The Home-Road Issue, Harper’s Crushing Grand Slam, Woody’s Day, and Other Cubs Bullets

The Super Bowl hype is just not as present this year. I’m not wrong, am I? I feel like I just don’t see it around as much as usual. Not sure if that’s a product of the teams involved or my own stage in life, but it’s not there. I’m still really looking forward to the game, though. Gotta get me some cheese sticks and wings or something …

  • Derek Holland finds a job, and I have a memory:
  • At the time it happened, that game felt a little more like it just flowed into what was going on at the moment: the Cubs were blowing a lot of games late, and they absolutely could not win on the road. But within a couple weeks, long before season entered its actual death throes, you started to look back at that moment as the clear beginning of the end. The Cubs had been up 3.0 games in the division when that road trip began, and Harper’s shot took them to a tie. From that series on, the Cubs finished the year 20-24.
  • Related, remember how the Cubs won fewer games on the road than all other NL teams besides the Marlins and Rockies? Boy, that was something. I’d say that the Cubs could be a lot better in 2020 if they just figured out how to be consistent on the road, but I’m not sure you can count on winning a whopping 51 games at home again. Good luck with that weird issue, David Ross.
  • MLB and MiLB are still fighting publicly, which is probably how it’s going to be all year as their agreement expires later this year. I think it’s a lock at this point that SOME minor league teams will be contracted and the draft will shrink considerably in rounds. The precise contours of what happens – and what kind of a raise minor league players get across the board (and whether some teams will up the ante even more for their players) – all remain to be seen.
  • More El Mago cover show:
  • More Astros dubiousness:
  • Pitches just shouldn’t move like this, and he was doing it at the end of his day. So special:
  • https://twitter.com/PitchingNinja/status/1223607852532731904

  • Ah, what the heck, let’s just enjoy them all – just watch all the ridiculous swings and pants-pooping freezes:
  • The Phillies still come in for Kris Bryant mentions and you can see where they would have the need, but man, that rotation is in a scary state:
  • That is to say, even if the Phillies had young pitching outside of their top pitching prospect in Spencer Howard, I don’t see how they could justify moving it for another bat.
  • I laughed:
  • TVs, glasses, supplements, and ozone generators(?) are among your Deals of the Day at Amazon today. #ad
  • 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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