Cubs Minor League Daily: Probably Not Almora Time

May 21, 2016, by Luke Blaize Chicago Cubs

Jason Heyward left the game last night with an injury, and the collective mind of Cubs’ Twitter turned to one man: Albert Almora.

That’s probably not going to happen. With Matt Szczur due to come of the disabled list in a few days, the odds are much better that the Cubs will make due as best they can until Szczur’s return and leave Almora to continue dazzling Triple A audiences with his defense as he works on making consistent hard contact at the plate.

That said, if it weren’t for the resurgence of Szczur, this is exactly the situation in which I would have expected the Cubs to give Almora an early call up. He would make up most or all of the defensive value that will be missed if Heyward misses any time (we may know more about that today), and given the potential potency (when they’re not in a team-wide scoring slump, anyway) of the rest of the lineup, the Cubs should still be able to win plenty of games with Almora hitting in the lower part of the order.

But Szczur was playing very well before he got hurt, and right now I think the Cubs are better off with Szczur and Jorge Soler picking up most of the starts in the outfield that Heyward could be missing. That leaves Almora free to continue to hone his craft in Iowa.

His day is coming, though. And I can’t wait to finally get defensive metrics on how good he actually is. To the eye he is, at times, unbelievable. I really want to know what the math says.

(Watch some of Almora’s recent defensive prowess below.)

Triple A: Iowa Cubs
Tacoma 9, Iowa 4
The Cubs gave up two big innings; Tacoma had secured the win after the first one.

Armando Rivero: 2 IP, 3 BB, 5 K
John Andreoli: 2 for 5, HR
Willson Contreras: 2 for 5, 2B
Taylor Davis: 3 for 4

Double A: Tennessee Smokies

The Smokies were rained out.

High A: Myrtle Beach Pelicans
Lynchburg 5, Myrtle Beach 3
The Pelicans led going into the ninth, but a rare stumble by the closer ended in a loss.

Jeremy Null: 5.1 IP, 1 R, 2 H, 5 BB, 6 K
Tommy Thorpe: 2.2 IP, 1 R, 1 H, 4 K
Gleyber Torres: 1 for 4
Ian Happ: 2 for 4, 3B
Jeffrey Baez: 1 for 2, 2 BB, SB. He now has fifteen steals.
Gioskar Amaya: 2 for 4, 2B

Low A: South Bend Cubs
South Bend 7, Lake County 5
They had to play ten innings, but the Cubs still got the win.

Adbert Alzolay: 6 IP, 2 R, 4 H, 1 BB, 2 K
Greyfer Eregua: 1 IP, 1 R, 1 H, 2 K
Andrew Ely: 2 for 5, HR
Eloy Jimenez: 2 for 5, HR
Daniel Spingola: 2 for 3
Matt Rose: 1 for 4, HR

Other Notes

Eloy Jimenez has now homered three times in the past two day. This was the second one yesterday.
Rashad Crawford had to make a late adjustment on this fly ball, but he caught up to it and turned it into a pretty nice play.