Settling Into Another Quiet Baseball Weekend? And Other Bullets

The post-Thanksgiving malaise. I just want to eat more food and sleep and watch football and see some baseball transactions finally break through. Let’s do it, folks.

Can we at least get some Cubs coaching news? …

  • More perspective on the Cubs’ pitching coach search, which looks to have the team interviewing a couple big names, but also strongly considering in-house candidate Tommy Hottovy (discussed more here yesterday):
  • Read Levine’s piece for the full rundown of possible candidates, but one other in-house option is minor league pitching coordinator Brendan Sagara. The jump from minor league pitching coordinator to big league coach feels like it’s become much more common in recent years (the Cubs’ last two minor league pitching coordinators were poached to become big league coaches in other organizations).
  • Another coaching loss for the Cubs, per the Tribune: 2017 AA hitting coach and 2018 hitting coordinator Jacob Cruz is off to become the assistant hitting coach with the Pirates. Cruz oversaw the offensive breakouts of guys like David Bote and Trent Giambrone. You wonder if the Cubs gave Cruz serious consideration for their own open assistant hitting coach slot.
  • Apropos of my thoughts on the Cubs going after utility man Derek Dietrich, here’s a note that he’s the hit-by-pitching-est batter of all-time. He’s been hit so many times that, in terms of Win Probability Added, his HBPs have been worth about three wins! Heh.
  • Missed this the other day – a nice Thanksgiving video from the Cubs:
  • Bryce gonna grab a Cubs had and commit on the air:
  • Dang. He’s signing with the Bucks:
  • That’s a fit:
  • I love that there are like three guys on the Bears for whom you could make a credible argument here:
  • Amazon devices are on sale this weekend, including an Echo Dot for just twenty bucks.
  • 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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