[Applause]
welcome to the rants live [Applause]
hello everybody and hello to you evan hola senor
you you seem to be in a very familiar location
yeah the uh the call is coming from inside the house [Laughter]
evan is in my house actually we're not doing it we're in different rooms
uh because it's kind of easier to do the setup otherwise we'd be sharing the same mic and there's not a lot of room here
and stuff so evan is in my uh my son's room and uh it's not my son's birthday by the way
even though behind him uh but there is a it is a wrigley themed room
and uh you can see the scoreboard even though game seven was not in wrigley field that is kind of a wrigley version
of the final score of game seven final line and so it's a fun room my son's a big
baseball baseball fan that's right you can't put something like that out on twitter because somebody would point out like well if
game seven wasn't that really that's not even real like thank you captain buzzkill that was
really nice or one of you getting dfa during the doubleheader
um that's a good question it's entirely possible um
if one of us is rex brothers uh i think i'd be all in favor of that
but we'll see for sure i don't know is it even worthwhile i mean okay
i guess we can talk we can talk about the game the cut listen the cubs are on us the cubs are streaking they've won
two games in a row which is delightful it's about as good as it gets
and uh because they just won today and they they won on monday because yesterday's game got postponed
so technically they kind of won yesterday is that a three-game winning streak that
they didn't lose which is you know kind of kind of that's that's although at this
point right like again and somebody somebody like messaged us on our on our
facebook page right to inform us that excited i had written a headline to
something that said the cubs don't actually want to win and they they made sure to clarify the players still want
to win i'm like yes but i didn't say that i said the cubs don't want to win like there's no
incentive for ownership of the front office there's no reason for them to want to win yeah the players always want to compete they always want to win
but and even as a fan at this point you're almost like great well okay now you win right like
now after this horrible futility now you decide you're gonna start winning ball games like when people are actually
fired up about a good draft pick um you know which is kind of funny and and i would personally we were talking about
this earlier i would personally love to see them run off of you and just hurt the draft chances
let's be honest like baseball draft is very different from the nba or nfl and i totally get that
but it is funny that as bad as they were and have been since no hitting the dodgers
that they could end up kind of costing themselves a couple spots there late so that would that would be hilarious to me
that would be and it seems like the rockies are uh are the the team that they can be because they they beat them
on back on august 4th and then uh they have one again here
um and they they're going for the sweep dude i mean that's real no
yeah well they almost look they won two out of three in cincinnati they they do this sometimes right which is and and
the thing the rockies are bad like the rockies are very bad however the rockies are actually really good at
home so when you consider how bad they are overall and to say you know they're actually well above 500 at home that
means they're that much worse on the road so like for and it's really kind of weird right you would think it'd
almost be the opposite if you're a bad team you would think you'd get blown out a lot at coors field by teams that are just
stronger offensively the rockies don't score a bunch of runs and so it's a little bit weird and then to watch you know the cubs are really
lighting them up right here as far as what we're seeing you know i mean patrick wisdom hitting you know big home runs and coming up so
yeah i mean hey they could get it they could they could get a sweep here and cost themselves in the drive for five
but we'll see i put nothing past him at this point well you know they're going into uh the
white sox over the weekend and they uh are sure to get swept i'm assuming i'll be very surprised if
they win a game there although wow that craig kimball trade sure didn't
work out well for the white sox did it you're welcome no one it hasn't it hasn't worked out like
i i get that liam hendrix is the guy they went out and spent the money on in the off season and i i get that you don't want to upset
the apple cart so to speak but like you went out and traded for a hall of fame level closer
right you went to get kimbrell for a reason and i know like larussa has played coy about this
or he did from the start about well you know uh they kind of that he would alternate them back and forth but
i think the whole situation is blowing up in their face because kimberle has sucked in the eighth inning and he seems like one of those guys as much as i know
people want to say it shouldn't matter if he's not in there in a save situation he just doesn't seem like he's got the
same kind of juice and he hasn't and hendrix hasn't been that good but so now you're you're
effectively making both players worse by having kimbrell you know and i don't know would hendrix be bad in eighth and
then kimbrough keeps being out if he gets the ninth i don't know but it hasn't worked out real well for him and i'm not mad i just think it's
