Montas started Monday's Cactus League win over the Cubs and fired two scoreless innings, allowing no hits and one walk while also hitting a batter. He struck out two.
On the heels of firing a perfect frame in his spring debut last Wednesday, Montas put together another mostly dominant outing over 32 pitches versus a Cubs lineup that was notably missing both Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo. The right-hander got some good work in, however, and Martin Gallegos of MLB.com reports the control issues that led to the free pass and hit batsman could have been due to some of the experimentation Montas was doing with his pitch selection. "He was working on his splitter and slider," manager Bob Melvin said. "Got a little out of whack for a minute. He's usually quite the strike-thrower. But he ended up finding it again."