Around the Minors- May 16th
AAA Iowa Cubs- L 3-1
3B Matt Camp- 2-4, RBI
- Jay Jackson made his third appearance from the bullpen, going 2 scoreless and allowing just 1 hit while striking out 1. His overall line is at 4.1 innings, 6 hits, 1 run, 0 walks, 3 strikeouts. It's good, but not dominant or anything. Certainly not enough to discourage the Cubs to make him Justin Berg's replacement in the next week or two. It'll be nice to see some more minor leaguers graduate to the big club, with SS Starlin Castro, OF Tyler Colvin, and RP Esmailin Caridad already seemingly entrenched for the near future, and others like RPs James Russell and Berg up for now at least. By this time next year Jackson, SP Andrew Cashner and SS Darwin Barney should all be up too, while other possibilities would include 3B Josh Vitters, C Robinson Chirinos, SP Casey Coleman, RP Blake Parker and others. If all goes according to plan, with all the quality prospects in the system right now plus Randy Wells, Geovany Soto, and Carlos Marmol the Cubs team 3 years from now could be mostly homegrown. How cool would that be? Of course, if you know baseball, you know nothing ever works out like you think it will.
AA Tennessee Smokies- Postponed
Player(s) of the Game:
Rebel Ridling's Mustache- 2-3, BB, R, 2B, RBI SP Dae-Eun Rhee- 5 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 3 BB, 3 K
- Update on the Daytona team batting line- .235/.295/.327 with 13 HRs and 135 Rs in 37 games (3.65 runs per game). That's pretty bad, and it's no wonder they're 14-22.
- Ryan Flaherty was 2-4 Sunday and is now at .344/.389/.563 in his short time at Daytona, albeit with 9 Ks in 32 ABs. He'll get another crack at AA this year, perhaps by the All-Star break if he keeps hitting.
- DJ LeMahieu was 2-4 with a triple, but 3 out of his 4 at-bats resulted in groundballs, which is what I'm watching more than anything else with him.
Player(s) of the Game:
2B Logan Watkins- 4-4, 2 R, 2B, 3B, RBI, SB
- Watkins is now up to .282/.336/.359 now, but his strikeout rate is concerningly high. It's odd, he's shown such excellent plate discipline in the past couple years, it's kind of become his calling card. Then he comes out this year and out of the gate strikes out in 26% of his April plate appearances while walking just 5.7% of the time. Those numbers have returned closer to normal in May (16.1%, 10.7%), so it looks like he just had an adjustment period to get used to the higher level of pitching. Hopefully the two-week sample size becomes the norm.
- Is Justin Bour's power returning with the weather? He did hit a double today and has hit two home runs in his last seven games, but a quick looks at the stats suggests that no, it is not. His April isolated slugging and May isolated slugging are the same. He will have an extremely difficult time making it as a lumbering first baseman with no power, so it would be advisable for him to expend some extra effort in that area.
2 Comments
Nate is not nice said:
Jay Jackson pitching from the pen only makes sense if he'll be called up to the ML pen once his arm adjusts to throwing consecutive days. Otherwise, it seems like a drastic waste of a resource along the same lines as well, Carlos Zambrano.
Matt Swain said:
Absolutely agreed Nate, but it would be monumentally stupid for the team to make the move if a call-up is not in the immediate plans. There's an opening (Berg's spot) waiting for him and as I discussed at length in a post last week, bringing him up for the year in a relief role isn't a bad idea.
Now that you've planted the thought in my head though, I can't help thinking "what if they really did move him to the bullpen full-time?" I wouldn't think the front office would be capable of making such a dumb move, but....Carlos Zambrano. 'Nuff said. My fingers are firmly crossed.
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