The Cubs lost the series to the Rockies. Sunday's game was another shut out on a key offensive stat: 0-for 9 with runners in scoring position (RISP). For the series, the Cubs were 1 for 25 RISP.
The one bright spot for the series was the debut of Junior Lake. He is a slightly bigger clone of Starlin Castro at the plate. He has a nervous hitch in his set up, but he has very quick bat speed through the zone. He came to the team and had an immediate spark of rookie energy, first by hitting a double on his first major league pitch, then stealing third base. He also got caught in a run down between home and third, but showed some baseball intelligence by extending the run down sufficiently so his team mate could take second. But in the last game, his wild throw from center field to home plate may have been the difference in the loss.
Lake wants to impress the front office in order to stay in the Show. He does have flashes of being a major league talent but he is still a raw talent learning a new position, center field.
Lake's debut also took away from some of the weekend Garza trade talk. Everyone expected that Garza would have been traded by Saturday night. Numerous reports had the Rangers having a tentative deal with the Cubs. But the traded was nixed because of an medical concern with one of the players coming back from the Rangers (probably Mike Olt who has had concussion/vision issues). Or, the worst case scenario is that the Rangers looked at Garza's medicals and determined that he is one hard slider away from the next DL stint. Either way, the rumored second team has not materialized to submit a package to the Cubs for Garza.
It was unthinkable at the All-Star break that Garza would make another start of the Cubs. But he is scheduled to throw tonight. All things point to Garza remaining a Cub for the next week. The front office tried to get teams to submit their "best" Garza offers, but maybe the market softened after Ricky Nolasco went to the Dodgers and Scott Feldman was traded to the Orioles. It would seem that the longer the Cubs wait to make a Garza deal, the less value Garza has a rental player.
