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BN Chicago Cubs Taillon Dominant, Wisdom and Morel....

Taillon Dominant, Wisdom and Morel Hot, New Network, Hardware, ACL (The Good Kind), and Other Bullets

Brett Taylor Brett Taylor
May 05, 2024
Chicago Cubs

One thing that occurred to me this past month with my back injury: I was very lucky that it happened during shorts season. It’s a heckuva lot easier to put on gym shorts without bending over (you kinda just let them hang down in one hand, and carefully step into each side) than it would’ve been with any kind of pants. I never wanted to make fun of Brandon Morrow when he hurt his back putting on his pants – remember that? – and now I’m even more grateful that I didn’t. Pants can be a serious back-related risk!

  • Jameson Taillon was a stud yesterday, and the Cubs needed every bit of his studliness so that the bullpen had plenty of room to flail around and not fully blow the game.

  • Also a stud yesterday? Patrick Wisdom, with a homer and a hit to drive in a key insurance run. With Matt Mervis back to Iowa, and with Garrett Cooper gone to the Red Sox, the opportunity will be there right now for Wisdom to get some extra starts at DH. When Cody Bellinger and Seiya Suzuki return, those opportunities could tighten up a bit (because the Cubs are not going to want to sit Mike Tauchman or Michael Busch or Christopher Morel with regularity), so here’s hoping he makes the most of the next week.

  • Also homering in the game, Christopher Morel, who has homered in three straight games:

  • The homer binge has Morel’s wRC+ juuuuust back over 100 (though his xwOBA is waaaay higher than his wOBA, so there’s likely been some bad luck). He’s also looked increasingly stable at third base.

  • Meanwhile, Hector Neris continues to terrify with every outing – having matching 20.3% walk and strikeout rates will do that. The one thing he’s done well this year, and the one thing that is saving him, is that his groundball rate is a strong 52.9%. He still needs more strikeouts and WAAAAAAY fewer walks.

  • Meanwhile, Mark Leiter Jr.’s ERA is down to 0.59, the 6th lowest among all qualified relievers.

  • Oh, also, perusing that leaderboard has a guy I want the Cubs to target in trade: Nats reliever Hunter Harvey. He has been very good for several years now, and is a stud so far this year. He’s under control this and next year, but still feels like a very realistic trade candidate (as opposed to Mason Miller, sorry everyone).

  • More from Craig Counsell on the Cubs’ win:

  • The Phillies are on fire lately, but they just lost Trea Turner for at least six weeks to a serious hamstring strain.

  • I want the Cubs to have an awesome closer because I want the Cubs to have an awesome closer, but being able to create some kind of badass entrance would also be cool:

  • The former NBC Sports Chicago teams are off to form a new broadcast home, and it’s not with Stadium:

  • The most interesting line for me was this one: “The media group is expected to make the network, which is unnamed, available across ‘multiple platforms,’ including over-the-air and carriage agreements with cable and streaming providers.”

  • Standard Media Group is partly a local broadcaster in Nashville, Tennessee, which means they have considerable experience working over-the-air (they currently operate stations in Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, and Rhode Island). And the fact that this new network is EXPLICITLY planning to show at least some games over-the-air is huge news (I won’t speak for the Bulls and Blackhawks, but seems big) for yet another baseball team figuring out the new world. Yes, sounds like some White Sox games will just be on cable, but it would be a MAJOR development for baseball in Chicago if a whole bunch of White Sox games were suddenly available over-the-air on ABC or WGN or whatever.

  • Yes, the Marlins are off to a terrible start – 9-25 before the Luis Arraez trade – but it’s still pretty wild to see a team’s new President (Peter Bendix) saying in the first week of May that his team is “unlikely” to make the playoffs, and thus how could he not take this offer from the Padres (which, by the way, it turns out has the Marlins covering all of Arraez’s salary except the minimum, and I am not so sure that trade return was THAT good). I guess that means the Marlins are definitely already selling, and I would DEFINITELY be calling them to see if they want to sell low on closer Tanner Scott. Like, right now. I would be on the phone right now. (Get him AND then later get Hunter Harvey!)

  • Last year’s Gold Glove Cubs got their hardware:

  • That’s my QB1:

  • Significant upside. Would be huge if he really breaks out this year:

  • The Arizona Complex League (rookie ball) got underway yesterday (heckuva debut for Nazier Mule!), far earlier than we’re used to the league starting. This year, the league will be finished by the end of July, instead of only having just barely started by that point. That means we won’t see this year’s crop of draft picks making their pro debuts in the ACL, and instead, the team is mostly last year’s picks and semi-recent IFA prospects. And this year’s draft picks will either have to immediately go to full-season ball, or will just not debut until next year.

  • After a three hour rain delay, Cardinals-White Sox resumed only for the game to end on a terrible call on the very first batter:

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    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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