This week in state laws

Lots of discussion in the comments this morning about state liquor and marriage laws yesterday. Apparently WaLi tried to get drunk and marry his cousin yesterday, and needed to make sure what states he was allowed to do that in.

Is there a Cubs game today?

The Cubs play an A's split squad today at HoHoKam. Pat and Zonk have the call on WGN radio, and will be calling Tuesday's and Wednesday's games as well.

Cubs lose 12-10 to the A's to kick off the Cactus league

The highlights:

• Rodrigo Lopez and Marmol looked sharp, and Dolis and Trever Miller had scoreless outings. Not so much for Lendy Castillo, Jeff Beliveau, Dae-Eun Rhee and Marcos Mateo.
• The Cubs TOOTBLANed twice in the same inning, as David DeJesus and Darwin Barney were both picked off 1b by Kurt Suzuki. Good to know that DeJesus is learning the Cubs Way. Sveum quote:
  

  “The first instinct was right and the second instinct got you thrown out at first base instead of second base,” Sveum said. “If we had won that game today, we would’ve won it because of baserunning.”

  (snip)

  “I’ve told these guys your second instinct will always be wrong,” Sveum said.

• Welington Castillo homered, and roster hopeful Adrian Cardenas hit a bases-loaded triple in the sixth as the Cubs rallied to tie the game.

Rodrigo Lopez "in the mix" for the rotation

Per Sveum. Also, Kendrys Morales "has a chance" to win the starting 1B job with the Los Angeles Angels of Disneyland, and I am "in the mix" for winning the Fields Medal.

On a related note

Former Cub Andrew Cashner reportedly hit 103 in his throwing session with the Padres earlier this week. Sounds like they need to get their guns calibrated.

Theo went on ESPN 1000 on Saturday

The Cub Reporter has a good recap of Theo's comments (h/t to GW for the link). Most notable is how impressed Theo is with the progress on the Dominican Facility

"We're way ahead of the game in how organized we are down in the Dominican, in how we teach the game from a player development standpoint, not only from a scouting standpoint. Those kids down there were really working hard, playing the game well and were fundamentally sound. From the other academies I've been to, you see the balls getting sprayed all over the place and it looks a long, long way from the big leagues. We have some really good instructors down there. You could see the kids were ahead of where they should have been fundamentally. That's something that's hard to build. The fact that is already in place now is a competitive advantage for us."

Pitcher maintenance strategies in spring training

Buried at the bottom of Gordo's recap of yesterday's game, Bosio has an apprently new (at least, new to me) strategy for dealing with pitch counts.

Chris Bosio and the staff are building up pitch counts quickly in bullpen sessions and batting practice (50-plus), then dropping the limit to 35 for first starts in games. “We built them up pretty good to try to stay away from the dead arm guys get in spring training,’’ Sveum said, “and then you just back them way down and start right back up from scratch again.’’

Today in awesomeness

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