Koyie Hill for President and Other Bullets – May 12, 2011

It’s always nice to go into the third game of a series with a chance to win the series, but beating Jaime Garcia today – behind Casey Coleman facing the Cardinal lineup – is going to be a tall task. Perhaps Jim Hendry can hug Garcia before the game and throw everyone off. Heck, if he hugs him hard enough…

  • Mike Quade is sufficiently concerned with the team’s defense that he had a team meeting yesterday to address it. He’s mostly concerned with “errors” that don’t show up as “errors” on the stat sheet – bad routes, missed cut-off men, lack of hustle, etc. Outside of a handful of mistakes on Tuesday, I’m not sure that I’ve seen these kind of issues – but it’s good to see Quade being proactive.
  • As I guessed, it sounds like Koyie Hill will get the majority of starts behind the plate while Geovany Soto is out. If he keeps hitting like he did last night, no one will complain. That said, the stated reason for starting Hill more – Welington Castillo has to learn how to call a good game. Um, like, Geovany Soto didn’t even call his own games for years. Larry Rothschild called the game from the dugout. So let’s not act like it’s an absolute requisite that the catcher call every single pitch. Just saying.
  • Speaking of which, Geovany Soto’s MRI results came back pretty good. He’s not expected to be out longer than the 15 days required by his DL stint.
  • Aramis Ramirez will miss Friday’s game against the Giants to head home to the Dominican Republic and attend to a family matter.
  • Randy Wells will throw in an extended Spring Training game today, and, if it goes well, a rehab stint in the minors could be in the offing. Andrew Cashner is expected to throw live BP again today.
  • Last year’s first round pick, Hayden Simpson, is probably ok after leaving his start on Tuesday after just one inning with (scary-sounding) “shoulder tightness.” He’s already back on the field taking pitcher’s fielding practice, and Oneri Fleita says it’s nothing to be concerned about. Vague reports of his velocity not topping 90 mph this year (after hitting the mid-90s last year in college), however, keep me a bit nervous.
  • Phil Rogers says five other teams are more likely to sign Albert Pujols after the season than are the Cubs. I’d almost missed this kind of informationless, rank speculation. I think there are 12 teams more likely to sign Pujols!
  • 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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