Jon Lester’s Continued Dominance and Other Bullets

jon lester cubsIt is so hard to do “usual” posts during the Blogathon. Stuff’s happening left and right, and it takes a lot of time to step back and do the routine stuff … but then more stuff breaks! I’ve been working on these Bullets since 7am ET, and things keep changing and coming up …

  • Jon Lester was dominant yesterday. His 14 strikeouts were the most by a Cubs starter since Mark Prior was in his hay day, and the performance improved his ERA/FIP/xFIP to 3.26/2.92/2.96, and increased his WAR to 3.1. He’s now 16th in FIP in all of baseball, 12th in xFIP, and 12th in WAR. Folks who were worried about him in April looked silly then, and they look really silly now. But, hey, we’re all Cubs fans, so bygones and all that …
  • Speaking of Lester and David Ross, who catches him, they had a new left fielder for yesterday’s game – part-time catcher Kyle Schwarber. He started in left field for the first time after appearing there for one inning over the weekend, and doing work on the side. From the sound of things (Cubs.com), Schwarber could start seeing more regular time there in the outfield to keep his bat in the lineup. He didn’t see much action yesterday – fielding a single and catching a pop fly – so there’s not much to report yet on how he looks out there. Chris Coghlan looks like he can handle right field, though, so that’s good to know. If Miguel Montero comes back soon-ish, the Cubs will have a bunch of opportunities to rotate guys and take advantage of match-ups (and that goes double if Chris Coghlan can *very occasionally* play second base).
  • The source of Neil Ramirez’s abdominal injury: a violent sneeze.
  • If you missed the first Blogathon update post.
  • Three Cardinals things to share, though the big one (the TV deal) will get its own post at some point soon.

  • You can read about the Cardinals’ new TV deal here for now. Remember with these things: without knowing how much equity the team is getting in the RSN, it’s hard to tell exactly how much they’re getting annually. For now, we know only that the Cardinals are getting a huge bump in revenue very soon.
  • Matt Holliday re-injured his quad last night, and, although the severity is not yet known, it apparently left the Cardinals scrambling to make an addition. They’re already without first baseman Matt Adams, so the need to pick up a bat was fairly strong at this point, and they sent a very good prospect to the Indians for Brandon Moss.
  • And then there’s this:
  • Thoughts? Reactions? Savvy move? Dangerous move? I tend to land on a combination of those two, myself. The play doesn’t seem to be getting a ton of discussion – it was a foul ball, in the end – but it seems like it should be.
  • 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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