A Visit To Papago Park

PHOENIX, Arizona -- While most of the rest of you were watching the Cubs lose 7-3 to the Rockies in Tucson via ESPN2 -- and it appears that most of the pitching was done by pitchers who have little chance of making the team, except for Scott Eyre and maybe Sean Marshall -- I headed over to Papago Park in Phoenix, the minor league complex of the Oakland A's, to watch Carlos Zambrano pitch (taking what would be his regular turn, instead of taking the bus to Tucson).

Z threw six innings, which included 91 pitches, only 47 for strikes. His command was decent, despite the 50/50 ratio of balls to strikes. He walked three and struck out four, allowed two hits and no runs. The defense behind him wasn't very good -- center fielder Bobby Scales dropped what appeared to be a routine fly ball in the second inning; third baseman Kyle Reynolds threw away a ground ball in the fourth and nearly blew another routine play in the second, but recovered in time to throw the hitter out; and catcher Tony Richie let a ball get through him that probably would have been scored a wild pitch if a scorer had been there.

Of the four strikeouts, two were called on nice-looking breaking pitches. I don't know who any of the A's minor leaguers were -- A's practice jerseys don't have names, and there was no roster list available -- but it appeared to be Triple-A level. For the Cubs, Matt Craig played 1B; two guys both wearing shirts reading "BLANCO" were the DP combination (I assume one was Andres Blanco, who just got sent to the minor league camp; don't know who the other one was); Reynolds was at 3B. In the outfield were Jake Fox in LF, Scales in CF and Josh Kroeger in RF, and Tony Richie catching. Clearly, they are a little more casual about who bats, and where, because at least two different hitters batted where the DH should -- J. D. Closser and Joe Simokaitis. And, as you might expect, Z also batted, once lefthanded and once righthanded; he made contact both times, grounding out to second base hitting LH and grounding out to third hitting RH.

It wasn't Z's finest hour, but apart from the bit of wildness it was just about as good as his last major league start. He'll face the Angels in Tempe next Wednesday, and then be ready for Opening Day the following Monday.

About 50 people assembled to watch this game, including a gaggle of people huddled near the Cubs dugout carrying envelopes and boxes, and as the day went on it became clear that they were there waiting for Z to be taken out of the game so they could get his autograph. I didn't wait around to see whether they were successful or not.

Oh, and when I left, the Cubs, going into the seventh inning, didn't have any hits.

Top: Jake Fox batting; 3-photo sequence of Z pitching (Yes, I know it's from different hitters, but I wanted to put it in logical order)
Middle: Larry Rothschild lost in thought; Josh Kroeger swings and misses; Rothschild talking to an A's coach (sorry -- don't know who this is!); Z stands in the batter's box
Bottom: Z brushed back; Z fouls off a pitch; Z fouls off another pitch; Z showing excellent form, grounds out to third

Photos by Al; as always, click on thumbnail to view full-size in new browser window. If you are using IE6, you may have to click the lower-right corner of the image in the new window to expand it to its full size; in Firefox or IE7 click anywhere on the image.