Maddon wants better pay, recognition for established managers

The Chicago Cubs honored San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy with a video tribute and a ceremony at home plate Thursday, presenting him with a No. 15 (his uniform number) from the center-field scoreboard.

Bochy is retiring at the end of his season, and the Hall of Fame surely awaits. Bochy has talked about the need for good managers to get paid. The trend in baseball has been for teams to hire younger managers who can be controlled more easily by the front office and paid less.

That subject is right up the alley of Cubs manager Joe Maddon, who is either a lame duck or an impending free agent, depending one's point of view. He managed to get his agenda out there during his pregame media session.

"The one thing we do is manage more games than anybody," he said of baseball bosses. "A lot games, their schedule is half or even a tenth of our schedule. The major-league manager, there's a lot going on. You do end up being the face of the organization somehow by doing this 2-3 (media sessions) times a day - or more. There's a lot going on there. There's a lot of responsibility.

"I want to believe that the abilities will be recognized moving forward, not just to put somebody in place that's not just able to carry out desires based on analytical stuff. There's so much more to it than that, just dealing with personalities in the room, reading the room, conversations and then just good, old-fashioned horse sense."

Respecting 90 feet:

Joe Maddon said he notices that his players have been hustling on the bases, beating out potential double-play grounders.

"That's been going on a lot lately," he said. "Jason Heyward has set the tone, also. I almost all the time go up to them when they do that and say, 'I recognize the play.' One of my favorite plays in baseball is beating the back side of the double play. It leads to a lot of runs.

"We've been doing that a lot. I really appreciate that."

Darvish's historic run:

After Wednesday night's start, Yu Darvish has walked none and struck out at least eight in 5 straight starts. According to Elias, that's the longest such streak for any major-league pitcher since the mound was moved to its current distance (60 feet, 6 inches) in 1893.

Castellanos in the books:

Nicholas Castellanos hit homers in his first 19 games with the Cubs since coming over in a trade with Detroit on July 31. He is one of just four players to hit at least 8 homers within his first 20 games with the Cubs, joining Hank Sauer (9 homers in 1949), Mandy Brooks (8 in 1925) and Donnie Murphy (8 in 2013).

Castellanos was 0-for-3 in Thursday's 1-0 victory over the Giants. He was held hitless at Wrigley Field for the first time in his career. He had hit safely in his first 12 games at Wrigley, going 24-for-52.