The New Style

There seems to be a new trend growing in major league baseball, or at least in the Chicago Cubs bullpen. That is the new style of wearing glasses while pitching. Angel Guzman came off the DL the other day and now he has glasses instead of contacts. He said that he went to the eye doctor and he sees the catcher signaling the sings a lot better while wearing glasses over contacts. Most people believe the opposite and say you have better eye sight with contacts over glasses. Now the Cubs relievers have two/three players who wear glasses. They are Kevin Gregg, Angel Guzman, and Jose Ascanio who is currently in the minors even though he was effective in the majors. I know there are a few other relief pitchers who wear glasses like K-Rod. I wonder if this trend will keep on growing. I would think glasses would just get in the way. It would be interesting to know the exact number of players who wear glasses. To my knowledge there is only one position player who wear glasses and that is Brian McCann because he had a severe eye problem at the start of the season. You would think a catcher wearing glasses would just get in the way.

What happened to Ascanio?

Last week the Cubs sent down Jose Ascanio and called up Jeff Samardzija. I wonder why? He has had some rough times since we acquired him from Atlanta a few years ago, but he was starting to look like he put it all together. It seemed like he finally realized how to pitch and use his great fastball instead of just throwing 98 mph. He had a 3.53 ERA in 14 games with 18 strikeouts this season. Does anybody know why he was sent down? I feel like they just wanted an excuse to call up Jeff Samardzija whom they seem to be in love with. In his last eight games he only allowed 3 runs scattered over the month of June. That isn’t shabby for a young reliever to develop. Hopefully he will get another chance soon.