kind of funny yeah i was i was kind of confused by that trade just in general i mean it's the fact that they offered up uh
basically two major league players um young major league players for kimberle just it just i i was like
do they really need kimbrell it just it didn't make sense they already had a closer so i don't
know they went and got them and it's not working out for them i mean they're still gonna make the playoffs and i'm sure everything will work out in the end
but uh it is kind of funny to watch and uh cody hoyer just uh pitched today any
pitch did he two innings i didn't see i was getting chocolatey yeah i didn't look at the line but he's
been really really good since he came over i know the cubs worked him on on a couple little grip things
yeah and tried to get that in order because he was you know he's too many walks and and he had a really good season
in uh it was a last year and then he wasn't quite there for him but i mean at this point right like you said
you get a young reliever who's got potential to be um
kind of a i don't know about a lights out necessarily a high leverage guy all the time but but certainly
maybe in that ryan tapera ish role right where you're kind of that sixth or seventh like the first line of defense
getting to the the setup guy i don't know if he is a setup guy but he fits into that and if you get that for a year
of craig kimbrell that'll not even a year a few months of craig campbell now the white sox could pick up his option and we'll see
but you get that in addition to nick material uh who i think a lot of people like people are dividing there's
not that many people that are i guess nobody thinks he'll be terrible but there's a bunch of people who think
yeah okay he'll be a fine decent second baseman there's a lot of people that really really like
the bat that that's just gonna play like he's gonna be a guy who's consistently batting well into the 300s
reaching base playing solid second if that's what you get and even if that's all he is that's still a really really good return
for a couple months of a reliever even a big time closer because the cubs were terrible and so
craig kim would be great but if your team sucks a closer is worthless to you so i i
still think that's one of more and i also think that chaffing deal again any of those relievers right a high leverage reliever when you're never
going to play in a high leverage situation is pretty much only worthwhile to the other team that you're trading with so
anything you get in return i think it's worthwhile so i don't know i think they came out really well on those deals
yeah hoyer over his last 15 games has a 1.35 era
13.1 innings pitched he's given up seven hits over that time
uh only walked seven uh i'm sorry only struck out seven and he has walked only
four so that's some pretty good productivity there that's a guy you know you and i
were talking about earlier today who won the major league team we could actually see actually being a part of
like a world series uh caliber team and cody royer is definitely one of
those guys for sure yeah and he'll be around and just to address this comment in the section for those
who aren't seeing it kimbrough didn't have to stay in chicago uh his his daughter has had some health
issues it was more a situation of of kind of when dead hoyer was weighing where do we send people that was sort of
a favor so to speak of being able to keep kimbrell close to home without having to move or any of those things he he could
have been traded anywhere i mean that's the just nature of the business but it was more a matter of of jed trying to uh soften that blow
a little bit in terms of how do you figure out uh what are you doing with your child's medical needs and that sort of thing because certainly his wife and
his daughter could have stayed and he could have gone somewhere and they could have met him at certain times so he didn't have to stay there but that was i
think part of it helped and and while i don't really buy a lot of what hoyer
said and i think he he kind of uh i don't know he went off a little bit
with some things he probably shouldn't have said about the trades after the fact but i do think he tried to put those players not only to get what was
the best return for the cubs but he tried to put those players in some decent situations for them personally to where they could
go and succeed and where it would make sense for them as individuals versus just saying what's the best return we
can get and i'm not saying he he gave up a return that the cubs could have gotten better but i understand he
weighed some different factors and that it appears that way even if he did kind of throw them under the bus on the way
out of town and backed up and ran over them yeah i tell you what i tell you what
hoyer hat did have to do he had to win that trade with the chicago white sox
because that quintana trade was a total and utter disaster um that uh that will go down in the in
the history books of the chicago cubs is possibly one of the worst trades they've ever made
um yeah and
and that's one of those quintana was one of my wrote about this and and it the post did really well for some reason even for something i just kind of threw
out but it hasn't been a good uh since the cubs traded off for a lot of
the pitchers who have left the cubs organization right has they haven't looked real good since they've left um
some of the relievers you know but we you mentioned kimberly he's not doing great um jake arrieta clearly having some issues
