Lester expresses confidence in catcher Contreras
ST. LOUIS - Busch Stadium doesn't have a dirt path between home plate and the pitcher's mound, but Chicago Cubs catcher Willson Contreras might have worn one between those two points Sunday night.
Contreras was the opening-night catcher in the Cubs' 4-3 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. With veteran David Ross having retired, it's Contreras' job to catch staff ace Jon Lester.
The mound visits by Contreras were to make sure both catcher and pitcher were on the same page. Lester gave his young backstop a thumbs-up after the game.
"Willy did great," he said. "He's going to be fine. He did a great job with our staff last year, adjusting to new guys and adjusting on the fly. Now all of us got to spend a full spring with him, myself included. Willy is going to be fine. He's talented. He's smart enough. He knows what's going on back there. He'll handle this staff just fine going forward."
Contreras hit a game-tying 3-run homer in the ninth inning Sunday night.
"Yeah, how about that, right?" Lester said.
The Cubs always have liked his bat. As a rookie last season, Contreras had a line of .282/.357/.488 with 12 homers and 35 RBI in 76 games.
He said his night with Lester went fine.
"I feel way more comfortable than we did during the spring," Contreras said. "He didn't shake me off like he did in the spring. But it feels great when we do a pretty good job against a good team."
Oddities and entities:
The Cubs walked Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina intentionally in Sunday's ninth inning. Molina became the first major-league batter to be walked intentionally without a pitch being thrown. As part of MLB's efforts to speed up the games, managers simply have to signal for an intentional walk for a batter to take first base.
Sunday's game took 3 hours and 33 minutes to play.
An odd moment occurred in the bottom of the third when Cubs second baseman Javier Baez could not come up with a grounder off the bat of Aledmys Diaz. It looked like Baez broke the wrong way, but he and the Cubs said he could not pick up the ball out of a white advertising sign displayed on the wall behind home plate.
That prompted discussion between the umpires and managers of both teams.
"Of all things, the MLB app flip sign in the back was all white," said Cubs manager Joe Maddon. "That groundball he did not react to, he lost it in the sign, a pitch from Jonny Lester. That was a double play for sure. The next inning when he went out to take groundballs between innings, I just wanted to know which sign it was."
The Cardinals' Dexter Fowler led off the third with a single, and he later scored on a sacrifice fly after Diaz's single.
He said it:
Cubs president Theo Epstein was asked if he had heard from others in light of finishing first in Fortune magazine's list of World's Greatest Leaders.
"The pope hasn't chimed in," Epstein said. "He does not want to get the you-must-sin-to-win advice from me, I guess. I got more texts than when we won the World Series. I don't know what that says. People who read Fortune magazine like to text."