It’s the first Spring Training Miscellany of the year, a feature that will make more sense – and be slightly more useful – once the “real” Spring Training games begin. The gist, however, is that the feature catches you up on what happened in that day’s game(s), with a look at ongoing story lines as they develop.
Today’s game was considerably less “real” than a Spring Training game (note the excessive use of quotation marks around the word “real” – Spring Training games aren’t quite real, either), as the Cubs took on the Cubs. Insert joke about the Cubs being so bad that they lost to the Cubs.
The veteran squad took on the younger squad, and put it to ’em in a shortened game (5 innings). Among the highlights:
Jorge Soler debuted with a bomb off of starter Nick Struck. You can see the homer here, if you haven’t already. Irrational exuberance hit a high point, and Soler immediately overtook the number one prospect spot in the system according to all rankings services.
Starlin Castro dominated the game, with some stellar defense and a 3 for 3 effort at the plate, and scored three times.
Nate Schierholtz homered off the foul pole, and Brian Bogusevic (whose terrible 2012 season is partly an unlucky BABIP story – just throwing that out there) took Rafael Dolis deeeeep to right center. I’m thinking Dolis’s sinker probably isn’t sinking quite yet.
Dioner Navarro and Welington Castillo each had fine offensive showings, so I guess we’ll have to wait another day or two to officially declare the catching competition closed.
Javier Baez didn’t have a great day at the plate or in the field (Dale Sveum called his defensive effort “a little shaky”), but he did rip a ball into the hole … which Starlin Castro dove and snagged. Thanks to BN’er Eric Pauly, we’ve got more video:
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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NEWSLETTER
It’s the first Spring Training Miscellany of the year, a feature that will make more sense – and be slightly more useful – once the “real” Spring Training games begin. The gist, however, is that the feature catches you up on what happened in that day’s game(s), with a look at ongoing story lines as they develop.
