The Northwest Indiana Times reported that our old Z-Meter chum Jeff Samardzija – former Notre Dame football star and a short-term Bus Leaguer before his callup to the Cubs last year – has shored up his standing with the team by appearing in the Mexican Fall League.
Samardzija was 2-0 with a 2.25 ERA in five starts with a club known as Mexicali (which makes me think of that corn with the peppers and pimentos in it), which was apparently enough to earn him a long look as a contender for the Cubs’ rotation in 2010.
“He threw well,” [Cubs GM Jim] Hendry said of Samardzija at the GM meetings Tuesday. “His command of his fastball was better. His secondary pitches were better. His command in the strike zone was better — not just throwing strikes, but location in the zone was much better. The slider got better. The (split-fingered fastball) obviously, he got back on track with a little better strike zone command of that, too.”
This is all very interesting news, but this article never told me what I really wanted to know. Considering how much difficulty American announcers have had with Shark’s family name, it would make my day to hear the Spanish interpretation. I’m guessing something in the neighborhood of “Samaryee-yah!!!!”
Odds are, he won’t be back in Mexico any time soon, so we’ll just have to guess.
Bus Leagues Baseball 
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