there in diego which which everyone expected but like tyler chatwood not doing so
well uh didn't do well with the blue jays hasn't done well with the giants and then as you mentioned kitana who's
been injured who was working on van a lot and he came in and had a really disastrous start his last time out so it's it you know i i don't want to look
at that and be like i feel good about somebody else's struggles but there are at least a few things where it looks
better that uh that the cubs have have kind of let some of these guys go or
moved on from them in one way or the other but but the ariata thing was like the most and then everybody's like okay
what's what he left that game earlier they're like what's gonna be the what's gonna be the injury now you know it's like hamstring
again they're talking about like okay sure yeah yeah bad outing injury yeah it's like i can't you just can't
own it why can't he own it because his ego is too big
like he i we saw him get shell i was at the game in cincinnati when he got shelled there oh i had a laceration on
my finger then why were you pitching why were you out there at all and then he has the the stinker in san francisco
oh it's throwing up before the game again why were you pitching then he lays the next egg and they're like well he's
had a hamstring thing going on for a while again what we thought he could get through it like
ah you know once or twice but dude this is not a young guy
who you know should just know better by now like jake or who shouldn't know better but
like what are you doing david ross oh this guy isn't very good to begin with and now he's hurt
what the hell let's just send him out there and see if he's still any good or not maybe he can battle through no he can't he's sure for last four years that
he can't battle through it he is washed and good on you san diego that you
couldn't find literally anyone else on the planet that could come in
and pitch better for you as the sinking ship just goes down it is
it is wild to me that this is a team that's that's fighting at this point fighting for a wild card
they're not fighting for a division title yeah they're like a game back
yeah since he's playing well despite the cubs beating them twice inexplicably
and then the padres say this guy is so bad the cubs who were trying to lose
don't even want to keep letting him pitch for them because he's they could they would have been better off just just with a bullpen game
yes why not just do that or getting anybody okay find
him did they cut it i don't think so he's hanging out like riding his skateboard in san diego or
something i mean i don't know what they're but but how does a contending team like
he wasn't good enough for a team that was tanking its way to the fifth draft pick yeah and a contender is picking him
but like that was bizarre man and it just the fact that not only did he get shelled
but there was also the injury stuff that came up out of it like how many times do you need to read this
story before you get tired of it so it's oh it cracks me up and i'm just yeah
whatever man it was great for his time with the cubs the first time around and it definitely just did not come
together very well this this second go round but more power to him you know good luck with that that's great
so we have a comment here that says i am confusing you with my bears apparel it's
because my friends beat me up when i wear cubs and paranoids it's you know it's it's uh it's uh yeah
i'm trying to be optimistic i feel a little bit more optimistic about the bears potential season uh i think they've got
uh possibly a 500 record on the horizon who knows when justin fields will start so that i love this like
they might be 500 i feel a lot better about them than i do the cubs which i mean the cubs are just right the cubs
are having troubles yeah oh they're awful i mean they've been awful since that no hitter in l.a
but two months that was two months ago
two months yeah it's been a real long two months dude yesterday was exactly two months so we're a day pass that was june 24th they
were in first place in the nl central tied with the brewers
and now they're like 22 games back in two months like it is
wild exactly how bad this stretch of baseball has been from
that point i think we're saying what's their record been like you said
right around 200 win percentage yeah i think they're i think it's like 220
it's a little higher now because the last time i kept it was before these last two wins i think so i think it was on monday morning when i wrote up a
piece about you know how how bad they've been or what's going on
and i think that at that point up until monday uh they had like a 220 winning
percentage since that no-hitter and they were at like 181
since the trade deadline i mean it has been brutal
and of course you're looking at immediately after the no hitter they had the 11 game losing streak and then they
fumbled around a little bit and then they had the 12 gamer right and then in the mid step they had the period
where they lost 13 straight games at wrigley field so they went
before monday's win they went 28 days between winning a game at wrigley it was
july 26th i was at that august 23rd yeah so july
26 august 20 was it the 23rd point yeah 23rd and so
if you count february as a full month then they win a full month and if they hadn't if they had not
walked that game off and did you know that was their first walk-off homer since july of 2019.
