who had to trade for beleaguered Mets starter David Peterson<\/a> during the series in Queens last week. There is no real trade market right now with the deadline on Aug. 3.<\/p>\n\u201cJust kind of looking everywhere we can to find reinforcements,\u201d Hoyer told reporters in New York.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t have to go far to find Peterson, who had a 6.09 ERA with the Mets. Peterson, a 6-foot-6 left-hander, wound up winning his first start with the Cubs despite giving up a homer on the first pitch in Saturday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
Hoyer claimed Bryse Wilson off waivers from the Phillies last week, and he pitched 4 2\/3 innings of scoreless baseball in Sunday\u2019s bullpen game, in which they prevailed 4-3 in 10 innings. Ryan Rolison was the opener, and after two innings, he gave way to Wilson, who pitched until late in the game. He gave up four hits but no walks.<\/p>\n
So, Counsell, not exactly a modern-day Billy Martin, was understandably fired up in the dugout after Jordan Wicks, the seventh Cubs pitcher of the game, got out of a jam in the 10th to close out Sunday\u2019s series-clinching win.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, we claimed a guy on waivers and had him start, basically, and you win the game,\u201d he said Monday. \u201cThat\u2019s just a good feeling. That doesn\u2019t happen very often, I promise you that.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s fair to second-guess Counsell for sticking with starters too long or pulling a reliever too soon. As the saying goes, that\u2019s baseball, and Counsell is paid pretty handsomely to do the job.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s certainly appropriate to question Hoyer\u2019s roster-building at a time when many of the Cubs\u2019 high-paid position players aren\u2019t hitting and the pitching staff is one step away from being cryogenically frozen en masse.<\/p>\n
Hoyer knows building a bullpen is a year-to-year proposition with a lot of variables, and unless a team can swing a deal for Mason Miller, as Monday\u2019s opponent San Diego did last season, it should never invest too much money there. Hoyer\u2019s big-money addition this offseason was Maton, who has a 6.08 ERA in 30 appearances.<\/p>\n
Paying for pitching, in general, is a fraught exercise. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important for teams to develop their own.<\/p>\n
One of the long-running jokes among reporters is the \u201cYear of Cubs Pitching,\u201d a callback to the middle days of the Theo Epstein era, when the Cubs were always predicting a breakthrough in the minor leagues. There have been many changes in approach, philosophy and infrastructure since then, and some positive results. But where are the young fireballers? Where\u2019s their Jacob Misiorowski?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a macro question, but in the present the Cubs are showing their mettle in a challenging situation, and that should be recognized, if not applauded. On Monday, they picked up their 10th walk-off win of the season, while facing Miller, when Seiya Suzuki drove in Pete Crow-Armstrong with a hit off the ivy in left field.<\/p>\n
Why the Cubs can\u2019t escape the Brewers<\/p>\n
Ken Rosenthal<\/p>\n
Counsell isn\u2019t some dope. He knows how to run a pitching staff, and Hoyer and his staff have built a strong infield defense for a reason: it helps make mediocre pitching look better.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s also why Hoyer pays handsomely for hitting, but right now, the ROI has been ugly. The team\u2019s hitters have been healthy this season, but some of their numbers are nauseating.<\/p>\n
Alex Bregman, the team\u2019s $175 million free-agent signing, has a higher OBP than slugging percentage, and his OBP isn\u2019t great.<\/p>\n
Before the game, Bregman apologized for a poor effort running to first on a bobbled ground ball Sunday, but also pointed out that he was being mindful of injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve also had 10 soft tissue injuries running down the first baseline specifically,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, it\u2019s kind of some give-and-take, but at the same time, I obviously wish I would\u2019ve beat the throw.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure I buy it. But given how things are going for the Cubs, who could blame him for being cautious? Perhaps he could mix in a few more home run trots just to be safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 With his usual hangdog mien, Cubs manager Craig Counsell sat down before the assembled media at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[479,363,99],"class_list":["post-734781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}