I’m off to Chicago for the Cubs Convention, and I hope to see some of you smiling folks this weekend. I’ll be around the hotel tomorrow taking in the sights, then at the Opening Ceremonies, then at Lizzie McNeill’s next door for a beer, then the panels on Saturday, and so on and so forth. I also hope to do some live streaming from around the Convention, which may be on Twitter or may be on Instagram, depending on which platform decides to function well enough at the time.
For part of that time tomorrow, I’ll probably be poking away feverishly on my phone to get up the arbitration settlements. Remember, tomorrow is the deadline for arbitration-eligible players and teams to exchange salary figures for 2023, so we tend to see loads and loads of settlements on that day.
Meanwhile …
The Cubs have announced a ticket pack option for 2023, which allows you to get a chunk of tickets before single-game tickets go on sale. From the team release:
Chicago Cubs fans can secure tickets to their must-have matchups of the 2023 regular season prior to single game tickets going on sale in February through the new “Build Your Own Baseball” Pack (BYOB) starting Thursday, January 12, at 10 a.m. CST.
The BYOB Pack starts at 12 games and allows fans to add additional games to customize their pack to best fit their schedule. Fans can select from 81 total games when purchasing the BYOB Pack, including Opening Day, rivalry matchups against the Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago White Sox, interleague games against the Boston Red Sox and much more.
In addition, the Cubs are offering preset 8-game ticket packs set around various themes including Fridays, Sundays, coveted rival matchups and summer games. The “Friday Pack” features eight Friday games; the “Sunday Pack” includes eight Sunday games; the “Rival Pack” features matchups against the Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Sox and other N.L. Central Division rivals; and the “Summer Pack” features games in May, June, July and August.
“Through the BYOB Pack, fans can customize their own selection of games and secure their favorite matchups before single game tickets go on sale in February,” said Marquee 360 Senior Vice President Cale Vennum. “Whether fans choose the preset 8-game ticket pack or want to create something more customizable to fit their schedule, these two options provide fans with more flexibility and choice when deciding how to spend their time at the Friendly Confines.”
For the BYOB and 8-game ticket packs, fans must select the same number of tickets for all games in their package and tickets will be delivered exclusively through the MLB Ballpark app. For more information or to purchase a ticket pack, please visit www.cubs.com/packs.
I like these as an option for fans, though we can’t ignore the obvious implication: the Cubs are pushing hard to sell some extra tickets. Attendance has been falling along with the performance of the team (together with post-pandemic impacts), and although performance on the field is going to be the main thing to turn that around, trying to come up with creative ways to lock in additional sales is the job of various Cubs departments.
The Cubs don’t really have anyone right now who will show up in these kinds of questions:
If you had to pick one Cubs player who will surprise this year and wind up on the cover of MLB The Show next year at this time, who would it be? It would either take an ENORMOUS break out from a young player, or a monster step forward from someone like Seiya Suzuki or Dansby Swanson. I could probably make 0.1% cases for a few other guys, but on the whole, sure seems unlikely. It’ll be nice when the Cubs have players in that conversation again …
Speaking of that kind of exercise, my guess is Seiya shows up on lists like this next year:
I absolutely would not have guessed Kiley McDaniel’s top two team “winners” of the offseason in his writeup at ESPN, given that one of them had a completely lateral offseason after losing Carlos Correa this week (Mets) and given that the other is discussed almost entirely in the context of the shockingly massive contract they gave out (Padres). It *appears* that the thinking is that each team projects to be really good in 2023 – they do – and their offseasons aided them in that process. I guess that’s one way to think about offseason winners? That is the goal, after all. Seems like there’s more context to consider, though, and I think – for one example – the Braves have had one of the best offseasons, thoughtfully adding to a team that was already outstanding.
Old friend Junior Lake – he’s only 32! – is still heavy in professional baseball, alternating his summers in Mexico with his winters in the Dominican Republic, and he just took new friend Roenis Elias deep:
Shohei Ohtani might be close, but this is a pretty good tweet:
I mean, at 29/$865M, you’re keeping the AAV under $30 million, so there is some wisdom there.
I like to joke, but I always do wonder how long MLB would permit a deal to be before they would call shenanigans on trying to circumvent the luxury tax. We know that a contract can AT LEAST go through a guy’s, like, age 42/43 season before it would be a question. But what about 45? 48? Would MLB really want to have a fight about saying there’s no way it’s possible that Shohei Ohtani could still be a plausible DH at age 49? Julio Franco made it to 48 in MLB!
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Could be some BIG news this week for the Bears: