Last But Not Leashed: Trusting Craig Kimbrel to ‘Knock off Some Rust’ Could Come Back to Bite Cubs

The fresh-faced Craig Kimbrel who took the mound in Cincinnati Monday evening with a three-run lead looked nothing at all like the crimson-bearded man known affectionately as Dirty Craig. Until he started pitching, that is. His effort was dirty all right, both in terms of the baseballs he spiked all over the place and the untenable situation he was forced to turn over to Jeremy Jeffress.

Walk. Groundout. Walk. Walk. HBP. Walk. Only 13 of the 34 pitches Kimbrel needed to get through six batters went for strikes, and only twice did he throw consecutive strikes. Interestingly enough, the first two pitches he threw were taken by Nick Castellanos for called strikes. That means only 11 of the next…