Spring Training

Well, we're half way through Spring Training and nothing much is new.  Stewart, Vitters, and Castro are hurt or were hurt.  Junior Lake is out four to six weeks.  Garza and Baker, two of the three proven major league starting pitchers, are likely to start the season on the DL.  With these two guys healthy, the Cubs have a decent enough rotation that is rounded out by Jackson, Wood, and Samardzija.  Without them, adding Feldman and Villanueva into the mix, they are mediocre at best.

Epstein and Hoyer have tried to improve things here, but they tried last year as well.  You know that, for some largely inexplicable reason I may have time to address later in another piece, they are determined to trade veteran pitching at the break even if they get nothing or next to nothing back in return.  So look for trouble if they start slow, which is almost guaranteed to happen.

As for other spring training news, Soler, Baez, Christian Villanueva, and Lake look good, but, of course, they are two years away at best.  Cubs fans know that Felix Pie and numerous other talents looked good at this stage only to fizzle when they hit the majors.  Brett Jackson's swing also looks good, better than in the past.  However, he has struck out five times in fourteen at-bats, so the results so far are fairly consistent with past performances.

Actually, all of the guys mentioned above strike out too often.  Sveum gave a pretty good assessment of Lake which might in turn apply to most of these young players and many of the young talents cropping up with other teams as well.  This from a Chicago Sun-Times article:

“[He has] all the tools,’’ Sveum said. “Swinging the bat, he’s obviously got a lot to learn. He’s a very premeditated swinger. He’s not getting good pitches to hit. He’s swinging at arm action a lot. And he’s a guy with a lot of bat speed who doesn’t have to be a premeditated swinger.

“It’s a nice player to have, but there’s still development there.”

None of the youth news at this stage really matters all that much except to note there is no real surprise phenom either among the relievers or the position players to create the impression of hope for this season.  So far, you can conclude their pitching ought to be a little better if they can get healthy.  Also they have improved at catcher and somewhat with the likely outfield platoons.  They still do not have a major league third baseman.