Cub Tracks’ technical difficulty

Welcome to your Sunday, 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. Scroll down for the links or linger for the commentary and tweetstorm.

The Cubs started out as a tragedy in three acts (Schwindel, Villar, and Heyward had misadventures) despite the competent pitching of Mark Leiter, Jr, of whom Rick Sutcliffe said (and I agree) he could possibly spend time in the Chicago Cubs’ starting rotation at some point this season, and certainly the next. He certainly has the stuff and the pedigree.

Those three errors only resulted in two runs. If you didn’t see the game, Al has details in his recap. The Cubs had no answer for Patrick Sandoval. Ildemaro Vargas had the only hit. He’s got a snowball’s chance of making the roster as a backup and honestly I’d rather have him than Andrelton Simmons.

Nico Hoerner played some short.

Seiya Suzuki revved things up a little and tied the contest. The Cubs ended up winning.

I confess that I like the booth of Boog and Sutcliffe. Not better than Boog and JD, but I like it fine. Both sets of broadcasters come out as laconic when they have two-person situations and I like a lot of air in my broadcast. They also don’t holler a lot, which I enjoy. I supply my own hollering generally — yelling at the TV is one of my longest-practiced hobbies. I also collect dust.

The Cubs look to be providing a certain floor to the team, with the chance of maybe going up a couple of stories, but not so much down. The problem is that it’s a garden apartment plan. Not the basement, not the first floor, but a quaint little corner —- which was cool I guess when Wrigleyville was a piquant little neighborhood where you could drive in way early, park for five bucks, get nuts on Clark, step across to the diner and get a Greek skirt steak brunch, quaff a couple of cold ones before the game at a variety of homey gin mills, and have time to cop a choice bleacher seat.

Expectations are different here, now.

As always, * 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.

• Sahadev Sharma (The Athletic {$}): Cubs’ Kyle Hendricks explains why ‘down and away’ is his key to a successful 2022. “Everything else worked off it when I had it down.”
• Jordan Bastian (MLB.com*): How Miley’s injury impacts Cubs’ rotation. “We’ve got multiple guys that are built up,” David Ross said. Meghan Montemurro has more. Evan Altman weighs in.
• Logan Whaley (Cubbies Crib*): Next generation of Cubs pitching brings serious heat. “... the new crop of pitching is starting to come into their own, which may be trouble for the rest of the league.”
• Gordon Wittenmyer (NBC Sports Chicago*): Prospect Crow-Armstrong knows all about The Show business. “He’s an impressive young guy, on and off the field,” said Cubs farm director Jared Banner.
• Jake Misener (Cubbies Crib*): Clint Frazier credits change of scenery for strong spring. “Frazier, a former first-round pick, failed to live up to the lofty expectations of Yankees fans during his time in the Bronx.”
• John Keilman (Chicago Tribune* {$}): Ricketts family won’t own controlling stake in Chelsea FC or shortchange Cubs if bid for English soccer club succeeds, spokesman says. “Jed Hoyer … is not going to be transferred over to London to work on Chelsea,” Dennis Culleton said.
• Karli Bell (Marquee Sports Network*): Meet the fan who caught Suzuki’s first hit. “I was 100% percent in the right place at the right time. I was fortunate that it dropped right in front of me.”

Cubs birthdays: Alex Grammas, Koji Uehara, Bobby Hill, Jason Kipnis.

Food for Thought:

Cub Tracks and Bleed Cubbie Blue do not necessarily endorse the opinions of writers whose work is linked to in this series of articles. Please 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!