasn’t been available in the series.

The Cubs lost to the Dodgers 5-1 on Saturday, but beat them 5-4 in Friday's series opener behind left-hander Paul Maholm.

“It’s unfortunate that [Garza] isn’t feeling well and there is something that is going on around here, but hopefully I can step in and give them a strong outing and give them a chance to win,” Wood said.

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CHICAGO – With Matt Garza’s status still uncertain for Sunday’s start because of a virus, the Cubs have Travis Wood on hand in case of emergency but is not yet on the active roster.

Garza was supposed to start Saturday against the Dodgers, but couldn’t answer the bell because he has been sick. Reliever Scott Maine, who was sent back to Triple-A Iowa earlier this week, first came down with a similar illiness last week in Philadelphia. Jeff Baker is currently experiencing the same symptoms as Garza and Maine and was not available Saturday either.

Because Monday’s game at Cincinnati was rained out, Chris Volstad had enough rest to start Saturday. Nobody would have enough rest to start Sunday, though, so if it’s not Garza, it will be Wood.

As for what move the Cubs will have to make to get Wood activated to the roster, that remains to be seen. Rule 5 pick Lendy Castillo could be the odd man out. Michael Bowden, recently acquired in the Marlon Byrd trade, would have to go through waivers before he could be sent down.

Manager Dale Sveum said the choice to have Wood on hand as an insurance policy was an easy one to make.

“It's just his day to pitch [Sunday] and he was the logical guy,” Sveum said. “He's on the [40-man] roster and if it does happen, we'll make due and see what happens.”

Wood has been better at Triple-A Iowa after brutal spring training. The left-hander was out of contention for a major league rotation spot almost immediately after his first Cactus League outing and it wasn’t until the end of camp that he started to turn things around.

At Iowa, Wood was has just one victory in five starts with a 5.08 ERA, but does have 30 strikeouts in 28 1/3 innings, with just eight walks.

“It’s been real nice to get things going especially since spring didn’t go the way I wanted it to,” Wood said. “But since then I was able to have some good games and let my pitches work and feel like everything is headed in the right direction.”