Souza Loving on Cubs Fans, Kipnis and Hoerner, Manfred Caught Off Guard, and Other Cubs Bullets

I shouldn’t have said anything, because the sickness – which had only hit The Little Girl, but somehow no one else in the house – wound up hitting both me and The Little Boy yesterday. Bummer.

  • New Cubs outfielder Steven Souza, Jr. could wind up anything from a total wash-out to a full-time starter who puts up All-Star caliber performance. It’s rare that you are trying to evaluate a guy who was always super talented, then finally broke out, then immediately missed almost two full years with injuries, and is now heading into his age 31 season. He got a very modest big league deal for a reason, so you necessarily presume the floor is a much more likely outcome than the ceiling, but it’s a really rare spot. Dude could actually be really good! Of course, you should mostly just root for him to be a quality defender wherever the Cubs need him on a given day, and for him to play regularly, with success, against most lefty starters.
  • All that said, the guy is going to make fans in Chicago, even as a modest contributor – he’s got the right attitude after a career that saw him have a bad attitude, hated by his teammates, totally turning things around, and becoming a positive force in the clubhouse. Look at what he told NBC about his injuries: “Personally, I don’t believe in accidents. I believe everything happens for a reason. I don’t know what that reason was, but I know that I’m stronger for it. Mentally, I think if there’s a silver lining, it’s that I got to spend a full year with my son and my newborn daughter. As we all know, in this game, we don’t get to spend a lot of time with our families. So it was a huge blessing and I’m looking forward to moving on from that.”
  • Also, this:
  • https://twitter.com/BleacherNation/status/1229756036938174464

  • There’s a version of the roster where these two are working together sharing time at second base, in addition to working together on developing their games:
  • Ultimately, you’d rather see Hoerner either starting every day at second base for the Cubs or at AAA, for development purposes. The only reason I’d want to see him in a part-time situation at second base at the big league level right out of the gate in March and April is if the Cubs feel like – for him, personally – it’s the best way to max out his development. I just want to make sure the Cubs put Hoerner’s bat in the best position to develop into a sustainable big league starter, rather than letting his high-contact natural ability play for a while … until eventually the league starts using it against him, and then he isn’t getting regular starts to work on it.
  • As for Kipnis (and Souza), I know they aren’t likely to be huge impact players, but I do like the attitudes they’re bringing to the club – just wanting to contribute in any way they can.
  • It’s clear that MLB and the Commissioner’s Office dramatically underestimated the fallout from the Astros’ cheating scandal and the (lack of) punishments from it. You can see it in the wildfire of angry discourse around the game, and the Commissioner is clearly feeling it now:
  • You can’t go back in time, and attempting to suspend players really was going to come with serious problems, but I’m just saying: stripping the Astros’ ill-gotten 2017 title *TODAY* would go a long way in starting to repair the damage and turn the conversation.
  • The Cubs are hosting an event at Wrigley Field tied to the early sale of tickets:
  • Miles Mikolas’s flexor stuff is still concerning the Cardinals:
  • Ultimately, I suspect this just means Ryan Braun isn’t going to see as much playing time this year:
  • First base also potentially has Justin Smoak, Logan Morrison, and Ryon Healy, and since you’re not going to be sitting down Avisail Garcia (or Lorenzo Cain or Christian Yelich) much, Braun just won’t have as many starts available unless he really takes over at first base. Even at 36, Braun can still hit – .285/.343/.505, 117 wRC+ last year – so losing his bat would hurt that evolving offense.
  • This would mean legal sports betting in Illinois in time for the baseball season:
  • https://twitter.com/joeo670/status/1229474389307150336?s=12

  • I think the intersection between pro sports and social media and public speech is really interesting, especially because I think most of us WANT to see pro athletes being themselves publicly, even if we don’t always agree on what they say. It’s really nice to see fellow humans being human. But there’s a line, and it can come with real world consequences, even within the sport. I hope you haven’t had occasion to spend much time perusing former big leaguer Aubrey Huff’s Twitter feed, because it’s a pile of awful that goes so far beyond the bounds of even heated political discourse that I can’t believe he hasn’t been permanently booted, though he was recently suspended (and then he cloaks himself under the protection of “they’re persecuting my political views!” because he also tweets about politics). Thanks to his behavior on the platform, he has been uninvited from the Giants’ 10th anniversary celebration of the 2010 World Series victory:
  • A reminder that, again, it ain’t about politics:
  • https://twitter.com/aubrey_huff/status/1217965364123856896

    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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