Marquez and Moreno are alive! Tough break for Howard. He was finally hitting not terrible and then he gets hurt. Here's hoping it isn't as bad as it looked.
Yeah, Bain and Clarke make the most sense right now to fill the Tennessee rotation spots vacated by Jensen and Thompson. I still want to see Caissie and PCA swapped.
Yeah, that's nice to see after a miserable start. Even if you take out just the first 3 games, his numbers jump up considerably (.263/.377/.456, 134 wRC+, 13% BB, 26.1% K). Hopefully it's a trend that continues.
The sun 90s in that last inning certainly is worrisome, but is the typically low 90s and can pop some velo here and there but is more a command/location guy? Part of what made Kilian so interesting was that last year he discovered some velocity and was sitting mid-90's and hitting 98 with the 4 seamer. It's possible he has been throwing almost exclusively 2-seamers and cutters at the lower velocity, but the video I've seen has plenty of 4 seamers at a lower velocity. Some guys just take a little while to get ramped all the way up. Here's hoping Kilian is one of them.
Schlaffer, much like many (most?) of the pitching prospects in the system, has big K numbers so far. Does anyone know if he's added a better breaking ball this offseason? I seem to recall him being a 92-94 guy with a good changeup last year in his brief 1st stint with MB.
Sorta. Counts, though. https://www.bleachernation.com/cubs/2022/04/19/pete-crow-armstrongs-first-pro-homer-was-a-weird-one-even-by-inside-the-park-standards/ Well damn lol PCA doubled. That's progress, too. I’d honestly count it as a triple. Dude has wheels and that was the deepest part of the park.
Sigh. Nolan Gorman being a monster early in the season and Brennen Davis mostly falling on his face is not making it easy to talk to Cards fan associates.
Kevin Made sighting! 2-2 with a BB before being pulled (hopefully just load management coming off injury). This system needed one dang bat starting out hot.
AZPhil has a post about the EXST roster. Brayan Altuve has apparently been moved to the OF. https://www.thecubreporter.com/04142022/2022-cubs-extended-spring-training-roster
5:1 GO/FO ratio too. And one hit was of the infield variety. That's a terrific first outing for him. Milb gameday strike zones are notoriously untrustworthy, but it looked like he was being squeezed a bit at the bottom of the zone. Hopefully someone was there than can chime in on it.
I was wondering this as well, so I checked on a bunch of other good hitting prospects around the league. Crazy small sample size of course, but the vast majority of them came out of the gates hitting much better than the Cubs' guys. K rates look to be pretty high across the board though.
As originally expected. Wonder what the holdup was? Either way, here's hoping he can light some kind of spark with that offense. They've been terrible.