Sightseeing on the Pacific Coast Highway...
...350 miles west of Chicago on I-80, Mike Wellman keeps tabs on the Iowa Cubs in the PCL...
Living here in Des Moines I've always gotten a kick out of the local team playing in the Pacific Coast League. I guess that makes the portion of the 'road to Wrigley' that runs through here the Pacific Coast Highway. Here's my dispatch after the season's first homestand.
Of the eight games scheduled four were lost to opponents, three were lost to Mother Nature [one of which was reclaimed as the front end of a day/night doubleheader] and two went into the win column.
The team now heads to Nashville for a four-game set with the [micro] Brewers as the I-Cubs and Sounds resume their subsidiary version of the growing rivalry between Chicago and Milwaukee.
It's hard to glean much from the limited six-game sample, very little of which was played in conditions conducive to baseball, but here are some early trends that will bear watching as the season unfolds:
* Matt Murton is hitting .368 with zero RBI's. Jake Fox is hitting .240 with seven.
*Neal Cotts has two appearances so far. Each lasted two innings. He's allowed one hit with no walks and fanned six. Makes you wonder what's in the company file on him when they called up Marshall for a bullpen lefty instead.
*Jose Ascanio looks promising. He won't be 23 until next month and seems slotted as the closer here. I'm looking forward to watching him when it gets hot outside.
*I miss Micah Hoffpauir. He's supposed to be in Arizona getting oblique massages. Have you seen him down there, Phil?
*While trying to figure out what the brass is doing with various pitchers [Marshall, Cotts, Pignatiello] I was reminded that a year ago I was watching Carlos Marmol anchor the Iowa rotation before getting called up to become the anchor of Chicago's bullpen. Wait and see...
*Sean Gallagher looked very sharp in his lone start. In five innings he threw 75 pitches, 55 of them for strikes. He should throw tonight in Nashville since he was scheduled for the getaway day matinee here that was postponed due to winter.
*Sam Fuld is hittin' a hundred [1-10]and seems to have been assigned a personal trainer by the Cub organization. The accident/injury prone wallbanger has been followed from Peoria to Tennessee and now to Iowa by Matt Johnson, who's the I-Cubs' new team trainer.
*Murton has played in both right and left-field. Eric Patterson has been strictly a second-baseman. Fox has been at first base with Hoffpauir gone, but will also play in the outfield and at DH when the team is on the road against AL affiliates.
That's about it for now. Going forward I hope to make better use of my media credential which grants access to the ballpark, the press box and the playing field, but stops at the clubhouse door.
The team returns for a brief four-game stand versus Oklahoma on April 19. Stay tuned...MW
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