A Tip of the Recap March 19th

The Cubs lost in a late night matchup with the Diamondbacks by a score of 9-5.

The Good

Dexter Fowler got on base 3 times (twice via walk) and drove in a run with an RBI double.

Good Starlin Castro had a double and a triple at the plate with 2 RBI. Bad Starlin will come up in the next section.

Jorge Soler crushed a pitch to left center and legged out a triple. He has some impressive strides and is pretty fast for a man of his enormous size.

Edwin Jackson deserves some mention here because he had a relatively decent outing. He gave up 3 runs (only 1 earned) on 4 hits and 1 walk. He pitched pretty well though and if not for his defense (Starlin Castro), he would have fared even better. Jackson even added an RBI double to help his own cause.

Beef looks like a different hitter up at the plate; he is confident, patient and willing to go the other way. He drew 2 walks today and came around to score on Jackson’s double.

Phil Coke threw another scoreless inning giving up 1 hit while striking out 1.

The Bad

Starlin Castro made back-to-back bobbles on rather easy grounders right to him at short. He was not given an error on the first one because it was on what should have been a double play, but you can’t assume that and they still got the lead runner.

On the next grounder right to him, he again failed to field it cleanly and couldn’t throw the guy out at first.

Javier Baez is looking lost at the plate and struck out in all 4 of his ABs to give him 11 in 30 spring ABs and bring his average now down to .100. He is nowhere near a sure thing to break camp with the big league team.

The Ugly

Anthony Carter never truly had a shot of making the team as he is more of the depth at Triple-A ilk, but he didn’t retire a batter and gave up 4 straight hits before being replaced by Drake Britton.

Britton did Carter no favors though, as he allowed all 3 runners he inherited to score, including one on a bases-loaded walk. He then gave up a run of his own before being replaced by Yoanner Negrin to close out the inning.

In all, the duo of Carter and Britton gave up 5 runs and turned a 5-4 lead into a 9-5 deficit.

On Deck

The Cubs are back in action against the White Sox today at 3:05 PM (CST). Travis Wood will get the start and it looks like his main competition for the 5th spot in the rotation will be Jackson, so he will look to keep his momentum going for that spot after a decent couple of outings from E-Jax.