And in one night, Starlin Castro went from the next Cubs Hall-of-Fame candidate to being booed on the field.
Castro working on dance moves in between pitches.
(SunTimes photo)
I'm really happy I wasn't there in person to see that. I didn't want to experience that.
The game started off great with Ted Lilly having a no hitter going into the 6th inning. It would have been a perfect game if not for 2 errors by Castro before the No-No was broken up.
But back to Castro...we need to watch this kid closely right now. He does appear to have improved in a number of areas at the plate...including his eye at the plate as he took 2 walks last night.
The one thing that people were a little taken back at during spring training this year was that when they looked at what Castro did last year in the minor leagues, there was one glaring statistic that made them do a double-take...39 errors. Right now, he's on pace for 100 errors this season in the big leagues....that's not going to happen, but with 3 errors last night, and 4 errors total already, you have to wonder if this kids is actually ready. Those errors were costly last night...2 of the 4 runs scored by Florida could be directly attributed to Castro.
It's too early to make an complete judgment on him yet, but if we see much more of this, then Cubs will be forced to move Starlin to AAA Iowa and have him work with Sandburg.
I didn't think it was a good idea to bring Castro up at this time...still don't. I don't really care about the fact he drove in 6 runs in a blow out game. The truth is, the Cubs are 1-3 with him on the team. Starlin Castro isn't addressing the problems that this team has. It's a mistake to throw this 20 year old kid into the mix to try to fix a veteran team that is severely under-performing right now.
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Weather permitting, the Cubs will send Randy Wells to the mound tonight against Ricky Nolasco. Nolasco has been just average so far this year with a couple of very good performance against Philadelphia and Colorado 3 weeks ago. He has been pretty good against the Cubs in his career. In two starts against them last year, he was 0-1 with a 4.15 ERA. Wells was flat out horrible in his last start against Pittsburgh. In fact, it was the worst start of his career. Wells looked flat and unfocused. Let's see if this is a pattern with him.
I'm starting to fear that some of the veteran "leadership" is starting to be a problem here. It's hard to tell if there is a leadership problem, but something isn't right at this point. Forget about offense right now, this team is unfocused and making a huge amount of mental errors on the field right now.
