The life of a blogger. Sometimes you have to schedule posts to publish in advance (for example, this very post is suppose to publish while I’m coaching The Little Girl’s wiffle ball team). The last few days, our scheduling system has been failing for reasons that I can’t quite figure yet. So posts are just failing to actually publish. I’ll come back after something was supposed to be up, only to find that it’s still sitting there in our queue, like a turd you swear you flushed.
I’m working on some possible solutions. Hopefully I don’t return from wiffle ball to find that it happened again with this one.
Ben Zobrist left last night’s game after being hit on the back of his left foot by a bouncing pitch, though he did run the bases immediately thereafter. An X-ray after the game revealed only a bruise (Cubs.com), but Zobrist said he felt sore enough that he’s expecting he won’t play today. Which means this ridiculous thing remains true:
Cubs hurt or injured right now: Schwarber, Soler, LaStella, Rizzo, Montero, Fowler, Zobrist. That's, like, a good lineup.
I’d expect to see Javy Baez at second base this afternoon, and thus Kris Bryant at third. That could mean left field opens up for Willson Contreras, as the Cubs have said he could see time out there, but it’s just as likely that Chris Coghlan will be out there, and Contreras will instead start behind the plate or at first base.
Speaking of those two spots, each of Anthony Rizzo (back) and Miguel Montero (knee) are still in day-to-day mode, from the sound of Joe Maddon’s comments (Cubs.com). With John Lackey starting today, Contreras might’ve been the catcher anyway, so it makes sense to just let Montero continue to rest (Jake Arrieta, for whom he regularly catches at a minimum, is due to start on Monday). As for Rizzo, there’s no sense in rushing things and creating an injury where there’s currently only stiffness. But the Cubs obviously are far better when his bat is in there. Hopefully today is the day.
And speaking of Contreras, how beautiful is his swing? It’s just a perfect line-drive stroke, covering the zone well, striking with authority, and going gap-to-gap. When you combine that with his impressive discipline and improved power the last two years, and he looks every bit as good as the numbers suggested he could be the last 1.5 years in the minors. To be sure, there will be adjustments to come, and he’ll take his lumps like everyone does, but so far he’s given us no reason to doubt what we believed to be true by the end of last season: the bat will play in the bigs. (And if he’s doing it as a good defensive catcher by next season, too? It’s almost inappropriate to dream on how valuable he could be.)[adinserter block=”2″]
Also: since he’s got a hit in every big league game in which he had a plate appearance, and since he left Iowa on a long hitting streak, I think it’s fair to say that Contreras yesterday extended his hitting streak to 26 games.
Apropos of some things, Chris Coghlan is hitting .250/.438/.417 in 32 plate appearances since coming back to the Cubs.
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
The life of a blogger. Sometimes you have to schedule posts to publish in advance (for example, this very post is suppose to publish while I’m coaching The Little Girl’s wiffle ball team). The last few days, our scheduling system has been failing for reasons that I can’t quite figure yet. So posts are just failing to actually publish. I’ll come back after something was supposed to be up, only to find that it’s still sitting there in our queue, like a turd you swear you flushed.
