Hill Sent to Iowa
Just as the Sun-Times reported this morning would happen, the Cubs announced in a press release today that Bobby Hill has been sent to Iowa. Though I do think the Cubs are misguided in this decision, and employing a double standard with regard to the emphasis on the spring training performances of Hill and Mark Grudzielanek and Ramon Martinez, I also think that Bobby Hill will be back with the big league club soon.
The Cubs also cut IF Augie Ojeda, LHP Mike Sirotka, OF Midre Cummings, OF Trenidad Hubbard, C Javier Cardona, RHP Francis Beltran, and LHP Felix Sanchez. With Ojeda, Cummings, and Hubbard gone, that almost assuredly means Tom Goodwin and Lenny Harris have made the team, as Mike Kiley said they would, though Charles Gipson is still in camp and has to be considered a possibility. Gipson, though, has received less playing time this spring than either Goodwin or Harris.
UPDATE (4:50pm): Brian Carstens has comments, astutely noting that “[i]t is clear at this point that Mark Grudzielanek cannot hit, while Bobby Hill merely has not hit.”
UPDATE II (5:05pm): GM Jim Hendry comments on the move: “More went into it than, ‘Gee, he hit this batting average and that’s not good.’ He didn’t play as well defensively as he did last year, he didn’t run the bases as well, but he’s done it before. He’s got a chance to be a real good ballplayer. We’re not down on him or writing him off or feeling he won’t be a good player for a long time. But at the same time, it won’t do him or ourselves any good right now to put him out there and then start platooning him. . . . If it was just the batting average alone, I think we would’ve found a way maybe to keep him.”
According to Hendry then, it was more than just his batting average that did Hill in.