so it had been over more than two years since they'd had a walk-off homer
uh which again to win a game at wrigley which of course a walk-off is going to win in
order to walk it off you have to be at home but it is it
it's very hard to really look at this and say it never that's the longest 13 games the longest
home losing streak ever this is the first time they've lost
multiple uh double-digit losing streaks in the same season
you look at all these things it is it is incredible just how bad we know that there's been some futility
but the level to which they've been bad is unprecedented a lot of people like
there was some bad baseball in 2012 2013 2014 as they were getting this
going this is worse like the and the last
couple wins notwithstanding this team right now is worse than anything we saw
when they first read out you know and granted they could pull a few games out here and they might avoid losing 100 games for
the whole time in franchise history but take it just go on another bad
streak and they could still get there i mean they still i think they still gotta win six more games right isn't that where
we're at now they gotta win six more to avoid 100 losses um so they got 56 wins right now seems
like a tall order or 57 57 who do they play okay they play the white sox probably not going to win a game there
uh and then they play the twins the twins are dirt they play the pirates hey
they play the pirates seven more times so then they play the reds
and the reds are going for the red have a spot oh man chris bryant and the giants come to town
chris bryant's probably gonna hit like five home runs uh and then
he'll get a standing ovation from the 20 fans that are there yeah
so once yay oh man oh can we stop i'm sorry i'm
looking at the comments we got to stop telling people how to fan i was joking about getting beaten up i
didn't i don't really get beaten up it was a joke it's called sarcasm man
what if you i just felt like wearing a bear's hat today but would would bandwagon fans beat you
up for still wearing the stuff or would they just i figured they would just not give us anymore and
i'm not embarrassed to wear cubs gear i wear cubs gear all the time today's a bears i just i i go i go cubs adjacent
that's why i'm you know minor league stuff i got my max bane t-shirt on um but yeah i do like cups so tom garcia
says in here uh yeah i hope bryant destroys the cubs too i i sincerely hope
that because because tom ricketts in in the wrigley field that he saved
um we were talking about the the propaganda video that he made for himself that the
cubs made for themselves yeah about the whole saving wrigley and all this stuff but i'm like
of all the bad timing right and i knew what this video was going to be and i knew what they were going to pump on
people with it but to release that at a time when i mean okay with all allowances for the idea
that there's a rescheduled game although today the game today was supposed to have been a day game
originally right monday and tuesday were night games today was supposed to have been an afternoon game before it got
rescheduled as a double header correct i do not know okay i thought it was
um let's just go with it yeah we'll say that was case so uh so for a 120 start on a wednesday
when patrick wisdom hit that go ahead home run there were like eight people in the bleachers right so
i i don't care even if it wasn't originally scheduled to be an afternoon game even if it is a wednesday
you gotta have like there should be more like i would say were the bleachers even at 25 capacity
in that shot yeah okay so like 10 10 maybe maybe probably something like that yeah like
don't so and and don't give me the whole oh so we you know in the afternoon okay
it's wrigley field that's the idea right but we've talked about this and going
through there so the idea that the cubs will sell out regardless i think we like that should
have been put to bed a long time ago but it has been absolutely like it has been double tapped in the back of the head
and then buried six feet deep out in the desert next to you know paulie walnuts or whatever
out there somewhere in vegas this is not a team that can afford to keep playing
like this literally can't afford like if they want to make money if they need to drive this their revenues and even if tom rickett
says it's not about making money uh but if he says 70 of our revenue comes from game day activities and you only got
that place 25 full at best like come on man dude oh man ricketts
got some debt payments he needs to make dude that's that's what it is but they but they saved wrigley they saved it
so we should all go and just go to the games because tom ricketts was such an amazing guy that he saved the ricketts
family saved wrigley field and they deserve so many props forget about what they did to the team
yeah yeah they won a world series sure yeah but they are but you talked about that i don't
remember us last week or what but even their you know the marketing that they're doing right is they're talking about the experience
of wrigley they're you know what i mean they're they're pitching that as much as anything because you can't you can't
pitch the team right now so and i get it i mean i i understand
that those things are part and parcel with it wrigley field is an entity unto itself that that essentially is
separate from the cubs because people will go there just to check it off their bucket list right so i totally
understand that but at this point they're leaning really heavily into
come to wrigley field to see the ballpark never mind the raging dumpster fire of a team that
we've just set a blaze in the middle of the field don't pay attention
yeah it's although i will say the tour of wrigley is really cool so if you ever get a chance to tour wrigley field
