PCA and Owen Caissie – Picture by Todd Johnson

I spent tonight in Peoria watching the South Bend Cubs, taking pictures, chatting with Greg Huss, and talking with some other people including a few of you. It was a lot of fun and a little hot at times. I have lot of good pictures which will be on Facebook account in the morning.

Dingers of the Day

One of the best things how about tonight was seeing Pete Crow-Armstrong and Owen Caissie both have good games at the same time. PCA went 2-for-3 with two walks while Caissie went 3-for-4 and each of them had a solo home run. Neither of them won hitter of the day, but it was fun to see them do well at the same time!

Web Gem of the Day

The Jaguar lays out. Wow!

Starting Pitcher of the Day

Jordan Wicks – Picture by Todd Johnson

This was also a lot of fun to watch as a Jordan Wicks had everything working tonight as he went five innings, he probably should’ve gone six because he did not throw that many stressful innings even though he did throw 81 pitches, 51 of them for strikes. He allowed just one hit and walked a couple of guys and struck out 10 batters with ease.

Right now Wicks is at that funky stage where he is ready for Tennessee or he’s extremely close to going to Tennessee. He could go there after the All-Star break next week. But he looks like he’s got the right curve grip he wants to use on a daily basis figured out.

He’s had three good starts in a row but tonight was the best start of his Cubs career. Move him up.

Hitter of the Day

Dixon Machado easily takes today’s nod as he went 3-for-4three with 4 RBI and no one came close to matching there. Machado had a double and a couple of singles that each plated two runs apiece.

Reliever of the Day

This was the toughest award of the day. I thought Dakota Mekkes did well for Iowa as did Erich Uelmen. With Tennessee getting rained out, it made things a little more difficult as it basically came down to South Bend and Iowa’s relievers. I decided to go with Luis Devers of South Bend who went 2.2 innings and struck out three in relief of Jordan Wicks. He did run into a little trouble in the eighth, but Hunter Bigge came in and got him out of it.

I will be back tomorrow morning with a post on Ezekiel Pagan and his ability to just plain hit.