MESA, Ariz.—The Cubs’ defense of their world championship begins in a laboratory here. Though it includes plenty of math and physics, there are no beakers, test tubes, microscopes or white smocks. What you will find are adjoining 10-inch mounds of clay and dirt that slope one foot for every inch. Welcome to the lab of Chicago Cubs pitching coach Chris Bosio, where on these bullpen mounds at the team’s training complex here the failed and the anonymous begin to be transformed.
"I know I’m listening to him," said one of his latest lab students, Alec Mills, a 25-year-old righthander who was traded to Chicago by the Kansas City Royals earlier this month.