uh very cool probably i mean you know it's always good to sit around and have a beer there but i don't know so i
brought the family to seven straight games there at the end of july the last home stand
that we saw all our favorites and before they were traded and uh i had my two kids there seven and nine one one
of whom's room you are in right now and uh and it was fun and chris bryant threw threw us a ball i caught it and so
we have that uh one of the final balls chris bryant thrip and it was fun but uh you know there was a chance that
they would win some of the games they didn't win many of them that was the last game they had won before they beat the rockies the other day um that was
the last before their 13 game losing streak but it's like now i mean like
i wouldn't do that i with this team on the field honestly i i would not bring my kids just and put myself
through seven straight games of this baseball it's just not it's not something that i
would want to do i mean i'd still go to chicago you know and and we went around the town and saw the museums and stuff we'd
probably spend more time going to like the zoo and the museums and the beach and stuff but um i don't know it's just yeah you're
right at this point it's just not really all that great to watch there's really
not a lot of prospects that are on the team that you see being a part of the team in the future except maybe just a
couple guys like hoyer and and i mean like wilson contreras isn't a prospect and he's not even playing because he's
injured but he's obviously going to be a part of the team going forward but
you know and maybe wisdom is a part of the team going forward but he's 29 years old
but you do have justin steele starting tonight and they like you know we were talking about when you look at the prospects that the
cubs have in their system uh really picture heavy uh guys it's like and i don't know if
eventually they're gonna have to get to a point they've still got braylon marquez at like the you know top five prospects
um and uh justin steele who's pitching tonight who's
who really needs he doesn't need but it would be nice to see justin steele get
like you know get like six seven innings if that's even possible in today's game
um you know last game he he went well he's only got seven innings to work with so uh
that's right true good point no not a real complete game but you know for yeah maybe it's a
letter but he's given up over nine innings he gave up uh he's
given up five runs so far as a starter in his first two starts so it'd be nice to see him come out and
kind of control things and this is a good team to get some confidence against uh the the rockies are playing like
trash yeah i mean i think the thing and when you look at him like that first game
he it was great except for like eight pitches and in those eight pitches right there's a lot of damages like two homers
and a double and that really cost him in the last game same thing it's like he'll have this hiccup and but we did see him at least the last
time get the strikeouts up a little bit the stuff was working so i mean it's there we've seen what he can do
as a reliever in the big leagues uh when he went back to get stressed out in iowa he was really dominant so
i'm excited to see you know can he get out there against this bad lineup and sometimes that's all it takes it's
like one start get a really good one under your belt and then you get that confidence rolling again because it is it's a very different situation to come
in as a starter than to work as a reliever and if you can get that going i do think that there's a lot of big stuff
for him ahead i mean he's he's a guy you could plug in there and you know if you if you
him and owls lie you get some of these younger guys coming up and they said marquez can put it together
uh and they got a bunch of relievers now all of a sudden you've you've at least limited the amount of work that you've got to do out in free agency you know
finding a starting pitcher because lord knows you're not getting it done i mean i love kyle hendricks to death
and he's great he has been a great great pitcher during his time with the cubs but
if that dude is remaining your number one moving forward you do not have a playoff caliber
rotation period point by and i know like listen i know what hendrix has done in the playoffs i'm not disputing that but
if he is your number one i just don't know that that to me that
signals you don't have the horses behind him
and it's still so weird to me he's got 14 wins he still leads the majors and wins right but
the way he's done it again this is where it's inexplicable because the cubs are so bad and yet he
still leads the league and wins but it's not as if he's really even having anywhere close to his best season
he's giving up a ton of homers a ton of hits he's giving up the most hits in the majors which you kind of
expect from but he's walking more batters and he's giving up way more homers and despite that
they're actually giving him enough run support to give him those wins which is really kind of odd the way that goes
should his profile age well absolutely might he return to to better form than
what we've you know from this year and what we've seen in the past absolutely good but unless you stock up
because here's the thing in the playoffs it doesn't matter what your five man rotation is because you're not starting
five guys you're going to three maybe four and as things stand right now especially
with and here's what worries me is that also has done a lot better with limiting the walks but he gives up a ton of
homers and we just talked about hindrance like you need to have those guys who you know
