The Barbershop: Dennis Byrne, Proprietor

Because of the shortened spring training, Justin Steele and the rest of the Cubs’ pitchers are probably two weeks behind where they’d normally be at this point of the season. On Saturday, it was hard to tell with Steele, who threw five scoreless innings in his first start of 2022.

“It felt really good,” Steele said. “My four-seam [fastball] and my slider, coming into this outing, is something I really wanted to have honed in and I just felt really good as far as execution with my pitches.”

Steele moved to the rotation last August and could be a piece of the Cubs’ long-term future. Saturday was a good start for him this year.

“We need him to be good for us to have success,” manager David Ross said before the game. “He’s a big part of our future and success. I’ve definitely seen a maturity of still working through some things.”

The offensive approach
Besides getting hit by pitches, the Cubs offense found ways to get on base and score against Milwaukee and starter Brandon Woodruff. Cubs hitters drew seven walks total and set the tone in a three-run first when Woodruff threw 40 pitches.

“Some really good pitchers we’ve faced to start off,” Ross said. “Guys are staying committed to their approach in their zone and I think good things happen because of that.”

Seiya Suzuki had a hit and drove in three runs. Before leaving the game, Ian Happ got two hits and scored three times.

“You’ve got to put together some at-bats like we did against Woodruff to kind of get to the end of his rope and really force him to throw a bunch of pitches,” Happ said.

Bullpen roles
Having a defined closer makes things easier for a manager, but that’s not the priority for Ross. Whether it’s through an established ninth-inning guy or whoever fits the matchup, Ross is looking for one thing.

“I tell all the relievers I just like outs,” Ross said. “I’ll try to set people up for the right pockets, but if you have somebody you can establish in the ninth then it kind of works its way backward to get to that spot. It is easier to work that way, from my seat, but not a necessity.”

The first save chance this season went to veteran David Robertson, who successfully finished the Cubs’ 5-4 Opening Day win Thursday. Robertson, like the rest of the bullpen, will have to be flexible as Ross goes with a committee approach. And if somebody stands out from the group, they won’t necessarily get the ninth.

“If the biggest moment, the biggest pocket, is in the eighth and David lines up the best to face these three, four hitters, then I’m going to bring him in the eighth and try to lock that down,” Ross said. “I think it’s like leveraging the whole situation of the game. That’s the most important part.”

Health news
Shortstop Andrelton Simmons (right shoulder inflammation) is continuing a throwing program in Arizona. Pitcher Wade Miley (left elbow inflammation) is playing catch, and fellow pitcher Alec Mills (low back strain) threw a light bullpen Thursday and was expected to do so again this weekend.

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For months under interim coach Derek King, the Blackhawks played losing but respectable hockey.

The past few weeks, however, they haven’t.

“After the [All-Star] break, we were playing pretty good hockey,” King said Saturday. “We were still motivated to correct this. [We were] trying to build our values, culture, identity. And then all of a sudden, that faded. … After the trade [deadline], we just haven’t been the same.”

The Hawks have lost six straight games, including embarrassing home losses against three of the NHL’s worst teams –the Sabres, Coyotes and Kraken.

One more loss Sunday against the Stars will give them twice as many total losses (48) as wins (24) on the season. They’ve fallen to 26th in the league and are just three points out of 29th, although that drop would improve their draft lottery odds.

Since the second intermission March 26 against the Golden Knights (a span of just over five games), they’ve been outscored 25-10. Since March 14 (a span of 11 games), the Hawks at even strength rank 31st in the leaguein shot-attempt ratio (42.9%), shots-on-goal ratio (41.9%) and expected-goals ratio (38.9%) and 30th in scoring-chance ratio (40.2%).

“It’s unacceptable,” Alex DeBrincat said after the shutout loss Thursday, for stretches of which the whole team looked alarmingly disinterested.

“Even though we’re out of the playoffs, we want to win games. It sucks losing. It’s no fun. We’re battling hard for two of three periods, but it’s not enough, obviously. We’ve got to find a way to score some goals and play a full 60 [minutes]. That’s been our downfall most of the year and that’s why we’re in the position we are.”

King said Thursday night he’d “address” the lethargy and — in practice Saturday — address it he did, completely scrambling the forward lines that had been stable for a relatively long time.

“I caved,” King said. “I didn’t want to [change the lines], but we’ve lost six [straight]. It rattled in my brain a little too long, but we decided to shuffle them up a little bit.”

The formerly red-hot first line of Dylan Strome centering DeBrincat and Patrick Kane has finally met its demise.

