Hurts So Bad

For those of you keeping score, it looks as if Lucas Giolito will go on the ten-day IL and miss a couple of starts with that tweaked ab muscle of his while right fielder A.J. Pollock could join him after tweaking—how I hate that term--his hamstring running the bases in yesterday’s win against the Tigers. Mercy. Now, back to Yoan Moncada. One of the reasons I like Jake Burger is his being upfront about dealing with anxiety and depression issues; that takes guts to admit to. What’s to say Moncada doesn’t have them, too? How would we know, unless he admitted to them and team interpreter Billy Russo passed the information along? Which leads me to think that teams need to do more along these lines for their Latin players. Burger went to college and from everything I can tell has a strong family-support system to fall back on. In other words, he’s got some things working to his advantage, provided, of course, he makes the decision to use them. How many Latin players do, starting with college or high school degrees? Oftentimes, they’re signed as teenagers and tasked with supporting their (extended) families from the get-go, and they have to do it in a foreign land with strange ways and a strange language. Talk about pressure. I just read a feature on new Cubs’ starter Marcus Stroman, who utilizes a mental coach and a therapist. Again, good for him for being upfront about this. But what do you expect from a guy who finished his college degree at Duke while rehabbing from ACL surgery? What works for Jake Burger and Marcus Stroman may be just what a number of Latin players need. If only teams started making the effort.