Spring Training Miscellany: White Sox 3, Cubs 4 – March 27, 2014

cactusIf you were able to stomach Hawk and Steve Stone homering the hell out of the game, you just enjoyed the Cubs beating the White Sox to close out their 13-18-1 Cactus League season.

  • Travis Wood tuned up with three innings, giving up no runs, two hits, and one walk. He struck out four, and he’s ready to go.
  • Carlos Villanueva – probably the fifth starter – followed up with two perfect innings of his own, striking out two.
  • The Cubs’ lefties got in some work: James Russell threw a scoreless frame (1 H, 1 K), and Wesley Wright gave up back-to-back solo homers to Adam Dunn and Alejandro De Aza. I mostly shrug, but both were lefties. Don’t really want to see that from Wright.
  • Neil Ramirez came on to get the last couple of outs today, and once again, I was struck by how much I like his stuff. Pounded the bottom of the zone, showed a variety of pitches, and struck out both guys he faced
  • Ryan Sweeney broke out of his Spring-long slump with a deep homer, another hit, and a very well-struck out.
  • Emilio Bonifacio led off the game, got a hit, stole second, and then took third and home on successive groundouts. Would be nice to see that kind of thing on the reg in the regular season (well, maybe with some hits mixed in there, and not just groundouts).
  • Mike Olt and Ryan Kalish celebrated their roster victories today with a 1-4 and 0-3 outing, respectively. No worries, boys.
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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