If you didn’t hear the news, my weekly Cubs’ column on The Athletic is no more. But that doesn’t mean the Monday morning fun has to stop. You know, I didn’t get a chance to name my column over there, and now that you’ve seen the name of this one, maybe you can see why. If I were smart I’d be busy putting a subscription newsletter together, but nobody ever accused me of that. So, in the meantime, let’s Cub it up!
On Saturday, Sun-Times short-timer Gordon Wittenmyer and whatever the hell Steve Greenberg is/does were busy using the Twitters to tout a story Greenberg wrote about how David Ross is making the transition to manager while going through a divorce.
How is this remotely any of our business? It was bad enough last year when we had to find out the reason for Ben Zobrist’s trip to the restricted list, and I’m not a fan of the excuse that “we had to know because he was missing games.” We didn’t HAVE to know shit. And in Ross’ case it’s even less necessary.
This isn’t a cutesy story about Joe Maddon and his RV or Lou Piniella sitting in an LA hotel bar bitching that the only lefthanded hitter he had was Kosuke Fukudome.
If you want to make the case that the 2017 Grandpa Rossy Cashes in Tour with him dancing in sequined baseball pants on ABC and “spending more time with his family” by going to work at ESPN means Ross invited us into his personal life, I still don’t buy it.
Unless he forgets to make a pitching change because he’s on the phone in the dugout with his divorce lawyer, I just don’t think any of this is news. Gordon’s off to TV 1 whenever the Sun-Times gets around to assigning an unpaid intern to the Cubs’ beat. Maybe he’s angling for a few hits a week on Access Hollywood?
When MLB started the 1995 season late because of the strike that carried over from the end of 1994 they had an accelerated spring training. The whole thing only lasted a month, and then Cubs’ manager Jim Riggleman said he thought that the perfect amount of time. How then, 26 years later are we still slogging through six weeks of this crap?
It seems like two months ago when Kris Bryant strolled into camp, told the media all of the stuff it’s gotten wrong about him over the past few years–nicely and politely, of course–but somehow we still have more than three weeks of this left.
Most of the things that can happen to the Cubs’ roster over the next three weeks are bad. Barring injury, the rotation is set with Yu Darvish, Kyle Hendricks, Jon Lester, Jose Quintana and…oh, for fuck’s sake…Tyler Chatwood. The regular lineup is all set except for the final decisions on the second base platoon.
Ten of the 13 position player spots will go to Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez, Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, Ian Happ, Albert Almora, Jason Heyward, David Bote, Willson Contreras and Victor Cartini.
So that leaves three bench spots. Steven Souza will almost certainly platoon with Heyward in right until his knee bends the wrong way again.
The Cubs would surely like to trade Daniel Descalso, and as useless as he was last season he’s only owed $2.5 million, plus a one million dollar buyout next season. Trading him, as long as he remains ambulatory all spring should be fairly easy to do.
Nico Hoerner has options, and yet to experience the joys of Des Moines, so it seems pretty certain he’ll start the season there to “work on his defense.” But honestly, he should also work on drawing more than the three walks he recorded in his emergency stint with the Cubs last September.
Hernan Perez is bad, but in the past has been able to line up at shortstop and that might keep him in serious contention until the end. But here’s the deal. If Javy gets hurt again2 you can finish the game with Bote clanging around out there and then recall Nico. So there’s just no reason to waste any time on Hernan.
Robel Garcia is…no, just no.
Ian Miller is a speedy little guy and Len Kasper keeps talking about how “interesting” he is. But, Almora’s got a pretty solid lock on the “tearing up the Cacti League because everybody’s still trying to throw strikes and not trying to lead hitters out of the strike zone yet” roster spot. But were the Cubs able to turn Albert’s very predictable hot spring into being able to trade him for something, then maybe you think about Miller as your fifth outfielder, but even then, probably not.
By the way, how predictable was Albert tearing it up at the start of spring training?
This predictable:
Albert will hit .430 in the spring because these games are perfect for a guy who swings at everything. People will get excited and the real games will start and he will be bad.
— Desipio.com (@desipiodotcom) February 23, 2020
Kyle and I talked about Ross possibly wasting the 26th spot on the roster on a third catcher on last week’s Podcast. (Man, look at how smoothly I work in the plugs!)
Mostly our reasoning was that he’d do it because he was a third catcher with the Cubs. I just can’t imagine Josh Phegley would be that hard to sneak down to Iowa. I get the need for a real, big league catcher to recall when Willson conducts his annual hamstring pulling party, but until then, that’s a complete waste of a spot.
As for local favorite Jason Kipnis, I have a hard time believing he hasn’t already made the team. Is it possible he’s as done as Carlos Gonzalez was last year and his stay with the Cubs is short? Maybe, but it’s more likely that he remains useful, and the fact that he can play a somewhat passable centerfield in a pinch doesn’t hurt. Kipnis will almost certainly start the season as at least the lefthanded hitting half of a second base platoon.
The main problem with that platoon idea is that the logical other half, Bote, was terrible against lefty pitching last year.
.271/.380/.440 v. RHP
.218/.311/.372 v. LHP
That makes no sense. But it was not the case in 2018, when Bote had a .871 OPS v. lefties and a .668 OPS v. righties.
And then there’s Carlos Asujae, who Pat Hughes is clearly lobbying for. I mean, Pat makes a complete meal out of saying Cone-trear-us. Imagine him trying to not swallow his tongue with glee on Ass-ooo-wah-hey!
So where does that leave us?
I think they should keep Kipnis, Souza and whoever they trade Descalso for.
I think they will keep Kipnis, Souza and Phegley.
As for the bullpen? Man, that’s a topic for another time. Spring Training is so long that Brad Wieck has enough time to have a procedure on his heart and still make the big league club, and Brandon Morrow has enough time to get hurt like nine different times.
Many of you probably still can’t get Marquee Sports Network, and man you are really missing out.
At launch it was just spring games, a solid Ernie Banks documentary that they run every three hours and highlights from the worst Cubs Convention ever. But now, look out!
Marquee appears to be the home of Dayton Flyers basketball, day old Big East basketball games, German soccer league reruns and a show called “NHRA in 30” which you would think means “The National Hot Rod Association in 30 minutes” but it’s three hours long, and run multiple times.
The one new show we get this week is a panel discussion called “Cubs 360” which promises to have interesting banter between Chris Myers (remind me to tell you my Chris Myers prank call story from college–it’s worth it), Lou Piniella, Ryan Dempster3, Doug Glanville and Mark Grace. I like that they are calling it Cubs 360, because it reflects the Ricketts family goal of turning the franchise around 360 degrees from what what they bought in 2010.