Our BN Dogathon fundraiser for Make-A-Wish is off to a great start, and new week will be a lot of fun (for people who want to make me laugh around me). Please check it out and support a great cause!
• From the time David Ross originally spoke to the media before yesterday’s game until the time the Cubs made the move, that gave the Cubs reason to put Kris Bryant on the injured list. Ross said IL was not the plan, but then after Bryant completed his work for the day with the coaches, the move came down. Take that for granted, but the only thing we know is that he took fluctuations at about 50%, still felt uncomfortable, and that was that. He is now unfit to return to the Cubs for another six days, and the hope is that the inconvenience may come up quickly, and then in the run-up to his return he can go to South Bend and stand for some live pitching. What happens next is the judgment of one, because when it comes to the pulses of a hitter, the range of prolonged problems can (if not) be very wide.
• It goes without saying: this Cubs offense is nothing even close to what it could be without a healthy, effective, normal Kris Bryant in the lineup. Come on, come back in September, please and thank you.
Speaking about the crime, which is in full swing, Anthony Rizzo offers the stiff hand (Cubs.com): ‘I just think you have a lot of guys who are looking for a bit at the moment. It happens to be many of us at the same time. We all sleep, and we all sleep together. That’s the thing, we’re all together. When the ship sinks, you feel like you are just drowning. That’s the beauty of this game. You have to come back tomorrow and keep paddling and keep playing. ”
• A good read here of Sahadev Sharma on how things go side-by-side for the bills, and where you can and cannot expect course correction. One problem? They are an enormous three-way outcome team (walks, homers, strikeouts) and have been for a while … but this year there were more and more two of those outcomes (walks and strikeouts). The homers miss.
Meanwhile, on the pitching side, the Cubs allowed 5+ homers in back-to-back games for only the third time in team history, which is wild. Part of that is because the game is different these days, but most of it is because the White Sox were on an absolutely absurd homer binge last week, and the Cubs’ pitchers just kept missing their spots. The White Sox are very aggressive, have a ton of power up and down the lineup, and they do not miss those mistakes. Tip your cap, stop making mistakes.
• Speaking of which this is a carbon copy of a homer Jon Lester gave up Jose Abreu the night before. This is Rowan Wick, but it’s the same pitcher, same request to actually bury the curveball, same failure to do so, same ultimate location for the field, same crushed shot, and same reaction from Willson Contreras:
Want the pitch down, WAY down. pic.twitter.com/NOuJrQF6zD
– Ⓜ️arcusD ▶ ️ (@ _MarcusD3_) August 23, 2020
That Abreu’s homer, his third on the night and fifth in the two games, was also a notable one for Wick:
Abreu’s homer by Rowan Wick marks the first explosion of the referee since September 7, 2018. That catches a streak of 191 fighters facing off without allowing a long ball.
– Jordan Bastian (@MLBastian) August 23, 2020
• It’s a bigger conversation for another day, but I see it in the comments and on Twitter, so I’ll just point out: the idea that the Cubs should sell now and start a renovation is humorous for a first place by almost half of the season, but if that aside, the much bigger issue is that there is no market for the Cubs to sell into. That’s definitely the case this season, as teams will give up NIJ’s important long-term assets for short-term pieces (that whole plan to sell midseason if the Cubs did not see a World Series candidate gobbled up by COVID – 19), and it will be OVER this case the case where guys like Kris Bryant and Javy Báez will have very poor trading value on the last year of arbitration given the financial market. It sucks, it has long-term consequences for the organization, and it is “the fault of the pandemic,” but it is the reality.
• For example, with the exception of miraculous change between now and December, getting Bryant one year at $ 20 + million for the 2021 season will have this very low trading value. Heck, even in a NORMAL environment, getting one year from Bryant at that price point has no trading value of organization (see the Mookie Betts trade or the Manny Machado trade in recent years, and with love to Bryant, he is not those guys). Teams just will not give up super valuable precious controlled talent if their budgets are crushed, especially if the price on the other hand is a really expensive one season from a man coming off what could be a lost year. No, no, I’m pretty sure the pandemic forced the Cubs into a ride-or-die situation in the 2021 season. And you KNOW that is not what I wanted to see the Cubs do in these last two years of the core. But the reality of the world is the reality of the world. At this point, it might be better to root for ridiculous expansions for many Cubs players (and that’s not the case at least outcome!).
