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.
I'll start with the easy one, the White Sox have had a fairly quiet week. Not including today's as of yet unplayed game, the White Sox are 2-4 this week, having lost 4 in a row before yesterday's win. The excitement of Jose Abreu's hit streak died about a week ago, and he's been back to Earth since then, but there's no doubt that he's got another huge run in him before long. Even Chris Sale has looked mortal lately for the White Sox. This is why I was upset with them not making any moves at the deadline. Sure, they can still make trades, but waiver deals are tougher to make, and there's no guarantee that they will get the partner or deal they want. Sure, they'll have a couple of bullpen arms next year back from injury, and of course they'll have Garcia back, but this is a team that is 6 games under .500, and their pythagorean W-L is 54-64, even worse. It's going to take more than 1 or 2 guys to turn this thing around. Either way, they have another game with Seattle today and then go south to San Francisco for 2 games there before coming home to play Toronto to end the week. Hopefully things go better this coming week than they have this past week.
Now for the Cubs. The Cubs are at 2-3 this week. They started off well, but have since lost the first two games of a 3 game set against the Rays. The big news, however, has been Javier Baez making his big league debut. At this point record is really not too important for the Cubs, other than them getting a better draft pick. What's really important is the play of guys who are seen as pieces for the future. Guys like Jake Arrieta, Starlin Castro, Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez, Kyle Hendricks, and Arismendy Alcantara. As for Baez, since his call up there are two things that seem to be happening regularly. One is home runs, and the other is strikeouts. This really is what should have been expected, and he's actually been a touch better than I thought he would be. I thought the first 2-3 weeks would be a pretty big struggle for him, and in many ways they have been, but he's been able to redeem himself with those home runs.
Now just get ready for it to happen again, as Jorge Soler continues to hit AAA pitching hard. His swing has been sweet, his defense solid, and his speed doesn't look too bad either. It's going to be much tougher to figure out what Soler will do when he's up though. He may come right in and destroy pitching, as he is not nearly as raw as Baez is right now. His approach has been great at AAA, getting a lot of walks without striking out too much. While his sample size hasn't been huge, so the numbers don't say too much, it's the mature approach that is why I think he's going to be up very soon. If I had to guess, I'd say he comes up and hits in the .270-.280 range with a home run every 15 at bats. My guess is that the strikeout rate goes up a bit and the walk rate goes down a bit, but still stays somewhat consistent with what he's been doing in AAA. Still, he could very well struggle even more than Baez has, or he could come in and make the excitement around Puig last year look like child's play. It's way too tough to tell right now, largely due to how good he's really looked at AAA, but also due to the smaller sample size.
Now on to the meat and potatoes of this, the Chicago Bears preseason opener on Friday night. I'll be honest, I missed most of it when it was live, but I did catch it when they replayed it yesterday afternoon. As for the good things, the first thing I will say is that Jay Cutler looked outstanding. He was making a lot of difficult throws and making them perfectly. The next big positive is Zach Miller. He looked great as well, with two touchdown catches, and good catches at that. Of course that doesn't mean that Marty Bennett is out of the picture, it just means that there may be a good second TE option behind him after all. One game doesn't make a player though, remember that for everything I say about this game, both positive and negative. Moving on, Chris Williams was another positive. He only had 2 catches, but one of them was a 73 yard touchdown grab. That's exactly what the Bears will want out of him if he does make the team, a guy who won't be counted on for 50 or 60 catches, but fewer catches, but with the ability to make the big play. If he makes the team he's also probably the return guy too. A huge positive was the defense in this game. There were 3 interceptions, including one from the safety spot (Mundy). Also, the first string defensive line was doing a great job at harassing Foles throughout, despite Jared Allen not being in. One player I was especially impressed with was Willie Young. He didn't even show up on the stat sheet, but he was causing a lot of bad throws with the pressure he was applying. Kyle Fuller looked good, Shea McClellin looked good at times and bad at others, Khaseem Greene looked solid, as did Vereen.
Now for the bad side of things, the first thing I will mention is the special teams. Both punters had a bad punt, and there was also the muffed return. Also, Robbie Gould had a field goal blocked early on, so that blocking needs to be better. Oh, and the kickoff return for a touchdown that the Eagles got. Sure, it was only a handful of plays that I'm really harping on, but with special teams that's a huge part of the game for them. Things really need to get cleaned up there. Also, the depth was a bit concerning to me. In the end the Bears third and fourth string guys wound up looking better than the ones for the Eagles, but the second string looked a bit weaker than I hoped. Ego Ferguson did do a good job on a couple of plays at getting to the backfield, but as a whole I was a bit disappointed with the second string defensive line, as, for the most part they seemed to give the Eagles a lot of time to throw the ball. Keep in mind that due to some of the guys sitting out, the Bears may have been going a bit deeper at that point.
An interesting thing that I will bring up is that if you watched the game, you would have thought that Jordan Palmer was badly outplayed by Jimmy Clausen. However, looking at the stat sheet, while Clausen had one more touchdown, Palmer also completed one more pass on 2 fewer attempts. The big thing here is exactly what they were throwing. David Fales also got in and looked pretty solid, connecting on 5 of his 7 attempts, although one attempt did wind up being an interception on a very good play.
As a whole, I think the first game was a positive. It wasn't quite as positive as I had hoped, but a large part of that can be due to the guys who were not playing including Kyle Long, Jared Allen, and Martellus Bennett. Still, the positives far outweigh the negatives.
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