Starlin Castro Needs to Feed His Family and Other Bullets

Aug 09, 2012

I’m about to head to a doctor’s appointment. Felt a tweak in my wrist a couple weeks ago playing tennis, and it hasn’t recovered as well as I’d like. I’m no baseball player, but I do need a functional wrist to work (for typing, that is).

You already know that Starlin Castro is in a deep slump, and yesterday we discussed the possible explanations for that unfortunate fact. Late yesterday, Castro addressed the slump thusly: “I want to finish strong. Every [season], I finish strong. Every time, I put it in my mind that the last month, if you don’t finish strong, my family doesn’t eat. I put that in my mind. I need my family to eat these two months, like they eat in the first four months. I put that in my mind all the time. I’ll do it for sure.” English is Castro’s second language, but I’m sure he knows what expression he’s using there. He’s saying, “I need to play well so I can make more money.” I can’t decide if I like that or not. Let’s be honest, all of us do our jobs for a variety of reasons, but the primary reason is so we can make money. And we all would probably rather make more money than less money, and we all probably would like our hard work to be rewarded with more money. I’m sure Castro is also motivated by pride, and a desire to help the team. But it sounds like money is the big one. I think that’s probably fine, and not that uncommon. You just don’t hear it very often …

I’d like to talk about Jeff Samardzija breaking a bat over his knee last night. I didn’t think it was impressive or fun when Carlos Zambrano did it, and I don’t think I can give Samardzija a pass, either. I know it makes a guy look like a badass, but it also puts his health at risk for a really stupid reason. What if the bat doesn’t break? What if you cut yourself? What if you get a bruise from it that, while not keeping you out of any games, doesn’t allow you to drive off the rubber as well as you normally can? That is all to say: I’m not impressed. I like the passion and the competitiveness (I always liked that part of Z), but show it some other way. Doing the bat breaking thing isn’t worth it.

Dale Sveum gave Brett Jackson the day off yesterday so that the rookie could “sit back and watch.” It doesn’t sound like Sveum is too worried yet about the avalanche of strikeouts in Jackson’s first three games.

Jackson on making his debut at Wrigley Field: “A lot of excitement and anticipation. It’s going to be a whole new debut. Can’t be a better place to play than in front of fans like that. I’ve heard nothing but incredible things about Wrigley.” You’re going to get a lot of love from the bleachers when you take that field, kid. Enjoy it. A little more fluff here on Jackson’s and Josh Vitters’ debut at Wrigley.

A nice article from MiLB.com about Trey McNutt, wherein he goes into depth about his various pitches, among other things. Good read. Also a good time to remind ourselves that he just turned 23. It may no longer be reasonable to hope he’s a future ace, but a future big leaguer? Sure.

Over on the Message Board, BN’er Rated Rookie runs down some of the better performances by young Cubs in the Dominican Summer League so far this year. If you’re into prospecting and have been missing out on the DSL stuff, this is a good place to start.

written by

Brett Taylor

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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