Weekend Catch-Up: Rooftop News, Cubs Homers, Doubront Released, Soler Praise, More

bn baseball featureIn case you missed anything …

Friday, March 27

  • The day started with some heavy praise for Mike Olt’s glove.
  • Big news on the rooftop front, as one of the owners of one of the rooftops suing the Cubs is, himself, now under indictment for allegedly underreporting the rooftop’s revenues, which would have defrauded the Cubs.
  • Are the Cubs looking for pitching in return for Welington Castillo?
  • There was a set of prospect notes Friday afternoon, including praise for Eloy Jimenez.
  • Commissioner Manfred all but told Scott Boras to butt out of the Kris Bryant/Cubs call-up stuff.
  • Michael wrote about the recently-stagnating Cubs/Cardinals rivalry, and how it’s (hopefully) coming back.
  • The Cubs shut down the day by beating the White Sox at Sloan Park.
  • Saturday, March 28

  • The Cubs homered four times off of Jeff Samardzija in the process of that win, which was fun. Watch it here.
  • The big news on Saturday was the release of Felix Doubront, who wasn’t going to have a spot on the team. Also, the Cubs cut Eric Jokisch from big league camp.
  • Anyone else just about done talking about the Bryant/Boras/Cubs/service time stuff? I say I am, but then I write about it again.
  • As Luis discussed, Joe Maddon is probably really into having a good defensive second baseman (like Javier Baez).
  • MiLB has announced its pace of play rules for 2015, including the 20-second pitch clock.
  • The Cubs split their split-squad games.
  • Sunday, March 29

  • Jorge Soler’s beautiful, Vladimir Guerrero-ness segued into a batting order discussion.
  • Jake Arrieta, who homered the day before, was one of the best hitting pitchers in 2014. Did you know that?
  • Luis wrote about how valuable Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant project to be for the Cubs in 2015.
  • The Cubs shut out the Royals yesterday on the strength, in part, of a good Edwin Jackson performance.
  • The Cardinals could be down Jaime Garcia when the season opens, but that was probably always a 50/50 thing at best.
  • 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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