Although he’s tweeted similar things before, Ian Stewart’s latest tweet-fest has exploded in the Chicago media today. Last night, Stewart – who’s frequently indicated a belief that he won’t be back up with the Chicago Cubs and who has previously tweeted that he wishes the Cubs would release him – tweeted a number of things about wanting to be released/”probably never” being called back up to the Cubs/being not liked by Dale Sveum/etc./etc.
You can read about it in Stewart’s time line (until/unless the tweets are deleted), though you won’t be able to hear Stewart offer his thoughts any time soon, since he’s currently playing in a game for AAA Iowa. Otherwise, you can read about here, here, or here. Or a dozen other places.
As a 28-year-old minor league bench player who has clearly been pushed down the totem pole – he’ll be behind both Junior Lake and Josh Vitters on the third base depth chart at Iowa, as soon as Vitters returns to action – there’s not a whole lot of “baseball” importance here. Obviously Stewart should not be airing this kind of dirty laundry publicly, but it’s not like he was on the verge of returning to Chicago as it is. A .625 OPS in the PCL will get you only so far.
Which is to say: I write this piece because I don’t want you all to feel excluded from this conversation, since it is blowing up across the Cubs-related web (and in the comments already this morning). I have a feeling that the Cubs and Ian Stewart made their decisions about each other a long time ago, and those feelings have been obvious for a long time before the latest set of late-night tweets.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, Jed Hoyer had to take time out of his day to deal with the situation this morning, and then speak to the media about it today. On the Score, Hoyer said (per Tim McGinnis) that Stewart’s tweets were unprofessional and that there will be consequences.