Currently on the watching-it-on-Amazon-Prime slate: ‘Deadwood.’ Premiering 10 years ago, I’d heard for a very long time that this was a show I needed to watch, but I resisted because of the vaguely “western” genre. I’m just not into westerns. I’m digging ‘Deadwood,’ though, through about a season and a half, even as I would say it does live into some of the classic – and for me, somewhat inarticulable – western tropes and storytelling devices. I’ll finish out the three seasons of the show and reflect further. I do really like the post-Civil War, westward movement history incorporated into the show, though.
Although he wasn’t called up yesterday, it sounds like Mike Olt should be joining the big team soon enough. After a rough go with the Cubs upon making the team out of Spring Training, Olt was sent to AAA Iowa a couple months ago to work on his strikeout issues. Olt showed great power and defense at third, but an inability to consistently jump on pitches in the zone (and whiffing too frequently when he did swing) led to both an ugly strikeout rate and a lot of weak contact. Since then, Olt crushed it in 28 games at Iowa, hitting .302/.348/.585 (28.7% K rate), before hurting his hamstring in late August. He’s expected to join Kane County in a rehab assignment (and a playoff assist), before coming up to the Cubs as soon as this weekend (ESPN).
Upon his return, Olt could make a lot of starts at first base, depending on how long Anthony Rizzo (back) is out. As Sahadev Sharma recently wrote, Olt has made some physical and mechanical adjustments, which could conceivably legitimize his success (if he has some down the stretch).
He got up in the pen last night, but didn’t enter the game, and we all got excited for naught. It was nearly the debut of Arodys Vizcaino with the Cubs after two years of surgery/rehab and and then a year of building back health/arm strength. Theo Epstein told Cubs.com that Vizcaino has battled some mechanical issues this year that were bringing down his raw stuff, but the biggest thing is that he’s been healthy this year. The idea with the call-up is simply to get Vizcaino exposed to the Cubs/Chicago/Wrigley and prepare for 2015.
Epstein offers love for fellow call-up Eric Jokisch (Cubs.com), who may, together with Dan Straily, piggyback other starts to get in some work this month (ESPN). As surmised, Dallas Beeler didn’t get the call only because he was already at his innings limit for the year.
Consider this something like the confirmation of the confirmation, but the Cubs are definitely proceeding with a six-man rotation – Arrieta, Hendricks, Wada, Doubront, Wood, Turner – for now.
Mike Petriello writes about September roster expansion through the lens of the length/pace-of-game problem baseball is ostensibly trying to deal with. I figured September games were longer than the rest of the season, but mercy. It’s pretty stark.
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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