Cubs Minor League News: Rookie League Monday

Jerry Lai - USA Today Sports

Dustin Riese - Senior Writer - 6 hours ago

While you may not be able to clinch a playoff berth within the first month of a season, you can certainly position yourself to miss the playoffs, which is what the ACL Cubs are doing this season. Twelve games into their season, the ACL Cubs are not only struggling, but struggling to the point where it makes you wonder how bad the bottom-tier prospects have become in this organization.

Entering Monday's game with the ACL Rockies, the Cubs entered play with a woeful 1-10 mark as it took them nine games to get that first win after starting the season 0-8. At some point, you would love to see them get on a nice winning streak, but from a talent level, it may not happen as the Cubs fell to the Rockies 5-2 on Monday to drop to 1-11 for the season.

This was one of those games where the Cubs played well enough to win most of the night, apart from one bad inning. Unfortunately, that bad inning led to all five Rockies runs as they opened up a 5-0 lead in the second and never looked back. Anhuar Garcia was the victim of that massive inning as the right-hander had been one of the Cubs' best starters so far.

Despite that rough inning, Garcia gave the Cubs five innings, walking three and striking out two. That start is far from perfect, but he did all that was asked of him and more in four of those five innings. Two of the five runs saw the Rockies manufacture runs on their own as an RBI forceout and a sacrifice led to two runs.

You also had Garcia gifting the Rockies one of those runs with a wild pitch as the Cubs were again put in a huge hole. The big blow in the five-run second inning came from Roldy Brito, whose two-RBI single took what was a 2-0 game and flipped it to a 4-0 Rockies lead. That would be all Jhon Medina and company would need as the Rockies starter matched Garcia with five innings pitched, walking one and striking out four.

Even with the Rockies putting up a five-spot in the second inning, you have to give some credit to the Cubs' pitching staff, as they didn't yield another run the rest of the way. A small victory, yes, but when Wilme Mora had three scoreless innings later in the game, it gave the Cubs offense a chance to, at worst, try and make this game interesting.

Derik Alcantara broke the shutout in the fourth as he connected for his first homer of the season to make this a 5-1 game. That was one of his two hits on the afternoon, as his average is at .263 for the season. Still trailing 5-1 in the seventh, Albert Gutierrez pulled the Cubs a little closer as his RBI double kept them within striking distance and made this a 5-2 game.

That would be it for either side offensively as the Cubs lose another game in ACL play, 5-2. While Alcantara and Gutierrez were responsible for the RBIs, Eli Lovich continues to prove he has the best bat on the team, and a promotion to Myrtle Beach could be coming soon. With his team leading three hits, Lovich has pushed his average to .333 and continues to see the ball well.