they're going to go out and shut somebody down because you don't get that chance just come back every fifth day and make 30 starts over the course of a
season 35 starts every start's got to be on point if you're going to go out there and win in the playoffs so um
that's that's concerning do you have those guys in your system that you say can come up and even if you do
you can't just rely you can't sit there and go like oh yeah we're going to call up two more starters and we'll have a totally homegrown starting rotation and
it'd all be great now you've got to go out and spend some money on some of those guys who can go out winnie ball games throughout the season and then in
october so um i do they spend that money now do wait i
don't know it'll be i'm gonna spend it now interesting yeah well more than likely not
the you know and when you talk about hendrix he's got a career-high 409 era
he's never finished with an era above four and the last time he was anywhere near that was in 2015
um which was a while ago and and you know he's is in terms of strikeouts he's striking out uh less
than he ever has he's at 6.7 strikeouts per nine innings uh which is a career low uh outside of his 2014 year
uh when he was a rookie and so yeah yeah doesn't feel real good if this is
uh if he's regressing to this level the cubs are in some serious trouble uh
in terms of pitching for the next couple years i mean it's just like you know like we were talking about braylon
marquez he's at the top of a lot of prospect lists right now but we haven't seen him play for a while
well it's like the last time he pitched competitively was the last game of the season last year right when he came up
and made that appearance against the white sox and again there's nothing to take away from that but
last season he was delayed uh in getting going because again the season got started back up again he had not really
done a very good job of his with physical fitness uh he took a long time to get back into
shape and then this year he had issues with the covet intake process he ended up kind of hurting his shoulder
a little bit or you know and that may have been an issue overweight i don't think it's really hurt but some shoulder stiffness or
issues and and again just being in shape and being able to get back to baseball
activity so we probably won't see him pitch again maybe the arizona fall league they may try that to get him some
more innings against some decompetition um it's it's tough man because you you can't if
he was supposed to be a double a this year starting out maybe in triple a
move that through the system get that and then come on up well now you've lost the whole year after losing most of last
year so that's where i'm concerned that's tough yeah that's where concerns he's losing
all this experience in the minor leagues and it's like what i didn't understand last year was
why he was up right he had been up for a while but they just didn't put him in and so no he was only why don't you put
him in you know he was only called up for the last day yeah yeah so we just kept talking about
they should call him up he was at the alternate site the whole time yeah okay and but you felt like they
should have gotten them a you know two three four yeah kind of games in there and why they
waited until the very last game it made no sense whatsoever i don't know if that was a ross thing or if that was
a hoyer thing or epstein i guess at the time but who knows that was that was strange the
way they handled that yeah and and what we saw you know and last year when there were just a huge number
of players who were coming up and making their mlb debuts who were jumping all the way up from single a double a
and even to make debuts in the postseason of all places right like like coming up
consistently because you had so few players who were able to ramp up you had so much of a need for
more relief pitchers among everything you know and starters as well primarily relievers because you were burning through them so fast the starters were
pitching very short outings and you know who knew with the covet stuff and you had a lot of guys going on
the covet il needing to call people up to even to feel the team we saw i mean miami my
goodness look at how many players on their their prospects have had major league experience
because they had to because half the team was was quarantined you know and they could uh keep
laying off games and so that was what was concerning it's like you could have called this guy up you could have gotten some of this
experience to see what he is uh of course it didn't matter he wasn't on the playoff roster and it wouldn't
matter because they flamed out with two games against the marlins again where they just scored what one total run or
whatever it was um just super boring it's like what else are you waiting for and i know a lot of
people like the common frame from people it's gonna be like i want to start a service time clock well you know what
that really doesn't have anything to do with it when you're dealing with a pitcher who you think has limited bullets it's not like a guy who's going
to come up and a position player who can you know who you can be reasonably sure
is going to be able to come up and play for you for five or six or seven years with pitchers especially if you're talking about a guy who throws over 100
miles an hour you don't want to waste bullets and have him keep throwing the miners if you think he's ready to go you bring him up
and you use everything that you can from him and i know that sounds kind of uh a little bit
it doesn't sound real nice from a human perspective but you don't sit there and wait on the service time thing when you get a
