Wrap-Up: Chicago Cubs vs San Francisco Giants (8/31/12)

On Friday afternoon the Cubs hosted the San Francisco Giants to open a weekend series. The NL West leading Giants figured to continue the Cubs’ August woes.

What Went Right: Alfonso Sorianohas been linked several times during the waiver trade period with these very Giants, and he further proved in person why San Francisco has been interested. He kicked off the scoring with a RBI single in the first and gave starting pitcher Chris Volstad a 3-0 lead in the third inning with a two run blast. When all was said and done, Soriano had provided half of the scoring for the home team.

Unfortunately for the Giants and Cubs fans, Soriano apparently has declined to approve a trade to the Bay area. The fans desire to rid themselves of Soriano has not been subtle over the last few seasons, but to be fair to the veteran left fielder, he has quietly put together a solid season. Furthermore, there has been no prospect names dropped that the Cubs would receive from the Giants. It may actually work better in Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer’s favor to wait until the winter, but we can go into more detail in another post.

Meanwhile, Welington Castillo provided the most entertaining play of the game. The young catcher hit a ball of the left field wall that allowed Starlin Castro to sneak in on a play at the plate. Castillo was able to make his way back to home plate thanks to the being knocked away from Giants catcher Buster Posey on the play.

Castillo has done enough to show why the Cubs front office was comfortable enough to trade away previous starting catcher Geovany Soto.

Anthony Rizzo rounded out the scoring with his tenth homer of the season, coming in the bottom half of the fifth.

What Went Wrong: Volstad had another good outing to earn his second victory of the season and in a row, but Shawn Camp allowed the Giants to get back in the game by allowing two runs in the eighth. To be fair to Camp, he has been the rubber arm that the Cubs have been able to lean on all season long. He leads the pen with 68 appearances while posting a 3.56 ERA with a 2.65 strikeouts to walks ratio. Not too shabby for a late Spring pick up that was cut by the Seattle Mariners.

What Was Interesting: Carlos Marmol picked up his 17^th save of the season with a one two three ninth that included two strikeouts. That is actually a surprising total considering that he is the closer on an 80 loss team that also had lost his job for a stretch of the season.