Saturday, February 22, 2014

Chicago Cubs Training Camp at the Beautiful new "Wrigleyville" West, Sat. Feb. 22, 2014

Training Camp today was another 1st class and positive experience. “Mini-Camp” for about 50 of the minor leagues top prospects is fun to observe and participate. There are numerous potential MLB players moving around the Cubs minor league work-outs. Baseball America stated this week the Cubs have (7) of the top (100) prospects in all the minor leagues. That number is right with the Astros in number of top prospects.

I walked over to the major league work-outs and enjoyed watching Coach Jones hit infield plays. He has tremendous enthusiasm and seems to love to teach.  Coach set up this work period with imaginary runners on base and the defense had to decide whether to take the ball home, turn a double play or go to 1st base. These guys have such great instincts and ability they made almost every ball hit look easy in respect to decision making, fielding, and their accurate throws to the correct base. I embrace a saying the Cubs are using in this spring training which is: “Let’s do it again” if a player does not execute on that pitch or play. This tells the athlete that the organization is willing to take extra time in all training sessions to help them learn to execute correctly. Finally, while I was observing practice at MLB camp, I visited with Justin Grimm, former Cotuit Kettleers pitcher in 2009 playing for me and also Brett Jackson former Kettleers outfielder in 2008. These young man were so talented when they played in Cotuit, were so nice to everyone at Lowell Park and their house parents, and both of them are still just great people. It was so much fun to see them being very successful on and off the field. I will report on some other Kettleers players that are in camp in the next day or so.
 

 

 

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