picture like that if he could throw like triple digits triple digits especially from the left side so i know he's got a
lot to work on but i'm very concerned about his development path because of the last couple years for sure
yeah and we've got we got a couple comments over here talking about uh why why didn't the cubs trade contreras and
hendrix and you and i were talking about that just a little bit ago about what are the cubs going to do with
wilson contreras because if they have no intention of signing him which they've shown they have completely no ability to
extend anyone except for kyle hendricks who we were just talking about
um then why didn't they trade wilson contreras at the deadline
why wait to see if you can resign you know what they should have done they should have traded all the players and at the same time announced we have
extended wilson contreras because at least then that would have made sense
yeah at least it would have been a nice news drop you know again some pr but yeah if you don't extend him
this winter as quickly as possible what are you doing
because now you're letting the same thing play out again and if you end up having to just trade him at the deadline for pennies on the dollar
when you could have i mean honestly of all we've been we've been talking about because they've been talking about this reckoning for like two and a half three
years now and i had assumed the whole time that he would be the most likely to go because
he has the better value at that premium position and with the extra year control if they don't re-sign him
and they don't trade him this winter yeah to me that's another egregious
failure and i don't want him traded i don't want to see that happen but if you're gonna let him walk just like
you did with the other players or not let him walk they did treat them but if you're going to let it go that far to
where you're now dealing with a limited return what were you doing right if you don't have the money and
you're not going to pay him you have to move it i mean that's the only situation but i i just don't trust that either way
and i i don't know nothing would surprise me at this point it's just it's we've gone too far with that
a tip game win streak would probably surprise you that would yes that would surprise although you know hey they got enough
gig against the pirates like everybody just got to get hot like win one against somebody they get a four do they have a
four gamer they have a four gamer with the pirates left right you could sweep them yeah they've got seven seven games left against the pirates so you know
yeah i mean they could bring they could string together some some weird games in between there it could happen who knows
they just went out the from here on out yeah yeah get get back to like close enough to
contention you know what i mean like watch somebody else just take it and then all of a sudden they run i mean clearly that won't happen but it would
be kind of funny and then you have it but i i don't want to because then you've got a lot of people like that are trying to be justified by the oh see
they were right betrayed the core look at look at what they've done now look at what these scrappy players who
really want it frank schwendell carrying them to victory
frank schwendell good old frank although frank did have a triple today he did
good for him for him you know it's hard for that when you look at that i mean obviously all these guys their dreams
are coming true by playing in the majors right i mean these are guys who you know may not have gotten this much playing
time in the majors their entire career had the cubs not kind of been in the position they're in right now so
you know you got to be excited about the guys being out there just it's got to kind of feel crummy though like you know knowing that like you're
kind of the players who they put out there because they don't want to win i don't know if they look at it that way
i doubt they do but it's got to be it's got to be kind of in the back of your mind right
yeah i mean you're either out there there's an injury because they traded other guys away uh because they gave up on the
season and so you know it's it's the kid on the end of the bench in the basketball game when you know he's a
he's a 2020 player right he only gets in the game when his team's up 20 or down 20. and uh and and when that but when that's
the lineup that you're rolling out on an everyday basis like yeah you are going to have some guys who you know
raphael ortega and we mentioned schwendell there and some others who have really done well uh because of that but i mean when you
are talking about a andrew and austin romine are both playing together it's a cool story but it's only
happening because the cubs just don't have a full out major league roster that they
should have they do not have a roster that's built to win games and that's the long and the short of it so
but at the same time i think if you're one of those guys who's out there because of that you know you still go out there and you
bust your ass the same way you would uh whether it was your junior high team or whatever because hey guess what
somebody even if you're not with the cubs next year maybe somebody's going to see that maybe you're going to get signed as a result of it maybe they do keep you around so um i applaud those
guys for being able to go out there and still have an energy and still being excited to be out there playing the game for a team that is really best served
trying to lose to get to the best draft position you can so for them to still go out there and to do what they do
um you know day after day knowing that it's probably
not going to end well it's it's commendable i i just hope that