Taylor Raddysh now skates alongside DeBrincat and Strome, intriguingly reuniting the trio that formed a dominant line for the Erie Otters in 2016-17. DeBrincat tallied 127 points in 63 games, Raddysh 109 points in 58 games and Strome 75 points in 35 games that season as the Otters claimed the OHL championship.

They’ve spent only 5:10 together so far since Raddysh’s arrival in Chicago, but that number will likely more than double Sunday. King said he’ll see if “there’s any magic left” in them.

And Jonathan Toews now centers Kane, with Philipp Kurashev on the other side. During 148 even-strength minutes with Kane and Toews together so far this season, the Hawks have outshot opponents 80-75 but been outscored 16-7, indicating some bad luck during those situations.

Even the new third line –Kirby Dach centering Lukas Reichel and Sam Lafferty –is interesting. The Lafferty-Dach duo makes logical sense because Lafferty can take faceoffs while Dach handles the other center duties, but the Hawks have struggled (outshot 79-58 and outscored 12-3) during their 132 minutes together so far.

Perhaps Reichel, who has looked fine through his first six NHL appearances but is still searching for his first point, can add some spice. Playing wing instead of center is expected to free up the young German for more offensive opportunities, especially in transition.

Even if the new lines don’t work, however, they’re worth trying with 11 games left. Those 11 games may not matter in the conventional sense, but they certainly matter for individual player evaluations entering the offseason.

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If Zach LaVine knew how to fix it, the All-Star guard swears it would have been repaired.

That in itself is the real concern.

The Bulls resemble a lost ship at sea, broken, directionless, and headed into the belly of a storm they have no protection from.

A long journey that doesn’t feel like it’s going to end well.

“We’ve got to figure it out,” LaVine said of a season suddenly gone very wrong. “We’re not doing that, plain and simple. Everybody, top to bottom, coaching staff, everybody’s involved. We just got to do a better job because it’s (the playoffs) right around the corner. We can’t let this happen. It’s embarrassing. I’m going to fight. I’m going to go down swinging either way.”

Tough talk, but there have been very little swings of retaliation lately, and it likely won’t be coming in the season finale on Sunday, with the Timberwolves locked into their play-in position and having nothing at all to play for.

That means any sort of competition felt by this Bulls team before they step into a playoff game for the first time since 2017, will have to come in practice and against each other.

It will be up to coach Billy Donovan to figure out how often and how hard they go at each other this next week.

“I do think taking a day and letting those guys recover [on Monday] would be important,” Donovan said. “And then I do think that because there’s a length of time where these guys could be so out of rhythm, they’re used to operating every other day or back-to-backs, so we’re going to have to incorporate some kind of scrimmage and contact, banging and doing those things because I don’t think you cannot not play for six days or seven days, and then all of a sudden go into your playoff game.

“They’ll be a recovery piece, too. And how do you manage Zach’s knee during that time? Medical will be heavily involved in that. How do we manage Alex [Caruso’s] back? They’ll be heavily involved in that. I just don’t think you can necessarily go out there and script or just go through defensive concepts. There’s always that line you’re walking where is it too much or not enough?”

Especially with a team that looks completely out of sorts like the Bulls have the last few weeks.

April is expected to be the time a team is playing its best basketball of the season. The Bulls look like a team that feels like the season came to an end on April 1.

Now they will be expected to go from dead-team walking to a powerhouse capable of ending the hopes of the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference, all in the flip of a switch?

“It’s one of those tests we wish we would have had earlier in the season,” veteran DeMar DeRozan said. “We had so much success so fast I knew at some point we were going to have to deal with this type of adversity. You never want it at the end of the road.

“It’s kind of like going through high school, you’re getting all A’s as a freshman and sophomore, and then junior and senior year you have AP [Advanced Placement] classes and it’s just extremely hard.”

Especially when the last four tests have come back with F’s.

As far as who the Bulls will play starting next weekend? That won’t be situated until Sunday. But unless there’s major changes with the mindset of this roster, the opponent won’t matter much.

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It didn’t even take the Cubs and Brewers two games before tensions boiled over.

In the eighth inning of their 9-0win Saturday over Milwaukee, Cubs reliever Keegan Thompson was ejected for hitting the Brewers’ Andrew McCutchen. Both dugouts and bullpens emptied but there were no punches thrown, though both teams formed a giant huddle between home plate and first base.

Thompson’s purpose pitch didn’t come out of nowhere.

Brewers pitchers hit three Cubs batters. Milwaukee starter Brandon Woodruff grazed Nick Madrigal as part of a three-run first. Then in the fourth, Willson Contreras was hit by a Woodruff sinker. Contreras was also hit in Thursday’s season opener, and has now been hit 10 times by Milwaukee since the beginning of the 2020 season.

