Cub Tracks’ working on it

Welcome to your Tuesday, and today’s episode of Cub Tracks news and notes™, featuring material from current beat writers, bloggers, and the occasional in-house habitué, moonlighting. These pieces center around #Cubs, #MiLB, and #MLB baseball.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough as Hendricks didn’t bring the full Experience and the game ended up on the negative side as the Cubs spilt with the Pirates. The starting times were rather unusual but then, for me, every game starts at 4:20**, so what do I know?

Today’s another day, today’s another game. Let’s hope the Cubs can Steele another win.

* means autoplay on, or annoying ads, or both (directions to remove for Firefox and Chrome). {$} means paywall. {$} means limited views. Italics are often used on this page as sarcasm font. The powers that be have provided sarcasm font in the comments section.

• Gordon Wittenmyer (NBC Sports Chicago*): Where’d everybody go? Cubs, MLB pay for lockout. “Maybe a few more doses of Seiya Suzuki and Marcus Stroman will lift the early sales malaise.”
• Tony Andracki (Marquee Sports Network*): 7 under-the-radar players that could make an impact on 2022 Cubs. “... there’s no doubt the Cubs are going to need more than the 28 players they broke camp with to start the 2022 season.”
• Jake Crouse (MLB.com*): Hendricks falters, but Cubs’ arms remain fresh. “... because of the stellar work the rotation did the first time through to begin the season, the team is in a good spot.”
• Sahadev Sharma and Patrick Mooney (The Athletic {$}): Cubs think they’re on the verge of a breakthrough that will make lack of homegrown pitchers ‘a narrative of the past’. “An organization’s successes or failures can rarely be attributed to one person or a single decision or factor.”
• Andy Martinez (Marquee Sports Network*): Willson Contreras had some extra fun in picking off Daniel Vogelbach. “Once I picked him off, I was laughing,” Contreras said with a smile.
• Meghan Montemurro (Chicago Tribune* {$}): Contreras sees a lack of consistency in punishment for the Chicago Cubs-Milwaukee Brewers feud. “If I was Mike Trout or Shohei Ohtani that get hit 15 times by one team, MLB would be suspending pitchers from North to South,” Contreras told the Tribune on Tuesday.
• Jake Misener (Cubbies Crib*): Cubs “can’t be ruled out” as long-term option for Contreras. “... because Contreras’ is such a ‘unique’ player...” Refers to Athletic article {$}.
• Tim Stebbins (NBC Sports Chicago*): Suzuki’s plate discipline as advertised early on. “He’s done great,” Cubs manager David Ross said Sunday. “He knows his zone and is staying committed to that. There’s not a lot of even flinching at borderline pitches.”

**Doctor’s orders.

Food for Thought:

Please be reminded that Cub Tracks and Bleed Cubbie Blue do not necessarily endorse the opinions of writers whose work is linked to in this series of articles. Feel free to discuss in a civil fashion. If you have any question as to what kind of discourse is allowed, here are the site guidelines. Thanks for reading!