Cubs Minor League Wrap--August 25

I was at the Hawks game, and I don’t think Lee should really be blamed for either of the errors. The first came while he was fielding a hard, high chopper between third and short. When the third baseman didn’t even try for the ball, I thought the ball was going to go into the outfield, but all of a sudden Lee was there, at the edge of the grass. He made a backhanded stab at the ball with his arm all the way out, at or even a little above the level of his head, trying to stop his momentum as he caught the ball so he could turn and throw to first. He must have turned his head to first too early or been watching the runner going home, though, because the ball hit the glove squarely and dropped straight to the ground. Even if he had caught the ball cleanly I didn’t think he’d have been able to throw the runner out (not that I haven’t been surprised by how quickly a throw has made it to first before), so I was surprised that the official scorer ruled it an error, taking away a hit and an RBI by the hometown batter.

The second error was a throwing error, and I think the situation demanded he make the error: runners at the corners with one out in the bottom of the eighth, with the Hawks down by just one run (and meta-situation: tied with Spokane for second in the division, 7 games out of first with 13 to go, all 13 against Spokane and the first-place Tri-Cities). The batter hit the ball straight up the middle, just hard enough to get the ball past the infielders. Matheus made a really great diving stop at the grass, and still on his stomach, flipped the ball at Lee with his glove. It was a pretty remarkable play to get the runner at second, but not the feed you want when you’re trying to turn a double play. Lee had to reach for the ball, off-balance, and was falling toward third base as he turned to throw to first. He couldn’t get a lot on the ball, so even if he had thrown the ball on line, I think the batter, with pretty average speed, would still have been safe. But his throw was at least six feet away from Rohan’s glove; indicative of how little Lee was able to put into the throw (and a little of how much foul territory there is in Spokane) the ball didn’t even roll all the way to the home dugout. Yes, early in the game you need to hold onto that ball, but in that situation, I think you have to do everything you can to try to save that run, so in this case I think Lee really “took one for the team” by throwing the ball and picking up the error.

Now, the next night, with two outs in the first inning, Lee fielded a routine ground ball to his left, but instead of flipping the ball to Watkins he tried to run to the base himself; when the runner got there first he turned and fired to first, but the first baseman was already a few steps off the bag; the throw was right on the bag and Bour had to dive back just to catch the ball (a very athletic play from a pretty big guy) and try to tag the base with his glove (I thought he tagged the base in time, but I was sitting about as far from first base as you can in that stadium). The play was ruled a hit (really surprised me, I thought it was an FC for sure), but it was a bad (IMO) mistake on Lee’s part (Whitenack got the next batter to ground out to Lee, and this time he flipped the ball to Watkins for the final out, so no one scored as a result) that didn’t go down as an error.