This week, as teams around baseball made the decision to tender or non-tender their arbitration-eligible players, Cubs fans’ focus rested almost exclusively on Addison Russell.
In hindsight, it’s easy for us to say that a non-tender this week was so very obvious for baseball reasons – tight budget, underperformance, other needs on the roster, etc. But when Russell was tendered a contract last year, in the middle of a suspension for domestic violence (and after the underperformance had long before taken root), it imprinted on a lot of us an unshakeable feeling that proceeding in a logical way had escaped the Cubs when it came to Russell. We were being a little irrational, probably. But the feeling among fans seemed almost universal.
Maybe last year’s tender was a sincere belief in his baseball ability. Maybe it was more about the fear that he’d put it together elsewhere. Maybe it was concern about a serious lack of shortstop depth. Maybe it was a refusal to admit defeat on a former top prospect. Or maybe it really was about trying to be part of improving the way domestic violence is treated in this sport, and about helping Russell and Reidy. I do think there was some sincerity there; a belief that some responsible lay with the Cubs to participate in the process.
I don’t know the precise reason for the decision. I’m sure it was a combination of a lot of those things. I just know I didn’t like it then, and I will admit that – as a fan – I never really got past that decision.
Is the sport better for this process? Is Russell? Is his family or his ex-wife, Melisa Reidy? Are we as fans? Or was this just an entirely lost year, full of unnecessary ugliness and discomfort?
Again, I don’t know. I really don’t have answers there. Maybe in an alternate universe where the Cubs non-tender Russell last year some even uglier tentacles unexpectedly grew out from the decision not to try to create a support system. Maybe things are 180-degrees better in Russell’s personal life, for his family going forward, and for his relationship with the mother of one of his children. Maybe there was some sense of positive growth for Melisa. The best I can say is maybe.
But I’d be lying if I failed to admit just how relieved I was on Monday. It was a relief that the Cubs decided to move on this week, regardless of what I feared might happen, regardless of the reasons, and regardless of the propriety of why I was relieved. I guess I just wanted the cognitive dissonance to go away.
Theo Epstein took the unusual step of issuing a statement on the non-tender, which wholly pointed to baseball reasons for the decision, which is weird – a favor to Russell and Scott Boras? – since there were 39 other arbitration non-tender decisions around baseball made for baseball reasons, and they tend not to be accompanied by a statement.
In any case, Epstein tried to reconcile the decision to tender a contract to Russell last year, during his domestic violence suspension, with the decision not to tender him a contract this year, after the suspension had been completed, and after the work that followed had been underway.
“We decided to non-tender Addison Russell today simply because the role we expected him to play for the 2020 Cubs was inconsistent with how he would have been treated in the salary arbitration process,” Epstein’s statement read in part. “In the year since we decided to tender Addison a contract last November, he has lived up to his promise to put in the important self-improvement work necessary off the field and has shown growth as a person, as a partner, as a parent and as a citizen. We hope and believe that Addison’s work and growth will continue, and we have offered our continued support of him and his family, including Melisa.”
Of more import, I think, is Epstein subsequently noting how the organization is (hopefully) better for this process, and how it will continue into the future.
“In the last year, the organization has put in the important work necessary to bolster our domestic-violence prevention training for all employees, all major league players, all minor league players and all staff. We also offered healthy relationship workshops for the players’ partners and provided intensive, expert domestic-violence prevention training for player-facing staff. This heightened training and our increased community involvement on the urgent issue of domestic-violence prevention will continue indefinitely.”
The unanswerable question for the moment is how the Cubs would proceed in a similar situation now, knowing what they know about how this went.
For today, all we know is that the Cubs made a complicated and controversial decision at this time last year, and then made a simple and uncontroversial decision this year. It’s a cop out, borne out of one part exhaustion and two parts privilege, but there’s a part of me that is relieved simply not to have to continue exploring the “complicated and controversial” elements of Russell’s presence on the team I cover and the team I love. I hope there was utility, at least, in some of the conversations that emanated from that decision over the past year, but more than that, I hope we aren’t provided a new occasion to get back into them any time soon.
The sport and the Cubs are not finished grappling with the important overlap of their players and domestic violence, nor should they be. But for today, as it relates to the Cubs and Addison Russell, everyone is ready to move on.