Cubs Lose Another Member of the Front Office and Other Bullets

chicago cubs logo featurePrompted by this hilarious Vine and the fact that the very song came on the radio this morning when I was driving the kids to school, I glanced at the lyrics to one of my favorite oh-so-80s songs, ‘Africa’ by Toto. I was embarrassed to learn that for a couple decades I’ve been signing “I miss the rains down in Africa” when the line is actually “I bless the rains down in Africa.” How humiliating.

  • The Cubs have lost another member of the front office, and it stings a bit. Special Assistant Anthony Iapoce, who was effectively the organization’s minor league hitting coordinator, has been scooped up by the Rangers to be the team’s new hitting coach. It’s a great opportunity for Iapoce, and best of luck to him … but, dang. You can imagine that, given the way Cubs positional prospects have developed incredibly over the past few years, Iapoce was an important cog in the Cubs’ development machine. Heck, if you were the other 29 teams, wouldn’t you be trying to get the guy, too?
  • Unfortunately, though, that means the Cubs have lost both their minor league hitting coordinator and their minor league pitching coordinator in the same offseason, each to big league coaching jobs. Obviously this is the way things are supposed to flow for bright minds, and the hope is that the Cubs have a setup that will be very attractive to other bright candidates – internal or external.
  • (Two other front office execs, Tim Wilken and Joe Bohringer, have moved on as well. A lot of turnover this offseason, which is what you’d expect when an organization grows its front office so dramatically and then has a lot of success.)
  • Cubs catching prospect Willson Contreras left last night’s AFL game after coming up lame running to first. Folks at the game say it was his hamstring, and that he walked off very gingerly. That’s … not good. If it’s even a mild strain, Contreras’s AFL season is over, and he’ll now just have to rest before Spring Training. If you’re going to have an injury like this, certainly now is a better time than five months from now, but, of course, you don’t really want to see any injuries at all. Hopefully he’ll rest up and be fine in time for Spring Training or even pre-Spring Training workouts. We’ll have more when there’s more to share.
  • Matt Harvey and Prince Fielder are your comeback players of the year. In the NL, I probably would have gone with Jaime Garcia, given that pitchers come back from Tommy John surgery every year; they don’t always come back from the things Garcia’s dealt with (let alone come back and be as good as he was). And, if there were a comeback-within-a-single-season award, it would have been Starlin Castro’s in a runaway.
  • There is a golf course inside of Petco Park right now, and it’s freaking awesome.
  • If you missed it earlier, today is a big day. Also, last night, the Rays and Mariners made a six-player trade. Also this morning, DAVID PRICE RUMORZ.
  • There’s a sale going on at the BN store right now, with 20% off of all orders over $30. Just use the coupon code JOY20 when you check out.
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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