A Tip of the Recap March 26th

The Cubs dropped today’s game against the Angels by a score of 8-4.

The Good

The Cubs defense was outstanding all night as they turned four double plays, including two rather spectacular ones. The first saw Addison Russell dive to his right and make a good throw to Javier Baez at, 2nd who made a tough turn.

The other double play saw Tommy La Stella barehand a ball and make a running throw to first; then as the runner broke from 2nd to 3rd, Arismendy Alcantara ran with him and received a perfect throw from first to tag him out at 3rd.

Rizzo had 2 doubles in 4 trips to the plate and Mike Olt had 2 hits of his own including a towering fly ball to LF for his 3rd HR of the spring.

Travis Wood got another pinch-hit appearance and did not waste it with a solo HR halfway up the berm in LF.

Kris Bryant did okay for his first game of the spring in LF and started one of the 4 double plays by catching a liner with the runner going from 2nd and making an accurate throw that Javier Baez made a great pick on to get the 2nd out.

Javier Baez had 2 more Ks today, but did have 2 hits (a clean single and a hustle single). He stole a base, advanced on a grounder to short and scored on a sac fly. He made things happen and did play a terrific 2nd base tonight.

The Bad

Eric Jokisch didn’t have a great outing tonight going 4 innings, giving up 4 runs (all earned) on 6 hits to bring his spring ERA to 6.00.

The Ugly

Jason Motte came into the game in the 5th inning and was only able to retire one man before being removed. In all, he gave up 4 runs (all earned) on 3 hits (a 3-Run HR by Pujols) with 1 walk.

It appeared that Motte was trying to throw the ball through a brick wall and may have been pressing a bit for some reason. He was getting run on his pitches, but they were not close enough to entice many swings.

His spring ERA is up to 10.50, though he does not appear to be at risk of not making the team. It would be nice over the next week to see him start locking in his location though.

On Deck

The Cubs face the White Sox on Friday at 3:05 PM (CST) and the game will be televised on CSN. It will be Jason Hammel facing off against Jeff Samardzija.