NEWSLETTER
That was a late night and an early morning, with consternation in between. Body gonna feel the effects eventually. Tight neck and such.
• After the trade – which, hey, isn’t official yet, so be careful out there – the Cubs’ projected WAR for 2021 slides down to 18th in baseball … which is still good enough to be right there in the terrible, terrible NL Central:
I went and did it https://t.co/Pjv0dMAagv pic.twitter.com/LObj6Gl6FB
— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) December 29, 2020
• I don’t think the Central clubs – all of whom have done ONLY subtraction so far this offseason – are finished making moves, so this will shuffle a bit before it’s all said and done. But ultimately, it’s not hard to project that the Cubs, Brewers, and Cardinals will probably look pretty similar on paper when Spring Training rolls around. Maybe the Cubs do more dumping from here that changes that calculus, but the point is that it’s not like the Cubs absolutely cannot put a “competitive” team on the field for 2021 with a couple modest free agent additions. It’d be no more than a roll of the dice with rough odds in the postseason, but you have to get there first. And since the financial reality is already here, I guess we might as well root for some savvy, low-cost free agent additions?
• Stray point for which I don’t have much enthusiasm, but is still a point worth making: When you sign a post-age-30 pitcher to a six-year deal in free agency, you don’t usually expect to be able to trade the final three years for value. You’re usually expecting to get the most out of the guy in the first two years or so, and then you kinda suffer through the rest because you already got what you paid for. (But that’s all hindsight, and doesn’t make this trade a sudden big “win” for the Cubs – because Darvish DID turn out so well and DID have so much trade value at this moment. That doesn’t mean this trade was a good one; it just means the free agent signing was a good one.)
This sums up my perspective on the trade return as shared last night. Apparently some in the Cubs own org have the same questions. via @sahadevsharma: https://t.co/JF8yGK6BuX pic.twitter.com/a6ixeywr1S
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) December 29, 2020
• Oh, also, the Padres were the team that signed Ha-Seong Kim. Not the Cubs. Remember that? It was yesterday. That also happened yesterday.
• I really enjoyed this read from Jon Greenberg on Chicago media staple Les Grobstein, which included his perspective on the famous Lee Elia rant. That, in turn, included this incredible nugget about literally cutting and creating the necessary “bleeps” back in the day:
After Elia unloaded, Grobstein knew he had gold in his tape recorder, which he still uses, by the way.
“I wanted to start walking out of there and get upstairs because I knew we had something special,” Grobstein said. “I said to him, ‘See you tomorrow’ and he smiled and said, ‘OK!’ And then before I got a chance to walk out of there, he started up again. He used a line, he says, ‘The name of the game is pitch the ball, catch the ball and get fucking job done.’ That’s a line they ended up using, kind of similar to that, in the movie ‘Bull Durham.’”
In his many, many retellings of this story, Grobstein always credits WLS radio producer Renee Tondelli for getting that audio on the air so quickly.
“There were about 55 profanities and about 40 of them began with the letter f,” he said. “In those days you had to put it on a reel to reel and she would take a razor blade, cut it up and she had to put beep tones in there. And it was not an easy thing to do, but she was like a miracle worker. She took what would’ve been two hours’ worth of work and got it done in 20 minutes and we got it on Tommy Edwards’ afternoon show.”
• This was fun before things got nuts yesterday. New Cubs reliever Robert Stock out there just giving pitchers tips on Twitter – he’s just a good dude:
These mechanics are fundamentally sound. But you need to be able to do this with much more force/velocity. The challenge will then be maintaining the same mechanics while moving faster.
— Robert Stock (@RobertStock6) December 28, 2020
• Sigh:
Tonight, I will think about the time Yu Darvish took out three guys with a single 99 mph fastball, including an opening nut shot, and I will weep. pic.twitter.com/uVFZZBCEVw
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) December 29, 2020
