An Early Look at Jorge Soler and Starlin Castro

Jorge Soler has now played 2 games, so we'll take a look at those, and Starlin Castro is feeling the heat after a mental error may have cost the Cubs a run during last night's game. I'll give my opinion on that as well as those whose view differs from mine on that issue. I won't draw this out or anything, so let's go.

What Could This Be About?

Could I be writing about the current scores of today's games? No, why would I write about 1-0 or 2-4 scores? Could I be writing about something that happened overseas? Nope, although this does have something to do with someone who here from over some sort of sea. Okay, I'll quit with the stupidity, this is obviously about the Jorge Soler promotion. I can't wait until he makes a lot of the prospect rankers eat their words. However, since that happened, a couple of other things have come up that I will also mention.

This Week In Chicago Sports

I did my whole catching up post a couple of days ago, and now it's time for me to be going back to somewhat of a regular schedule. It was an interesting week in Chicago sports. Kevin Hayes signed elsewhere, light rumors circulated about the Bulls' 13th roster spot, the White Sox made a trade and got swept twice, and the Cubs had some controversy early, but finished the week with a sweep. There's also going to be some news from the farm, as a lot has been going on down there recently for the Cubs, and there's even some to talk about for the White Sox as well.

Getting Caught Up On Everything

It's not that a whole lot has happened over the last almost 2 weeks since my last post, as far as Chicago sports go, but it's that I've been very busy myself. I had a busy work week last week that ate up almost all of my energy, followed by going out of town on Friday to visit family (with 3 kids there, it wasn't exactly relaxing either, but I love them all still), then a frustrating flight back out here while taking the week off of work. I've finally be able to catch up on everything, as I made sure to catch our Chicago teams when they were in action, and I've just generally been able to keep up on everything as far as that goes, so let's go!

This Week in Chicago Sports

It's been a busy weekend for me, so I haven't been able to really say much about the Bears preseason game against the Eagles. There is a lot for me to go over there, and I'll make sure to hit that. Also, Baez-Mania hit Chicago this week, and more is likely on the way with Jorge Soler expected to be called up any week now. This has also brought up the question (well, it's actually been up, but reignited it) over Kris Bryant and when he should be up. Things have been pretty quiet on the Bulls and Blackhawks front, but the White Sox have also been playing, although it hasn't been any prettier on the south side than it has been on the north side.

Guessing On Next Year for Prospects

This is where I'll be making my guesses as to where the top Cubs prospects will be starting next season. With the Baez promotion, things are getting fun, especially with how well some of the rest of the top prospects have been playing lately. I'm going to take a bunch of current Cubs prospects, ones that I'm the highest on, and predict where they start next season. Why do I do this? Not because I think it's something super important, I mean, sports in general are pretty trivial in the big picture of life, at least for 99% of us, I'm doing it because it's fun to speculate and then see how you did later. I'll probably be doing an updated version later, but I won't make any promises. Also, I will include a couple of guys with some big league experience, one with 3 games and another that's back in AAA.

Reviewing Javier Baez After 1 Series

So Javier Baez has now played one full series as a player in the MLB. I don't know if I've ever seen a player show both so much good and so much bad in their debut series, but then again, this is the first Cubs debut series from a top prospect that I've seen since Felix Pie, and Pie never was ranked above #27 as a prospect, so Baez is still an entirely new territory that Cubs fans haven't seen since the Patterson and Prior debuts. This was a very interesting series for the Cubs.

Cubs Call Up Baez

Let's not get too excited, I mean, it's just one more guy for the starting lineup, and there's a strong chance that he will struggle making the big step from AAA to the big leagues, but yes, Javier Baez has been called up. There are a lot of things to take into account here, but at the same time it's just another small step in this rebuild that will hopefully eventually add up to make the Cubs perennial contenders.