Today is Cyber Monday, which loses some of its uniqueness in an era where most of us have had to do most of our shopping online anyway, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t huge additional discounts today. For example, Fanatics is back to doing its up-to-70%-off thing. Peruse!
• Good to hear, via The Athletic, that Cubs manager David Ross had a heads up from early in the offseason that the change to Jed Hoyer was possibly coming, and that his communication reflected it. “They were very open about everything,” Ross said. “That was on my radar. (Theo’s) definitely backed off a little bit this offseason. Where I used to communicate with both of them equally, I’ve really communicated (more) with Jed (recently). I talk to Jed daily, or every other day at least. That’s been the main change. You kind of feel like something’s going on.”
• That’s a reminder that, even as we DO want to see external voices added to the power structure within the Cubs front office, it’s nice that the President and the Manager have a long-standing, pre-existing relationship with lots of communication. In today’s game, you’ve got to have so much synergy* between the front office and the dugout, because one side’s decisions and actions impact the other, and the only way to really optimize* performance on the field is for the sides to be working together constantly, both in game, and also developmentally.
*(I’m very sorry for using “synergy” and “optimize” together in the same Bullet. They still feel like the right words, but boy does it look like such a stupidly vertical strategy dynamic layered cloud-based actualize interoperative customer-facing convergence paradigm.)
• Mark Gonzales writes about five possible GM hires for Jed Hoyer, with a few we’ve discussed (Jared Porter, Amiel Sawdaye, and Michael Hill), and a couple we haven’t (A’s assistant GM/Director of Player Personnel Billy Owens, and Padres Senior Advisor/Director of Player Personnel Logan White):
Who will Jed Hoyer hire to fill his former role as Cubs general manager?@MDGonzales looks at five potential candidates.https://t.co/rN9ZwgBQ1T
— Chicago Tribune Sports (@ChicagoSports) November 30, 2020
• Addison Russell’s time in Korea didn’t work out, as the former Cubs middle infielder hit just .254/.317/.336 over 65 games. His team will not be bringing him back:
Kiwoom officially announced that they will not be bringing back Jake Brigham and Addison Russell, they will try to work on a contract to bring back Eric Jokisch https://t.co/31Nc9zFlfL
— Dan Kurtz (@MyKBO) November 27, 2020
• Fun fact: all three of those players were Cubs org members at one time or another. Brigham, 32, was only very briefly in the Cubs organization in the early part of the rebuild (received in the Geovany Soto trade), and has pitched pretty well the last four years in Korea. Jokisch, 31, was a Cubs 11th rounder back in 2010, reached the big leagues with the Cubs in 2014, but then never made it back to the big leagues. He’s been dominant the last two years in the KBO, and he’s been talked about as a guy who might try to make the return to the States. Very tough to know how his extreme command/control style in the KBO would translate to MLB. I’m not so sure it would.
• As for Russell, he could try to latch on with another KBO team, could try to play in Japan or Mexico, or could hope there’s an MLB club that would give him a Spring Training invite. He’ll be just 27 next year, but he’ll also be five years removed from being a starting-caliber player, and three years removed from being a useful bench player. And that’s to say nothing of the domestic violence suspension, which would still make some teams wary about whether it’s even worth bringing him in on a flyer.
• The last time my entire Twitter timeline was so singularly focused on a topic (state of the Bears) AND was in complete agreement on the topic (Bears should clean house today) was soon after the Cubs season ended, and every single person was railing that it was time for the offense to be changed in very fundamental ways. Ah, but am I talking about after the 2020 season or the 2019 season or the 2018 season? Correct! All three of them! And nothing significant happened the last two times, so I guess the entire sports fan world agreeing on something that obviously needs to happen doesn’t always work.
• Games, toys, phones, chargers, TVs, computers, bedding, Star Wars, Play-Doh, and I could go on. It’s Cyber Monday at Amazon, so, yeah, tons and tons of things are on specials today. #ad