Cubs Minor League Wrap: April 8

We've gotten lucky here at BCB, as Dylan Heuer, a Des Moines area photographer who takes wonderful photos of the Iowa Cubs, is letting us use some of his photos of the team for our stories here. Obviously we can't use them all, but pretty much all of them are worth looking at, so you can meander over to www.dylanheuer.com and check them all out.

Tonight's photo is of Christian Villanueva's home run last night.

Iowa Cubs

The Iowa Cubs were silenced by the Nashville Sounds (Brewers), 4-1.

Chris Rusin's second start of the year was a lot better than the first, but he still took his second loss. Rusin pitched six innings and allowed three runs, two earned, on seven hits. He struck out five and didn't walk anyone.

The I-Cubs were shut down by Sounds starter Mike Fiers, who allowed only one run over six innings. He struck out nine. The only Iowa run came when catcher Eli Whiteside singled home third baseman Christian Villanueva, who had doubled earlier in the inning. Both Whiteside and Villanueva were 1 for 3. Chris Valaika had the only other Iowa hit.

Tennessee Smokies

Traveling home for the home opener in Kodak, TN tomorrow. They'll take on the Chattanooga Lookouts.

Daytona Cubs

If Daytona is getting rained out in April, it's going to be a long season in Florida. Or a short season, depending on how you look at it. They'll play a doubleheader tomorrow.

Kane County Cougars

The Kane County Cougars won their home opener by outlasting the Ft. Wayne TinCaps (Padres), 4-3 in 12 innings.

Jen-Ho Tseng was pretty impressive in his professional debut, at least through the first four innings. In the fifth inning, he was touched for three runs. Tseng's final line was three runs on eight hits over five innings. What makes me the happiest though is that he struck out five and didn't walk anyone.

He was relieved by Gerardo Concepcion, who had his best outing in a long time. Concepcion allowed no runs and only one hit over three innings. He struck out three and didn't walk anyone.

Zack Godley got the win with two innings of scoreless relief. He allowed only one baserunner, a leadoff single in the 12th. Godley struck out one.

The winning run was nothing to really be proud of, as the TinCaps made three errors in the inning, including throwing the ball away on a play to the plate that scored Carlos Penalver as the winning run.

Center fielder Jacob Hannemann went 2 for 5. He scored one run and had one RBI.