The Contreras Brothers Are Here to Make You Smile, the Cubs’ Performance Less So, and Other Cubs Bullets

Jul 11, 2022

‘Better Call Saul’ is BACK TONIGHT. I am very ready to be in that world again. I am not ready for there to be only six more episodes ever.

Let’s start somewhere sweet, with William Contreras making the NL All-Star team as the DH, meaning that he and his brother Willson will start in the game together.

The Contreras Brothers are going to be starting together in the All-Star Game. That is some seriously wonderful stuff. pic.twitter.com/SuqQcCwgy9
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) July 11, 2022

Brothers starting an All-Star Game together hasn’t happened in 30 years:

It's official: With Bryce Harper out, Atlanta's William Contreras will start at DH for the National League alongside his brother, Willson, the Cubs' catcher.

They'll be the first brothers to start on the same All-Star team since Roberto and Sandy Alomar in 1992.— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 10, 2022

The full All-Star rosters are here (including Ian Happ, too), but I won’t get into the snubs and whatever just yet, because we know every year guys get hurt or drop out, and there will be additions over the next week.

Now we can talk about the bad stuff, like how the Cubs lost yesterday’s game despite a grand slam and a three-run homer, something they haven’t done in a very long time:

Last time the Cubs hit a grand slam AND a 3-run homer and still lost was May 24, 1996 at Astros.

Slam by Sandberg, 3-run shot by Sosa. 8-7 loss.— Christopher Kamka (@ckamka) July 10, 2022

The loss, of course, was the fourth straight in the series, and seventh straight this season to the Dodgers (aka, the season sweep). The Dodgers are good and the Cubs kept the games close, but it’s not like these two teams – or even organizations – are in a particularly “close” position right now.

To that end, I saw a lot of people talking about the Cubs in relation to what the Dodgers are now – how the Cubs should be that, or would be that if only they spent more money – and it led to a lengthy thread on Twitter. Something something follow BN on Twitter if you don’t already:

I guess I have to say this part explicitly – I've said it many times before, but you can't say it enough: the point is that the Cubs, while winning in the bigs in 2015-18, were failing, badly, elsewhere in the org. There's a reason there was massive turnover starting in 2019.— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) July 11, 2022

So much of baseball operations has a very long tail (it happens when the basis for your sport starts with teenagers who don't peak for almost a decade). Your failures five years ago – the ones that are hard to see when they're happening – become VERY easy to see today.— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) July 11, 2022

The Cubs *wanted* to become something like this. It was the intention when Theo/Jed came in back in late 2011. For a large number of reasons – some their fault, some biz/ownership fault, some nobody's fault – it failed.

Last season and this season are the fruit of that failure.— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) July 11, 2022

At least the Cubs now get to face the Orioles … who’ve won eight games in a row, their longest such streak in 17 years. Lol.

David Ross tries to stay positive (Cubs.com): “We have a really close group that roots for one another and fights tooth and nail; we’ve proven that with the best teams in the game, consistently. Are we where we want to be, and at the end of the day do wins and loses matter? Absolutely. But those guys understand that we’re going to be fighting for championships real soon.”

Nelson Velazquez hit his second big league homer yesterday to keep the Cubs in striking distance, though it notably came on a meatball fastball:

Nelson Velázquez launches his second home run of the season. pic.twitter.com/hcvuC7SFF1
— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) July 10, 2022

Like I’ve written before, now that Velazquez is starting more regularly (a very good and necessary part of the development process), the league is seeing how they can attack him: breaking balls in the strike zone. There’s just a lot of swing and miss there. Ultimately, I’m OK with the Cubs deciding either to keep giving him as many starts as possible even as he struggles – maybe he’s a guy who can learn/develop against big league breaking pitches by simply seeing a ton of ’em. And I’d also be OK with them taking the opportunity, if it comes naturally, to send him back to Iowa to continue the work – he played only 34 games there earlier this year, and it wasn’t all hugely successful. I can see the sense in both approaches.

I’m intentionally not going too deep on who should do what where right now, because in the coming three weeks, everything is going to change. There will be trades, there will be injured players returning, and there will be new injuries.

Speaking of which: No idea what’s about to happen with Nick Madrigal, or if he’ll even have a long stretch of being able to play at Iowa this year, much less in Chicago. He felt “tightness” in his groin yesterday after one at bat, was pulled, and then was sent to Chicago for more evaluation (which, to me, means it was worse than just mild tightness or whatever). If Madrigal continues to miss time, you will probably see more Christopher Morel and David Bote sharing second base from here on out. That’s fine in its own right, but it also leaves open the outfield spot that might otherwise be taken by Morel in the second half (if Madrigal were to return). In other words, the longer Madrigal is injured – which is bad, don’t get me wrong! – the more evaluation time there will be available, indirectly, in the big league outfield.

When people talk about Pirates youngster Oneil Cruz, the description is often about just what a unicorn he is in his size and strength and freakish skill. That’s easy enough to say, but it’s better when you can show examples – like the homer he hit yesterday against the Brewers, which looked off the bat like it might be a bloop over the second baseman’s head … and instead went 416 feet:

Cruz Missile!!! pic.twitter.com/jl59iPrelo
— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) July 10, 2022

Wait. The Home Run Derby X thing happened this weekend? I missed it completely, which is probably not a great sign for how well it was promoted:

Teeing off in the #HomeRunDerbyX.

(MLB x @FTX_Official) pic.twitter.com/bbjTfGWUB2
— MLB (@MLB) July 9, 2022

Enjoy:

ABSOLUTELY LOSING MY MIND OVER THIS pic.twitter.com/LfSHQH0DVc
— the tonight show made the video—i merely found it (@phan2187) July 11, 2022

written by

Brett Taylor

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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