you know and at least at least it's exciting for them you know what i mean like patrick wisdom hitting homers
that's super exciting he's enjoying it uh that's not an indictment of players that came before him it's just the fact
that like you know what they're out here winning games and it's pretty damn cool for them rafael ortega good for him with his big
walk-off shot the other day that's awesome his three homer game a couple weeks back like nobody can take
that away right pastor's wisdom leads to nln homers nobody gets to take that away from him
so good for him i'm i'm happy for them individually even if as a team
there are some things about which i uh am not going to be able to get excited about
just a few things yeah just a couple but like we said like we were watching the game today and like you know when wisdom
hit that home run you know i mean these guys look like kids playing little league again you know i mean
they're just they're just short of just dog piling everybody like the kids do when when a
kid hits a home run uh you know and so it's like you feel that and so it's cool to see like that
level of excitement coming from major league ballplayers which i think we miss a lot especially
when you get teams that are used to winning so i mean that's fun
yeah yeah what's funny yeah you know it might not win much but the other thing that's interesting is
that they pointed this out i think in monday's game is that the cubs actually got older as
on average their team is older now than what it was before the trade deadline because you've got these guys you know
wisdom is a rookie but he's 29 years old rafael ortega doesn't have much experience he's 30. um you know these
guys are who they're bringing in here are not young it's not like they jettisoned off their best players and
then brought in a bunch of rookies or a bunch of you know guys from double a or 21 22 years old to fill those spots the clubs
are still an old team and that's the thing that's kind of wild to watch but i think that's where you see that
appreciation even more because you do have a guy like patrick wisdom who's 29 and has never gotten a real shot before
this right and now he's getting it or ortega same thing you know he's and michael hermacio
he's i mean ortega debuted like nine years ago originally and he so these guys have been in the minors
they've been in a bunch of different organizations they've fought and scratched and clawed and stayed in the game for so long and now they're kind of
being rewarded uh even if it's just kind of on a karmic level you know and individually more than the
team success but but baseball's a tough grind when you're not you know not everybody's mike trout
right not everybody just comes up and is the best player on the planet uh consistently from the time that he debuted for another decade or more so to
see these guys spend five six seven years in the minors and do well that's very very cool for them and so and that
you know again that is absolutely worth applauding uh whether they repeat that success in the future or not
it's it's great i i do i do enjoy that it's it's
you gotta kind of try to take some like something out of what we have to watch over the next month and the thing is is
that you know i mean we still watch the games i mean we we we have a podcast a webcast that we turn into a podcast we
run uh cubs insider so we i mean we're gonna be watching
yeah even even sometimes when we don't want to it's kind of nice not caring for once
though it's been a while since you just didn't care about it and it does make it easier i wrote about
that the other day it does honestly make it easier to not be as concerned with the individual outcomes of the
games um because it means if i have to go do something else for a while i can or if i
put the flip the channel for a little while to catch something else that's going on and i come back you know and you follow it
on your phone you i can have my my earbuds in and listening to it you know but to be able to follow it at
arm's length a little bit um is is a little bit refreshing and i think that does help to kind of recharge
the batteries on some of that stuff and a focus on bigger picture thing so um i don't want that to continue i want to
get back to having to be concerned with the day-to-day stuff but uh you know as
someone who writes up the lineups all the time which at some point here i got to get the second game out
and then looking at recaps and that sort of thing it's sort of nice if you're like all right that stuff if i don't get to
it immediately it's okay you know what i mean it's it's it's it's like cooking with a crock pot
instead of a microwave you know what i mean like whatever man it's a slow cooker if it sits there for an extra two hours
nobody's gonna mind it might even be better i like that analogy the cubs are no
longer a microwave they are at crockpots they are definitely a croc of um so
there's at least that on that note i think we should end up on today's show
uh but we'll uh we'll circle back after uh who knows what's gonna happen maybe the cubs sweep the white sox i'd be
shocked you never know could happen i don't think you could but
at the odds i'd like to see the vegas odds on that uh yeah i don't think it's very good but
i'll i can uh maybe i'll pull up a betting site and uh i could parlay those
cubs money line on all three we'll see what happens let's do like 10 bucks on it probably turn into a millionaire or something
yeah hey there we go then we can retire all right okay everybody well thanks for joining
us um i know hopefully we're easier to watch than the cubs so uh hey at least you got that going for you
yeah until never bad thing until next time see ya
[Applause]
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