Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts poked his head out of the tunnel a few hours before Saturday’s game at Wrigley Field just in time to get a face full of cold and an eyeful of snow flurries.
“This is great,” Roberts said, scanning the sky and smiling. “I’m pleasantly surprised. I didn’t expect snow. And this is the real stuff. So it’s going to be fun. Hopefully our guys can perform.”
Very funny, right?
Mush.
The Dodgers got on top early against rookie Hayden Wesneski, and it was tough sledding from there for the Chicago Cubs in a 9-4 loss, their second in a four-game series that wraps Sunday with a Clayton Kershaw-Marcus Stroman pitching matchup.
But this is how good it’s going for the Cubs more than three weeks into a season with middling expectations even on a cold, miserable day of flurries and Dodgers home runs:
You’ve pretty much got to pick on the rookie fifth starter to find something to be concerned about (albeit if you choose to overlook some of the bullpen warts and the occasional soft spot in the lineup).
It might not seem like much to worry about on April 22 but quickly could become part of a series of strains on all the good vibes the Cubs keep talking about if it goes on much longer.
Two days after the Cubs put veteran Jameson Taillon on the injured list with a left groin strain — the first test of their pitching depth — Wesneski pitched again like the weak link in an otherwise impressive April rotation.
“The great thing about our staff is how well we’ve been throwing,” Cubs manager David Ross said of a rotation that led the National League with a 2.82 ERA entering the game. “And Wez last outing was much better. Just where he’s at in his career, we’re going to try to take the good with the bad and continue to work through some of the moments where he’s not as sharp and trust the human and the work ethic. Right now he’s a big part of our success, and we need him to just continue to grow.”
Wesneski, who was acquired for reliever Scott Effross from the New York Yankees as a Triple-A prospect at last year’s trade deadline, looked like a building block for Jed Hoyer’s Next Great Cubs Team during an eye-popping monthlong debut in September and an even more impressive spring.
Since then, he hasn’t made it through the fifth inning in three of four starts, and it took surviving a shaky first two innings against the woeful Athletics to do it in that one.
“Maybe I need to have better preparation going into a start and do something a little differently,” said Wesneski, who has given up 10 runs in the first and second innings of starts, including two Saturday — and four in all the other innings combined.
“Probably mentally I’m not ready to get going. There’s little things you can change. … I’m going to look into it a little bit more and see if we need to change anything and talk to (pitching coach) Tommy (Hottovy) about it.”
Overall command has been the problem — more out of the zone in earlier starts, more in the zone for hard contact more recently. Especially with his trademark slider that was so good in September.
And there’s the right-hander’s dramatic platoon splits, with lefties feasting again Saturday, including Dodgers rookie James Outman, whose first career four-hit game included a second-inning homer against Wesneski, a fourth-inning RBI single off him and a second homer off Brad Boxberger in the ninth.
Ross pulled Wesneski with one out in the fifth with lefties Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy — who also hit two homers Saturday — due up.
So patience? Sure. The Cubs are 12-8 after all.
But also this: Who you gonna call?
Taillon’s sidelined until at least May 2. Adrian Sampson, the journeyman Wesneski beat out for the rotation job this spring, is on the Triple-A IL with shoulder inflammation. Javier Assad, who started in Taillon’s place Thursday, was optioned back to the minors and can’t be recalled for 10 days unless he’s replacing an injured player.
And as promising as Kyle Hendricks’ progress has been as he approaches a probable return from a right shoulder injury sometime next month, he still hasn’t started the minor-league rehab assignment that would be the next step, barring setback, after throwing three innings of a simulated game Saturday in Arizona.
So patience?
Wesneski knows as well as the Cubs do how that works in the majors.
It doesn’t for long.
“I think about it all the time,” Wesneski said. “I could come up here and lie to you and say it doesn’t cross my mind. But at the end of the day, all I can worry about is throwing one pitch at a time and getting outs, and whatever happens, happens.
“I’ve got to compete and get after it a little bit more. And we’re close. We’re not far off.”
Gordon Wittenmyer is a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
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