The costliest hit-by-pitch, however, might have come in the bottom of the seventh. Brewers reliever Trevor Gott’s slider hit Ian Happ directly on the left kneecap, with Happ crumpling to the ground. Perhaps encouragingly for the Cubs, Happ was able to walk off the field under his own power.

Making his big-league debut in the ninth, Cubs reliever Ethan Roberts hit the Brewers’ Christian Yelich, but play continued without incident.

The eventful ending overshadowed an otherwise-ideal day for the Cubs, who have won their first two games of the year. Making his first start of the season after joining the rotation last August, Justin Steele threw five scoreless innings, needing 77 pitches to strike out five while allowing four hits.

“We need him to be good for us to have success,” manager David Ross said before the game. “He’s a big part of our future and success. I’ve definitely seen a maturity of still working through some things.”

Suzuki drove in threeruns and Happ had two hits with two RBIs and three runs scored before exiting.

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DETROIT — Five innings from a starter never looked so good.

That’s what Dylan Cease gave the White Sox in their second game of the season Saturday, hours after it was learned that Opening Day starter Lucas Giolito will be shelved for a couple of starts or more and on the day before right-hander Michael Kopech wasn’t expected to go very deep into the game Sunday.

With Kendall Graveman and Liam Hendriks needing a day of rest after getting up twice in a one-run loss Friday, the Sox needed length from their starter and quality relief from Bennett Sousa and Jose Ruiz, and Cease delivered his share by pitching into the sixth inning in a 5-2 Sox victory. The guy who some thought would be the Sox’ top starter in 2022 — even before Lance Lynn and Lucas Giolito got hurt — Cease struck out eight, walked three and gave up a run on two hits, throwing 79 pitches.

Aaron Bummer pitched the ninth to close out the Sox’ first victory of the season after a tough loss on Opening Day.

Eloy Jimenez drove in Luis Robert and Jose Abreu with a single against Casey Mize in the first, Yasmani Grandal hit a two-run homer that ended Mize’s day in the sixth.

Josh Harrison tripled and doubled and scored on Andrew Vaughn’s single in the seventh that gave the Sox a 5-2 lead. Vaughn was in the game for AJ Pollock, who left in the third inning with a tight hamstring.

The Sox infield turned three double plays. The Sox got a key first out of the sixth when Javy Baez tried to score on a Reynaldo Lopez pitch that got away from Grandal. Lopez broke late to the plate and tagged out a head-first sliding Baez.

Jeimer Candelario then doubled in the Tigers’ second run, cutting the Sox lead to 4-2.

Left-hander Aaron Bummer, after giving up two singles to open the ninth, struck out Jonathan Schoop, Spencer Torkelson and Dustin Garneau to end it.

This and that

Tim Anderson returns to the lineup Sunday after serving a two-game suspension for bumping an umpire late last season.

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Having a defined closer makes things easier for a manager, but that’s not the priority for the Cubs’ David Ross. Whether it’s through an established ninth-inning guy or whoever fits the matchup, Ross is looking for one thing.

“I tell all the relievers I just like outs,” Ross said Saturday before the Cubs faced the Brewers. “I’ll try to set people up for the right pockets, but if you have somebody you can establish in the ninth then it kind of works its way backward to get to that spot. It is easier to work that way, from my seat, but not a necessity.”

Unlike last year – before the trade deadline – the Cubs don’t have a Craig Kimbrel-type they know will get the ball for a save. The first chance this season went to veteran David Robertson, who successfully finished the Cubs’ 5-4 Opening Day win Thursday.

To put it mildly, Robertson has been there. He entered Saturday with 138 career saves, and pitched in high-leverage situations for the Yankees, including their run to the 2009 World Series title.

“I know he’s done a nice job in a lot of different environments, a lot of stressful situations on the biggest stage you can possibly get,” Ross said. “He’s definitely a guy that’s been around and you trust.”

Robertson, like the rest of the bullpen, will have to be flexible as Ross goes with a committee approach. And even if somebody stands out from the group, they won’t necessarily get the ninth.

“If the biggest moment, the biggest pocket, is in the eighth and David lines up the best to face these three, four hitters, then I’m going to bring him in the eighth and try to lock that down,” Ross said. “I think it’s like leveraging the whole situation of the game. That’s the most important part. That goes back to getting outs.”

Health news
The Cubs gave updates on three injured players.

Shortstop Andrelton Simmons (right shoulder inflammation) is continuing a throwing program in Arizona. Pitcher Wade Miley (left elbow inflammation) is playing catch, and fellow pitcher Alec Mills (low back strain) threw a light bullpen Thursday and was expected to do so again this weekend.

All three are on the 10-day injured list.

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