The off-day is over, and baseball returns tonight. The Cubs are totally going to beat the Cardinals, too, because we deserve it. Right?
The Wife and I are on our way to Chicago (as I type – thanks for driving this leg, dear!) for Michael’s wedding this weekend. Gonna try to get her to join me at Nisei Lounge tonight to watch Cubs-Cardinals since there’s no game at Wrigley Field. I figure that’s the next best thing.
Gleyber Torres continues to rake in the early part of his career with the Yankees, which is drawing out ever more “oof, what a horrible trade” reactions from national quarters (Twitter was a zoo last night, as were the comments here), and I still can’t wrap my head around it. Setting aside the fact that we’ve seen dozens of young studs crush it for a couple months or a year before going through a serious league adjustment process from which they may or may not recover, it’s like there are people who *actually* forget the Cubs won the 2016 World Series. I know they didn’t all follow it as closely as we did, and nothing can ever be certain in either direction, but here are the things I know: the Cubs *did* win the NLDS, NLCS, and World Series, and I’m not at all certain they win the first or last of those series without Aroldis Chapman.
And that’s not even solely because of Chapman’s performances that we know about (Game Five of the World Series chief among them) – instead, I’m saying it because we have no idea how blown up the Cubs might have been if they had to lean as heavily on other relievers as they leaned on Chapman. Did he have a couple rough games? Yup. Could it have been much, much worse given the state of the rest of the bullpen at the time? My lord, yes. Could they have won it all without him? Anything’s possible. I only know for sure what actually happened.
So, then, I’m going to try to just flat out stop engaging in this dialogue, even when it takes over the national attention. Gleyber Torres is playing very well right now. Great. The Yankees, who took over his development from High-A on up when he became a top-top prospect, deserve some credit for that. That’s yet another unknown: are we sure Torres would be now what he is if he’d stayed in the Cubs organization? Maybe. Maybe not. We can’t know.
Draft signings of note:
We’ll see if supplemental second rounder Cole Roederer comes in well above slot (thus using up the savings from the guy picked right after him, Paul Richan). If not, the Cubs may have a little extra bonus pool space to play around with, given that Davis and Artis were not significantly above slot. Remember, the Cubs already have an extra $375,000-ish to play with because they can go up to 5% above their bonus pool without losing any draft picks.
A nice time all around:
Beware Jordan Hicks this weekend. The flamethrowing Cardinals youngster has really figured out his command in the last few weeks, and has been the single best reliever in baseball over that stretch. He throws 100+ mph, and now he throws it for strikes. (Fun fact, in that write up, the third best reliever and the one with the best strikeout rate? … Justin Wilson.)
Michael has jokes:
Camping gear is among the Deals of the Day today at Amazon.
The MLB Shop has flipped extra stuff to clearance today, including a bunch of Cubs gear here.
NEWSLETTER
