Try Not to Suck and Other Bullets

try not to suckWhat do you think: a McDonald’s with all you can eat fries. Would you do it? How much would you eat? How much would you pay for all you can eat fries? How soon after eating all you can eat fries would you die of fry poisoning?

  • Implicit in the joking t-shirt Maddon mantra “try not to suck” is the acknowledgement that sometimes you will suck. Yesterday, on defense and offense, the Cubs sucked. It just happens, even to blisteringly good teams (and I believe these Cubs are blisteringly good). Resist the urge to take much of anything away from that one other than (1) sometimes the offense won’t explode, (2) sometimes the defense will screw up, and (3) sometimes the Cubs will lose a game without it ever being especially competitive. They’ll simply go back out today – with Jake Arrieta on the mound! – and try not to suck.
  • As for the game, Joe Maddon said about what you’d expect (Cubs.com): the Rockies’ pitcher was effective, and the Cubs’ll just have to “throw that one out” and come back today. It might be boring not to hear much detail from the manager after an ugly loss, but I actually like it.[adinserter block=”1″]
  • Maddon also said he thought Kyle Hendricks pitched well (ESPN), and I’d agree with that. Off-hand, I can recall only one inning where it looked like he was giving up a lot of hard contact, and it was a scoreless frame. All in all, a good outing from a what-he-did perspective, and all the more encouragement that he’s going to be able to continue – if not improve upon – the success he was having late in the year in 2015 after some mechanical adjustments that were designed to square his delivery to plate some more.
  • It was mop-up duty, sure, but it was interesting to see Neil Ramirez pitch more than an inning yesterday (1.2 innings to be precise). And he was once again effective, too.
  • The Chicago Tribune has confirmation on “the point” – which is what Cubs hitters are doing now, instead of the helmet rub, when they get on base. It’s a signal about being in the present – “I’m right here” – and not looking too far ahead in the future or back into the past (though David Ross acknowledged the it might be partially an ironic half-kidding thing). I’m not sure anything will quite match the beautiful spontaneity of the helmet rub that Jonathan Herrera and Starlin Castro combined to create, but I can get myself on board with “right here.”
  • If you missed it earlier, I discussed the futures for two big-time AAA Cubs prospects in Albert Almora and Dan Vogelbach.
  • Chris Bosio tells The Score that Kyle Schwarber will remain involved in game prep even as rehabs his season-ending knee injury.[adinserter block=”2″]
  • I have no idea why this softball player decided to bunt backwards, but I’m very glad she did, because it’s awesome.
  • Also awesome is this killer into-the-dugout catch by a top Tennessee draft prospect.
  • Kevin Costner – he of the many baseball movies – told Larry King that he’s got one more baseball movie in him and it’s about the Cubs. But he has to get it written first. So, what’s the story? And who plays whom?
  • Totally random, but totally cheap lightning deal at Amazon on a huge bag of peanut M&Ms.
  • How? How does this happen? Obviously we know that the ball hooks when you pull it, but how does this one hook so extremely when it wasn’t really pulled? Poor Carlos Gomez never had a chance:
  •  

    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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