Dave Smith, continuing his comeback, threw another round of batting practice Saturday and again was impressive.
Cubs manager Jim Lefebvre said Smith’s next outing will be in a game, possibly Monday. “He’s ready,” Lefebvre said.
It will be Smith’s first competitive inning since June 8. He spent most of last season sitting and observing before undergoing elbow surgery in September.
“It was hard,” he said of the idle time, “because I was trying all these other ways to get my arm better without surgery, and none of them worked.”
He tried weights, cortisone, rest. “But it was inevitable that we had to go in.”
The veteran reliever is working on a token minor-league contract after giving the Cubs almost nothing for their $5 million investment over two years.
– Mike Harkey’s A-game debut Saturday, an 8-3 loss to the Mariners at Mesa, wasn’t quite as fortunate for him as his B-game start Tuesday. But it wasn’t as bad as the numbers: three innings, five runs, four hits, two walks. Two errors, one each by Steve Buechele (who had a two-run homer) and Dwight Smith, contributed.
“It wasn’t terrible,” Harkey said. “It was just one of those days when I didn’t have good velocity and I needed good location-and I didn’t have that, either.”
– In a split-squad game at Scottsdale, the Cubs beat the Giants 3-2. Frank Castillo gave up two runs in 5 1/3 innings, one on a Barry Bonds homer. Derrick May was 3 for 5 with two RBIs.
– Ryne Sandberg was out of his cast briefly Saturday for X-rays and treatment. “It’s healing,” he said. “But it still hurts.” The cast will be back on for two more weeks. Then a week or two of rehab. . . . Sunday’s cut, Lefebvre said, will include seven or eight players.
– Pitching coach Billy Connors wants the staff to be more aggressive. “We’re trying to teach them to pitch inside a little more,” he said.
Greg Hibbard knows he has to come inside to be effective, and he’s doing it.
“Firing it in there,” said Hibbard, unscored on through 16 spring innings. “Letting it fly. I’ve got to be able to do that. It’s going to make my outside stuff that much better.”
– One morning last week, conservative columnist and radical Cubs fan George Will spoke to the team. His closed-door near-filibuster, which covered everything from the Clinton tax proposals to foreign policy, lasted more than an hour.
Coach Tom Trebelhorn was impressed. “I really didn’t understand the deficit until he was done talking,” Trebelhorn said. “He put us 45 minutes behind our workout. Now I understand the deficit.”
– Sunday’s game will be the first televised over cable’s ChicagoLand Television.
