For the fourth time in six years, our furnace has died. How does this keep happening, even when the dang thing gets replaced? Do we just have the worst luck in the world? Is there some mystery ailment in our house that causes furnaces to die (of different issues, mind you)? Is it just history’s most specific curse? Whatever it is, I can tell you that it sucks to happen when it’s 16 degrees outside, and you wake up to seeing your own breath.
Guess I should look at the Early Black Friday deals at Amazon for a space heater or five … (way to sneak an #ad in there, Brett … commitment … ).
“One of the things that we talked about early on was how do we utilize each member of our staff that’s involved with the hitters that has a presence with these hitters and identify what they’re really good at and then be able to bring that to the table to create a group that services our hitters. Our goal as hitting coaches is to get our players prepared every single day with whatever they need.
“Every (hitting coach) has their own specialty, and we’re going to leverage each of those. … A Swiss Army knife is how I’ve described it to our guys. We’re one unit, one little knife, but within that knife, there’s a bunch of different tools that we have to use and we can pull from depending on the situation ….
“That’s healthy in my mind to have multiple voices within the in the batting cage that players feel comfortable with that maybe my message doesn’t get across to one particular player, but (Washington) or someone else has the ability to put it in some terms that are maybe more simple. We’re all are going to check our egos at the door. That’s a big thing that we’ve talked about is there’s no ego here. We’re the hitting department. We’re here to help players and whatever needs to get done for that particular player that day, we’re going to be able to do it as a group.”
The Cubs, already very successful at wringing money out of a local and tourist fanbase, still need to sell tickets, sponsorships and advertisements. Prevagen ads can’t … I forgot where I was going there. In any event, the Cubs are chasing growth in every direction, from real estate to gambling to gambling real estate. And to make that work, they need stars. They need someone to market. And they don’t have that right now. They don’t have anyone even close, really ….
This doesn’t need to get to Boston-NESN “tail wagging the dog” territory (NESN executives once told Theo Epstein the TV broadcasts needed “good-looking stars”). The most important thing is to find the best talent, not the biggest names.
But Correa, more than any of the other shortstops on the market, has the star power and the production to cause a stir. And judging by the way people talk about him in Minnesota, he’s the perfect kind of star for the Cubs to build around ….
No one is going out on a limb saying the big-market team with a lot of money to spend and a Báez swing-sized hole at shortstop should sign the best shortstop on the market. Maybe Hoyer, his staff and their Ivy computer model’s projections don’t think Correa is the high-end shortstop who will age the best over a long deal — though he is the youngest of them and he doesn’t turn 29 until late in the season — but if they want to build back the buzz at Wrigley, I say make no small plans.
The place looked like an actual snow globe:
Well this is silly and fun: