welcome to the rants live [Applause]
hey welcome everybody to the rant live it is uh tuesday august 17th and um if
you're still paying attention to the big league team well i feel for you i feel i feel for
you you you like pain you like bad things evan is let me
like it it's confounding how bad the team is and you know i was watching the game
last night i was thinking you know they use all the analytics and everything like these advanced analytics to uh that's what theo kind of started back in
the day with boston and he brought over to the cubs and it's very successful right i mean when you get it right and you get the
right players in that complement each other in an analytical way you can win a lot of games
but i'm thinking have they reverse engineered this have they did they purposely well now
follow me did they purposely take the analytics and try to figure out if how they could
make the worst team so that it complements each other you know what i'm saying so the players
as poorly as possible they've been speaking that they will never win again
so seriously i think that's what happened and i think jed hoyer is proving himself to be an analytical genius
well uh you'll be wrong no i mean i don't know that i really can't because
this is from the moment like and there is still potential that on paper
this will be the worst cubs team of all time at over the whole season
they've only lost there's there's what three other occasions four three on which they've lost 100 games one of
which came during the rebuild um the others were 62 and 66. so i think their record is these are 103 104 losses this
team could get there okay this team could even with the players that they traded away
even having them until july 30th this team could still surpass
i don't think 100 losses is even a stretch at this point i mean i think that's almost a given if we look
at the way they've been playing and you're talking about this is a team that
had a 19 and 8 record in may that like and and as of as of june 24th
when they know hit when they had the combine no hitter against the dodgers they were on pace for 94 wins 94 wins
on june 24th it's about the midway point of the season and now we're sitting here talking like like the
turn around it and but you know it's so but if you take out that month and i looked at this too if
you take out the two losing streaks the 11 and 12 get which obviously you can't but even if you take those out
their remaining winning percentage would still only be third in the nl central
so you could take out 23 losses and they're still behind the reds like that's how bad and but but go back to it
and remember what we talked about and what everybody not not you and i we but like we the
royal we with trading you darvish and then going with a rotation that was based on a
bunch of soft tossers with at the time trevor williams and jake arrieta neither of whom are with the team
anymore of course and then hendrix and davies there was a you know hey did they did
they find something and for about a minute and a half it actually was working out fairly well uh but very clearly and then you look at
and obviously when you trade off when you have a bad pitching staff and then you trade away the three best relievers on that staff
you're clearly going to have other problems and man
it has just got like they they had a very very thin margin for error to start with
and then they've gotten rid of all of the players who created what little margin they had so now they're zero now
they've got to be perfect or lucky just to win our game let alone string together and he wins
and it is well wow over the over the 12 game losing streak they've scored 43 runs which is
3.58 runs per game uh the mlb average is 4.51 so they're they're just it's not
terrible offensively but defensively they've allowed 101 runs
that's uh man that's uh what's 8.41 runs per game i mean and they are
regularly getting you know these double-digit numbers hung on them and it's just i
mean like even the marlins looked like a world series contender against this team and so that's why where i say i i really
do believe that that jet hoyer has done his best to analytically put together
the worst team you could possibly put together can you imagine this team on the field for a full season oh dude the 2012 team
that lost a hundred games that team would beat the hell out of this team right now they switch 2012 was better a
lot like a lot but like this i i am not exaggerating when i say i think right now the cubs are the worst
team in baseball they're really reflected because of that between them and the d-backs
yeah do they play the d-backs again no they've already played them twice in the second half they played them they
played that's that's what got them started they won two out of three against them uh right out of the break so they they they had that eleven game
losing streak then they went two and two to close the first half then they opened with two wins you know what's done was done
uh by that point already but it i mean they're they're worse they're right up there with the diamondbacks i think they're you know
they're worse than the orioles you know i almost wore my orioles hat uh just to to kind of you know like set an
example for what the cubs are trying to be uh the problem there is you know those teams were were kind of i
mean the orioles have been rebuilding quote unquote they don't know what the hell they're doing clearly there is a lack of
direction there because they've been really bad for a while now yeah and they're not making any progress tonight
the d-max went out they you know they signed madison bumgarner they made some moves and like
which was a curious move at the time anyway i'm like you guys are signing this dude for how much but anyway
um it's it they're just they're the cubs are awful i mean they they simply are really
really terrible i i do believe the number five pick is is almost a foregone conclusion i
would be shocked with as bad as they are right now if they don't i mean
i don't think they're getting a four there's no way they catch the pirates because the pirates were just so bad
uh for so long early i don't know yeah they play the pirates again well but
there it's like a nine or ten game gap still so i mean even if the cubs
even if the cubs went oh for the rest of the season the pirates just have to win you know the pirates
would have to lose i mean win less than 10 games out of their last you know 30-some so i helped
play the pirates seven more times i suppose it is possible like every team the cubs play from here on out honestly
is either a contender like in the playoffs or a contender or they're one of the teams battling for
that those those top five to seven spots and so if they keep playing like this they will easily play themselves into
the fifth because they still have to play kansas city they've still got to play the twins uh they still do they
still play the rockies again um they've got the nationals they don't play the rockies i think no they don't
play the nationals again right no they do they they play the rockies on the upcoming home stand yeah that's what i was gonna say so they're they're but the
rockies suck on the road so that that might be something uh but i mean the club still need to play
st louis is kind of in that middling spot so they're like the one of them but the cubs still have to play the pirates
they've got to play milwaukee again they've got to play the phillies uh they got to play the giants again
so there are then and that's with chris bryant coming back to town who's in he's been mashing
and talking about how happy he is out there it's just there's just so many things and as much as i know there are still people there's
a lot of people out there actually they're like i'm not mad about this it had to happen whatever which first of all is wrong it
didn't have to happen right because there were multiple little decisions that could have been made
along the way that could have prevented a rebuild like this this kind of tank going a hundred losses
never had to happen it could not have happened yeah and that's that's what this is
a a distinct drop off and turn around and we don't know about the turnaround so you
could say oh this is what but a rebuild is not guaranteed and success is not guaranteed so maybe we look back on this in three
years and say okay hey it worked out kind of like what's happened with the red sox a couple times but to say that it had to happen this
way is foolish because that's saying well all the decisions they made prior to this were fine
and built toward it no they made a lot of in they didn't trade guys when they should have when their value was high
ian happ and kyle schwarber and so forth if you're gonna end up without them anyway uh they they made some very poor
signings as far as those like look at tyler chatwood or some of these other ancillary uh moves that they kind of got
these guys in there as as role players because people want to blame this on the core it's not the fault of the best
players on the team that they didn't win it's the fault of the front office for not surrounding the best players
with the right complimentary pieces that could lead to something better well and that's that's the thing that kind of
gets me is when you start looking at when you model out anything right like i'm a finance guy so i model stuff
when you model things you look at multiple scenarios okay and so
some scenarios are you know really good some scenarios are bad and so you you
want to make sure that you're you know being very inclusive in the number of scenarios that you're looking at so you can understand hey this is
what happens if this scenario takes place or this person performs like this or that happens or you know whatever
and it feels like the cubs never really ran multiple scenarios it's like the
scenario they were always running was the 2016 2015-2016 playbook assuming that the players that
they had would all continue to perform at the levels that they had and all they needed to do was add these
small little daniel discusso pieces and voila you'd continue to win and and
so it's just it's it's i'd love to see their assumptions when they're running their analyses just to understand like how
do you get here because when you talk about all the decisions that they made up to this point yeah they're
they make you scratch your head they don't make a lot of sense especially when you step back and look at the whole situation which is where we
are now but it's like they had to be running multiple scenarios and it's like clearly
whatever that analysis was that started you know back in 2013 14 15
that got them here they should probably throw that away and figure out a different way to look at
things going forward and maybe they will maybe that was a theo thing uh maybe that's where the shortfall was we know
theo hasn't had any success in repeating his world series champion uh and so
maybe that's kind of you know on him so i guess we'll see but but right now really it's about keeping
perspective right i mean the minor leagues the cubs have a very very exciting minor league
uh a prospect list if you want to say that brendan davis uh original presadio
who they got in the udarvish trade is the number two prospect uh and he hasn't
even seen any minor only time i think he's down in arizona with uh christian hernandez
um in the rookie league and but but that's really where the future
lies is in the prospects is in the minor leagues right now and so the cool thing is is that marquee
actually finally figured something out and they're starting to show minor league games so that's really cool yeah
from more than you know the first couple of them were like iowa cubs games and they had you know i think they've
had a myrtle beach pelicans game on there um i know they're showing their all four affiliates are gonna get some air time
here over the remainder of the season which you know it's kind of like that's weird i feel like we've been talking about that for a while like if you're
going to give me a shitty product as your as your staple at least come back and and get you know
and and they've done that to you you remember when marquis first launched rice during spring training last year
and then the season got cancelled and then all they did was basically they had a kerry wood documentary and then like an ernie banks one and so all day long
would be like one of those two um and then you know there'd be like an old
game that they'd show and and i still find it hilarious that they'll advertise sami sosa on some of the things like uh
running down the greatest cubs moments like you won't even invite this guy back for cubs convention you act like he doesn't exist and as always you're using
him to pimp your product uh just like he's the one who who sent prices skyrocketing back in the 90s uh ticket
prices speaking of which we we don't need to get into this too much but uh the annual
charade of the season ticket holder waiting list and and uh getting oh you're
like what are you talking about i was number 38 000. like again that's a charade it always has been it's not real
but uh i know a lot of people are starting to get that now which i'm like huh there's two months left in the season and
they're already trying to mine through the season ticket holder waiting list at this point
what does that tell you so between that and the field of dreams game um that the cubs got announced for i wonder
do do some of those things from a business perspective because that's a lot what a lot of this comes down to
does as much as we know tom ricketts does not like to spend additional money
he's literally said you know he's talked about the the luxury tax as a deadweight
cost a deadweight loss he we know he doesn't want to spend more than what is necessary i'll put it
that way what i wonder is does that pressure because we're talking about season
tickets we're talking about people bailing on that you're also talking about it not being as attractive a product for corporate sponsors and for
people renting suites like hey it's exciting on the south side of town and guess what it's a hell of a lot cheaper
to go get a suite and to entertain clients down there and and probably a better experience so
do things like that and and not wanting to be embarrassed on a national stage and and pressure maybe from mlb
i don't know does that push the cubs to to kind of have to at least try does
that force it you know and there's a ton of money that we know is out there in the payroll does that allow the jedhoy a
bigger budget i guess that's it remains to be seen but you do kind of wonder if those things will will
jump start that a little bit if nothing else will who knows
hard to say on that one but yeah it's it's not a good product obviously it's
not um it's and and the the tone deafness of the ricketts family where
they are patting themselves on the back listen so they're putting a plaque
uh somewhere i don't know exactly where but they're putting a plaque on wrigley field uh to commemorate the historic
um significance of of it as a historic landmark and then also to congratulate the the
ricketts family on this is a separate place those are two separate plaques by the way it's not one plaque that says hey historical monument
has two plaques sorry continue how does that even work
like i i'm gonna put a plaque
commemorating my family on my house yeah for it
let's say you bought an old house right and then and then you you gutted it
and you redid the whole interior and and you left them some of the facade but then you repainted stuff and you
added a bunch of new things you can kind of tell that it's the same place and then you're going to slap a plaque on the outside to be like
look at how i preserved this old house oh first of all cool like good for you
i hope you you know i don't know if you removed a rib or two like marilyn manson in order to fellate yourself along with
that or what good for you uh but the thing is you're doing this
two weeks after it was announced that you're building a massive sports book adjacent to the not even adjacent to but
attached to the building and your team is in the midst of its worst losing streak since an 0-14 run to
open the season a few years back it's the the timing of it and again i know some of these things it's not like they
just decided that like yesterday that they were going to do this it's just when it got announced but it's
the repeated deafness as you mentioned of this ownership group and their then the
business side of things just continues to be such and the same thing was going on 10 years
ago when they were leading into this rebuild when they would just do dumb stuff like the charles lindbergh mural
that they put on the side of wrigley field when he was actually at comiskey or you know they dumped they threw away
ron santo memorabilia and they they did they had that cake that they made up for the uh whatever it was the museum of
natural history or whatever nobody ate and just ended up throwing out in a dumpster this expensive cake like this
we were seeing the same things and it gets glossed over they made us a lot of dumb mistakes
along with well like when they were winning they were still doing dumb things from a business comment of the year oh there
you go yeah that sounds about right the td and td ameritrade stands for tone deaf remember the stuff when they were
fighting with the with the rooftop owners and just just the public statements they would make or how about when they were
battling with tom tunney who i you know again maybe not a great guy but they were throwing money behind political
opponents and just publicly slamming tom tunney in the middle of cubs convention they've continued
from a public standpoint public relations wise whether it's ownership or the business side which is a mouthpiece
for ownership to just do the dumbest stuff at the worst times and i i tweeted this
out it's most people agree with it but it was like i don't care i honestly i don't
mind the the change through i don't live in wrigleyville i go there to visit for games right i like the video boards i've
mentioned that you and i have been to a couple of the suites there uh i've been to the 1914 club that stuff's really
cool for an in-game experience but you know don't do all that
and then try to come back on the ba and then add this massive sports book and do all these things
don't come back on that after you've slashed payroll after your team is in this has been just horrible it's a terrible
product that hasn't lived up to expectations you're charging us tons of money for ticket prices and then you come back and
be like well look how well we've preserved wrigley field because yeah i mean that's and that's the thing
that's what they're doing is is they're trying to sell uh wrigley field and wrigleyville as an
as the experience not baseball right they're doing the same exact thing that everybody was worried about which is they're saying
well people will show up to wrigley field regardless so let's tout that
and what we've done to wrigley field never mind what we're doing with the actual product and that's that's exactly
what they're doing yeah they're trying they're trying to you know obviously jet hoyer is focused on building the
baseball operations but from the ricketts perspective it's like they've created uh disneyland
in uh on the north side of chicago and they want everybody to come and if you look at their tweets they're even doing
they're like come experience wrigley field they're talking about holding up the ball like
look at this i was like oh like that that's cool but guess what nobody's gonna catch that at the next
game because they're not gonna be anybody in those seats because nobody wants to pay to watch this just hot mess that they've got
going on there like and i get it you you have to do something i totally understand there's people in certain
positions like if you're a ticket sales rep like you got to try to maintain your job right you got to try to make money you
got to do what you can but it was so fun i only i watched the trailer for that and part of this whole
wrigley rededication i do think it's cool they're going to have like a team hall of fame if that's an actual physical building and and i know john
greenberg is writing it up i haven't been able to check it out today to see if he's got anything up that's going to make the reds have that at great
american ball park and it's a very very cool part i totally am down for that i like it
but if you look at the documentary about the 1060 project first of all
it looks like the most disingenuous stuff like he said laura ricketts saying something like this just sounds so fake
first of all you know and i get that but the guy who's their vp of development who oversaw the entire 1060 project carl
rice was fired last year as a part of their massive layoffs that they made i'm
like you're celebrating this whole development you're doing all this and the guy who headed it all up got fired
is he gonna be i wonder is he gonna be in the actual way how could you how could you have the documentary without
him in it uh i mean how do you have he led the whole thing they do cubs convention without sami
sosa i mean this team is very used to getting rid of
people and shunning them off when they've been instrumental in the growth of the franchise i just
and and maybe he will be you know and maybe this got i mean maybe he got filmed before he was fired right there's
a lot of this stuff that was probably yeah that's true he's the guy who like when i when i got invited up to go on the tour of the new clubhouse he was one
of them leading the tour he was one of the primary ones and theo was there and crain kenny and i know when you i think you went up right to
see some of the new was it like uh yeah the club the catalina club and the barrel room and all that and he was one
of them i believe right who was leading that as well yeah and so this guy was was very instrumental in all this and i
listen i totally understand this but it kind of feels like uh the veteran who got hurt and then
you're just gonna release him rather than than paying him anymore because you know he's not gonna play again and the same thing like the 1060 project was
done and the covet thing and they fired a bunch of people they fired a bunch of scouts and and other ticket reps and
other people and you know as a vp he's probably making quite a bit of money and they're like well
we're done with the renovations maybe they can rehire him to help with the sports book i don't know yeah
well there's actually an interview uh that i did with carl rice
on uh cubs insider youtube page so you can go you can go look at that you can see the tours there
uh that i took and then uh also him uh making some comments and kind of giving
a rundown on how everything worked and how the renovation uh took place so there was
yeah maybe they'll use our video yeah in the documentary um but i just it's just funny because i
i i can't remember if i said this on the last show maybe i wrote about it somewhere
i i don't i don't really think well i do think they don't care
what people think about what they do and they i mean the business operation side and ownership
i i think they they want to act as if they care about what people think
but they don't and but here's the thing i don't necessarily think it's like a really intentionally malicious
or even uh you know kind of a high and mighty i i think it's simply a matter of
these folks are are only connected to the regular people
in as much as tom ricketts will walk around the ballpark and glad-hand people right i don't think they actually
understand or know what people care about this outside of those same people that we talked about that
they're like i love the cubbies forever i'll always wear my cubby blue even when they're you
know and that's great that's cool if you're if you're that pollyanna you know starry eyed fan with the rose colored
glasses that's great but those are the people who are going up to tom ricketts and talking to him and thanking him profusely and just
genuflecting before him for bringing them this title and how he's the best thing that ever happened because there's
still people that believe that and and it's hard to argue it given the results of five years ago it's easy to
argue it but it's hard to argue against that point they brought a title right but i don't think they truly understand when
you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth you don't understand like he he thinks he understands what family likes
and that his wife and the bleachers whatever they don't get it and they don't care because they don't have to care
i'm not saying they they say screw you people i don't think they're actively saying that i just think they don't give a
they just have this agenda and they're and they're yeah they are completely oblivious to it and
the only attempts they make to really truly get the pulse of the fandom
is is superficial at best and is limited more to like tom taking
selfies with people and signing autographs and feeling like well everybody must love this because this is the wrigley experience
he's mingling with the peasants you know it's like it's like when the aristocrat comes out to the masses
and and his presence alone gives them hope gives them a feeling to like people
love famous people people will just you know even if they hate that famous person they'll just follow oh let me get
you know and and you know whatever and that's cool but it's just one of those things where and
again i get it i understand why people might fall into that category and why people want to
believe this is all a necessary part of the process but it to be like you know and again i'm not
i don't really care if the sports book is there or not i don't really care about the the sweets and things like
that but what i do care about is doing those things and then trying to pawn
this off as if it's like some some uh great effort that they went through uh
to the fans like this is some altruistic or philanthropic uh adventure
that they're that they've embarked upon you know like they're melinda gates or whatever
of disease you know like let's not let's not celebrate yourselves as some
sort of saviors while you're in the midst of if you're gonna do it do it be transparent about it yeah
hey we're trying to make money in this place like we're trying to make this into a revenue generating massive project that
also gives some cool amenities to the fans don't be like oh we're preserving
wrigley for the sanctity of the fans and if that just so happens to make us some money along the way then so be it
but like stop you know nobody's buying this line of
anymore so quit stepping in it because and you're leaving didn't they they got
a rebate of uh the construction costs because whitley was named a historic uh site so
how much did they get back 100 million or something like that it's a pretty big i i don't think because we'll we'll
never really know um because that's going to go into their tax records i think that they i don't i don't think
they because they're private right so it's like what they have their tax breaks and i'm sure somebody could
figure this out i know based on the research that i had done and where those breaks were and i don't know if it's an
annual thing it was it was many many it was tens of millions of dollars i think that's none of which
went into the player payroll of course even though we were told that any surplus would go into that but this didn't because you
know of course it is rebates on stuff that they already paid and so
now it's just coming you know but it's just funny man you're going to
celebrate getting this national historic landmark status which again is supposed to preclude you from making major changes
to it uh they did have to go and get approval for those things of course but it's like the the landmark that you got approval
for is not the same landmark that that represents what wrigley field was
unless zachary taylor davis actually had plans for a sports book and that was that was the original plans
he drew up like i want to put a casino on the corner but uh which again
i i want to keep reiterating this because i don't i don't think people get it so much like i am not opposed
to the changes and to going through and revamping things because there's a lot of stuff they had to do they they really
did yeah the place was literally falling apart right so i get that and they did they did preserve it i am not arguing
the fact that they didn't preserve it i'm arguing with the fact that they're giving themselves a plaque
to actually commemorate their own actions right after again it's it's the order of
this stuff 11-game losing streak get approval for this massive sports book 12-game losing
streak hey we're giving ourselves a plaque like something that this isn't right there
like maybe give us a better team that's that's that'd be nice recognition i would like i i feel like that's
i think the black's gonna end up being defaced by somebody at some point unless this isn't a very i'm
behind like a plexiglass case seriously it's going to be undercover and
protected by security yeah oh well well they've they've done a fine job of building a good minor league uh
system you know i was looking at uh just to get off the tom ricketts topic because we go on for there forever i was
looking at the the cubs top prospects and i it's very interesting that they've got four shortstops in the top 15
prospects um of their system young guys right i mean you're talking
about uh hernandez and and howard uh under 20 um yelston santana
just over 20. um so some really really young guys there but what's what does jump out at
you there's not a lot of pitchers in the top 15 uh and the one that's the highest is braelyn marquez which i
is he even playing yet no like he had he won't yeah so he had an injury right yes his shoulders jacked up
so we don't even know what's happening there so you know when you look forward to the future of the cubs i mean
obviously we've got justin steele and keegan thompson i thought steele looked pretty good last night um you know and
we'll see what thompson looks like i think he's gonna should be coming back soon
i don't think they officially have him slotted in yet but uh but he should be back up within the next week or so i
think he's gonna get at least one more they want to get him to like five innings in the minors i think he's been around four so i believe they want to
get in probably another um another start or so i mean at this point it's not like it really matters
right it's not something you gotta count on me to fill in for you so i know jake garrietta will make another
start in the majors before can you believe that oh my god dude the padres what uh that i
mean like literally did they even watch any of the games that he pitched in well here here's the thing i look at two
things one how shitty is your minor league system that you can't just call somebody up to make that start and two
jake arrieta was so bad how bad was he he's so bad that a team
that wants to lose no longer wanted him on the roster
that's ever still paying him now you've got the padres who are third in their division but
still i think what they're you know they're leading the wild card and and they're signing this dude two
minutes start in colorado of all places it is it is amazing
like that that i'm gonna wrap like it's supposed to work the other way around like you're supposed to go find a shitty like you're
you suck for a contender they get rid of you you go pitch for a shitty team over the last couple months and hope that you
can show out maybe somebody picks you up next year or you know you get traded or maybe they maybe they release you
because you requested it they're like yeah cool we'll get rid of but like he was an abject disaster after the
first month of the season and maybe it's a matter of just
he's too i well i know part of the matter is he's too damn proud to admit
the mistakes that he's made he's always coming up with excuses he'll never admit that he actually sucks or sucked because
i mean who knows maybe he does have gas in the tank right but he keeps saying that like oh if i knew it was wrong i'd fix it well
what's wrong is you never actually freaking figured out that when you're sliding any good anymore and you've lost
four miles an hour on your sinker you can't keep throwing it down in the zone because they're going to bomb you every
time you should have been throwing the sinker up in the zone more that's what we even wrote about on our site that's a
lot of what the cubs have been trying to do with their other guys who don't throw us hard but no jake arietta believed it's still good to throw down on the
zone how'd that work out for you jake not gonna work out well if you pipe one of those to trevor's story but no i you
know i just think it's kind of funny maybe maybe pitching for a contender maybe having a bigger chip on his
shoulder will uh will get him going but the guy wasn't very good at the end of
his time with the cubs he wasn't good in philly he wasn't good when he came back with the cubs we are not talking about
someone who's having a down year we're talking about someone who has been decidedly you're
still pretty good in 16 uh but obviously after 15 you know
uh kind of kind of started to fall off so i i i don't want to
i you know it's not a matter of him pitching poorly that's not what i'm upset about it's just i didn't really
like him very much i i soured on him as an individual kind of with the way he left the cubs and things he said even in
the two years prior to that yeah yeah and and i just didn't i i didn't like his overall attitude
about stuff and coming up with oh you know i had a bad game oh it's my thumb had a bad game oh i was throwing up before the game
had a bad game oh you know it's uh just i don't know what it is this is uh you know had a couple bad pitches here and
it's always something in the phantom oh well he had the hamstring that it's been acting up for a while we gotta put him
on the aisle for a while okay sure yeah i still got gas and tank sure you
do sure you do buddy prove me wrong on wednesday we'll see yeah we will see that well i was uh i
said to you he'll probably go and throw a no-hitter now in colorado um wouldn't that just be the luck of the cubs but i
i don't think that that's gonna happen somehow i doubt it but hey you know you know stranger things have happened maybe
maybe this was a wake-up call for him and he actually he'll start throwing high sinkers and uh and yeah you know
he'll be reborn so meanwhile you know looking at i just was looking at some of the
the core of the cubs mainly chris bryant javi baez and anthony rizzo um you know
kb of course performing he's what batting over 300 he's got a few home
runs he it fits right in with san francisco and but the funny thing is that like i
saw some comments from him today where he's saying oh you know it's just comfortable everybody kind of goes to work and does their thing head down kind
of grind and i'm thinking this feels good because the giants have the best record in baseball i think or
they're close to it um but let's not forget the giants aren't consistently good they're you know so
of course it feels good to chris bryant he's gonna feel really good about going to a team that's leading their division
that's dominating uh who wouldn't feel good about that and he's obviously an mvp caliber player
uh but this listen the giants came out of nowhere this year i mean and they have their ups
and downs i mean they're they're they win the world series and they finish you know terribly the next season but at
least it could win three in five years so i mean that's that's true you know
we'll see what happens this year but i'm happy for chris bryant just because he seems to be fitting in uh who knows what's gonna end up happening with him
there's so much speculation around all these guys meanwhile javi has been awful and he's injured uh anthony rizzo has
hasn't actually been very good either outside of the first two games that he started for the yankees he's batting 185
in august and so you know it's it's i feel pretty good about the return the cubs got on this
got me anybody that they got really was better than what they would have gotten in the end which would have been nothing
so it's just it's interesting but i think out of all those guys it really feels like chris bryant is in the right place
i you know both of us i think we like chris uh
the most you know his dad we've had him on the show here a couple times and i'm rooting for him i'll be a giants
fan in the playoffs so i got no problem with that i hope they kick the out of the cubs when they come back to wrigley to be honest
chris is going to have like five home runs right and and that's not that's not like oh it's not even a vindictive thing
about letting go it's just a matter of hey if the cubs are going to lose i mean you might as well watch chris
bryant just mash against them i mean what the hell at least and then and the five fans that are
going to show up for that uh you know hopefully are are the ones that that were actually
cheering for him a little bit because i think people are starting to realize what it was they lost and obviously hey
was he he he was inconsistent there the last few years and that was injury based right it wasn't it wasn't just
talent-based even though a lot of people mistakenly believed that which is just beyond me there's so many stupid online
arguments i've gotten into with idiots who thought the guy was washed up which is just dumb um and speaking of rizzo i think the
coveted thing hit him a lot harder than what the yankees have let on but um yeah and we'll you know we'll see which you
know how you get vaccinated uh that probably could have helped a little bit but yeah i mean and the thing with bryant
was just like he he was but he was always that that head down quiet guy that's all he ever really wanted like
hey i'm gonna go home and play some board games with my family and that's it you know i'm not gonna i'm not gonna buy
a yacht i'm not gonna flaunt this stuff i'll do some ads when you know when i got this deal with red
bull and i'll do some of that stuff but outside of that he was really quiet i know a lot of people took that took his comments as
being like directly kind of aimed at javi or or somebody like that i don't think that's
really the case i think it was i i think it was mostly just bryant saying this is what this team is not like my
old team was this and this team is different although that you know the cubs did
inherit a measure of rock stardom fall you know leading up to and then following that world series title and i
think just in general the pressure was that was there i think san francisco is a different type of city there's a
different type of vibe around the giants and their sports teams and then that team
itself and i think honestly going somewhere else and having those expectations reduced or removed and
having a fan base that better appreciates you has got to just be one of the most relieving experiences
that you can that you can have and i think that did him well and i think it's unfortunate because he would have loved
to have stayed in chicago i still firmly believe that that he absolutely would have resigned with the cubs had they
offered anything uh which again they really didn't despite what hoyer says there wasn't
anything formal and certainly nothing recent and i'm going to take brian's word for that i'm going to take the word of sources that that i have in his camp
that have said the same thing for the last several years but he's the one who you talk about change of scenery it's not like an
automatic flip the switch gets flipped but man you take away somebody's anxiety and you take away just the the
discomfort and some of that and you put them in a different situation and you surround them with overall a better team
yeah they're going to do better i mean that's that just and it's gonna feel a lot better yeah and so but man it was
dude it just it just hit me watching him out there watching fireworks he had his little son with him and his giants gear
and watching i'm like that's supposed to happen at wrigley that's supposed to be happening with the cubs they could have
done that and and that's what is difficult is we talk about this reba well guess what
happened with that rebuild before you got these guys in there who were
chris bryant javi baez and anthony rizzo and others who you brought up through your system or with rizzo you know you
traded for and he was at the he had debuted but was still like a triple a player and you brought them up and they came
into their own as a part of that team well you don't go out and and sign all free agents you have to have multiple guys
like that who can form the the heart of your lineup and who can
be producers at a very very high level we're talking mvp caliber gold glove caliber levels
and so it that takes a lot that doesn't just is this overnight is this the playbook going forward like the
cubs you know obviously what they did they didn't resign anybody they literally did not resign one player
or extend i should say hendrix yeah but they got him on a club-friendly deal oh yeah i mean that's
that's all they're going to be able to do and so so they they offered they did not offer market to anybody
obviously if they would have had offered market to anybody they would have had conversations word would have gotten out
there would have been nothing ever really came out except these way below market offers that they made to extend
players um and so is that the playbook is that so we can expect that from the cubs let's
say they they get lucky which i would think at this point you know trying to do the same thing that you did back in
you know 2012 13 14 to get to where they won the world series with a base of talent that really
was cheap at the end of the day they ended up having to pay them and having to bring guys in at the you know
like the jason hayward signing was just a terrible signing that's still weighing
them down but is that what they're gonna do he's not waiting down now because they only owe he's one of only three contracts you
know but but is that what they're gonna so are they gonna develop a team let's say they get good let's say the guys that
they have in the minor league system come up and in 2023 there may be close to where 2015
cubs were um and they get back to the playoffs and they start winning games again
are they going to change anything have they learned from what has happened with this core
that now is basically everyone is gone because they just didn't have the i mean
when you talk about they didn't have to do what they've done to get here i that resonates with me hopefully it
resonates with a lot of other people but it's like will they change their ways
going forward if they get these guys to the major leagues and and will they actually try to extend them
on on you know maybe player i don't want to say player friendly deals necessarily but at least something that can be
palatable they're probably trying to do it earlier i mean that's that's been the thing with major league baseball over the last few years and now we're seeing
these very early extensions for players but they're huge look at fernando tattis though i mean it's not
like he signed this tiny little that's a little bit different because that is you you're talking about a guy and actually all the
you know the algorithms and things that are out there like said he was going to be an mvp like when he was 17 years old or something weird like that you know i
mean there's there's been stuff that they've tracked that but i'm talking about like um ozzy albies you know signed very very
early and wasn't didn't didn't eloy jimenez uh do one really super early with the
white sox and you've got some of these where you're getting these guys where you're buying out all i mean david beauty is a
bad example but it's it's that type of timing where you've still got
two or three more years of your you're getting two more years on a rookie deal prior to arbitration then you got your arbitration years so like we're saying
hey uh well let's get them for uh five years and and 50 million bucks or whatever it
is i don't know right but so when you sign a deal like that do you do you basically preclude any of their options
their options are gone at that point or do they do they retain their options there's there's different things that
are in there i think it depends on on how that timing works i don't know and and that could be something that changes
with the cba too right there could be things because i know what they want to do is is reduce
because the system right now it favors so heavily economically it favors a team finding those young guys and having a
bunch of rookies if they can and then then it flips and it has changed you know to where you get such cheap labor
relatively speaking for those first seven years six years seven years depending on how you you hold them down
uh of that deal and then you know free agency is kind of a given in some of these cases like it
was with javi and chris bryant because the cubs weren't gonna pay him but they got him cheap early and so it's like okay well do you reduce do you do you
speed the time to which they get to arbitration do you reduce the number of arbitration years they have because then
teams are going to be more willing to want to keep those guys because if you come up when you're 22 years old and that team only has control of you for
four years you know 26 is really when you're hitting the the best of your athletic prime so
they're not going to want to let you go at 26. it's entirely different if you're hitting 30 when you're at that you know
jason hayward was a rare example because he came up so young and he did hit the market at like 27
years old or whatever he was 26 27 years old when he hit free agency and that's why he was able to command the deal that
he was he was coming off a couple of really good seasons but um so i mean i i think we're going to see
them tried a lot whether it's brennan davis right um you know certainly position players or much
and to go back again to your other question uh about the how they're gonna do it well
who are the guys you mentioned and who are the guys who are already coming up in in the rotation uh people can maybe debate al's lie i think he's gonna be
fine long term i think he's just struggling through some things but if we look at al's lie and steele and thompson
hopefully marquez um alexander viscayno is another intriguing possibility um killian who they got from
uh from the giants in the in the bryant deal i really like him um wix
you know jordan wicks who they just drafted number one lefty so now but those are the guys we're talking about
those are guys who could move quickly who could be a part of the big league staff and then you've got guys like ben leaper and and um ethan roberts and uh
we've seen you know manny rodriguez is already up there and i think scott f ross we've had him on the show a couple
times that dude has been nails and if you're telling me right now i guarantee you scott afros could do better than dan
winkler out of that out of that bullpen uh if you're looking for the kind of middle relief guy who can give you a
couple innings to work he's a side armor you know does well against guys from both sides really good ground anyway so
now all of a sudden we're talking about a whole bunch of pitchers well what was the problem with the rebuild that last time and the way they built that up they
had a whole bunch of young position players who were cheap and they had to pay for pitching and they never developed any pitching and they couldn't
back any of that up now though not only do they have a lot of pitchers who are ready to come up they've got a couple of
guys at the position player level so their their pitchers are not they're
the pictures there's a ton of depth and a nice string of players down the line the position players they don't have
much they don't have the elite pipeline like what we saw before but it's a long tail and so you can start
bringing some of those guys up so i think what they're going to try to do then is before they brought up the position players they were to pay a ton
of money toward pitchers and then and then they got imbalanced i think now what you're seeing is they've got a bunch of cheap pictures that they can
come up and fill up that staff with maybe you supplement with another starter but then you go out there you get maybe this is a maybe
is it a carlos correa do they do they go spend some money on a guy like that or somebody else uh a corey seeger
do you go out and find a guy like that who you're gonna pay a bunch of money to but he's the guy who comes in and believes hey we can do this we can get
this going and now we supplement around him with a few star players who are coming up from our miners and we have
cheap pitchers and then we can add a little bit i just think they flip it that way so it'll be interesting yeah i mean what's gonna yeah i mean you
mentioned the depth of the pictures uh as but as i was pointing out earlier you know they there's not really many
pictures in the the top 15 uh prospects and so it's like are you gonna have to go out and sign
you know a a number one number two pitcher do you do is there a number one
in the cub system marquez could be if he's healthy i mean he's such a question mark right
now i mean i'd say before last year you know it kind of felt like that and then like you know the way they brought
him in just for that one game is like the last game of the season just really weird and then his covet entry was all
weird now he's this season and now he's now he's injured and so no i mean you you can't bank on although
you know again there there is no such thing as a pitching prospect right if you if you look at it that way perfect pitching prospect uh certainly
pitching is such a crap shoot i mean are there some guys that will they have to go out and maybe spend but they will not have to go out
and go you darvish and then tyler chatwood and then you've got to spend on a bunch of other like i think the bullpen
could be made up almost exclusively of homegrown guys and still be pretty solid because then then you got rowan wick
right he just came back so i you know again and that that's not much because relievers aren't traditionally very
expensive but if you talk about hey we're not paying 16 million to a reliever and i hate that like i'm not trying to make this out like oh they
gotta spend very little money but what i am saying is you know you can afford to maybe go out and find
maybe he's not that ace type yet but you go out and get another number two type or maybe you luck into a
number one guy you spend some money there and then you get like one big name free agent signing who you feel like can
bat in the middle of your order and be there for five or six or seven years and then you're able to kind of bring
some because the other thing is that's at least that at least makes you look like you're trying to compete whether you actually will or not but you're
spending some money and you have a big name back in there and then you bring up a brennan davis
right whether it's at the start of next year or part way through next year now you've got another piece of that and and
you know maybe miguel amaya is ready to start depending on what they do with with wills contreras there too
but you get a michael hermacio who's maybe not a full-time piece but been playing really well he comes up that's
something new you get an alfonso rivas right again he can't replace rizzo but he's an on-base machine pretty solid guy
so now you start bringing these guys along and at least you have some pieces that look like
they know what they're doing and it shows people that like yeah okay we've got a pipeline going
and then you hit 23 and maybe that changes a little bit and some more of those guys come up and you have you know whether it be i think pete crowe
armstrong's probably another couple years he's probably 24. um you know i don't know does bryce ball keep mashing who knows does alexander
canario does he keep hitting like he's been hitting uh and knocking the cover off everything i don't know
but i i do think they're gonna they're gonna trend more heavily toward trying to develop that pitching that they never
have and then pay for some hitters because that if you go out and here's i guess my
final thought on this is that as you mentioned earlier right their regression models didn't quite work out
the way we thought because none of those guys actually i shouldn't say none of them bryant was one of the few that actually did make
some changes in there but for the most part what you had in 2015 was the same thing
that you had they peaked in 2016 and then as a group the hitters never really completely came together you cannot
guarantee you look at a lot of these prospects you can't guarantee you're gonna work the swing and miss like canario is one of them big swing and
miss what we saw with their moves whether it be nick madrigal or crow armstrong or some of these other ones
even dykman it was a really big on base guy and who knows what happens there they have trended way more toward the
contact side of things you don't know what that prospect is going to be and you can't guarantee that in three or four or five years he's even
going to be in the majors let alone improving at the major league level but if you go get a corey seeger or a correa
or somebody like that who you know pretty much what you're going to be able to expect for the next four or five
years you can at least plug that guy in the lineup and now you can work around them and i think that's something that
they're going to try to look to do is to i know people are like gun shy on hayward but we're talking about a
different profile with some of these other guys that they could go after so or trevor story i mean who knows um so so you
think there's a chance that cubs are buyers in the off season there's a chance i don't i don't like
i'm not sitting here going like they're absolutely gonna do that but i do think there's a possibility and because of what i said earlier whether it be the
hemorrhaging season ticket sales and just overall game attendance the need to have a product on marquee that people
will actually tune into and the fact that if you're gonna be featured in that field of dreams game i mean i don't know if if you know ricketts had to kind of
promise rob manfred anything uh the cubs are also angling to try to get an all-star game right like they don't want to give
that i mean they gave it to colorado you know after pulling it from atlanta and all that so that's a different story but
they they need to do something because if they if they are a terrible team next year
you talk about those biblical losses like they're it's possible they could operate at a loss again
and the sports book won't be open next year so you've got to do something to generate activity i'm not saying they're
going to go out and have a 200 million payroll but i do believe it's possible
that they would go out and try to find themselves you know kind of a guy that they could build around because if you're if your window opens and i've
said this that i don't think it's going to open next year but i think 23. and if you think you can get a guy who's
going to still be solid 23 24 25 around whom you can kind of plug in some
pieces in that roster in the in that order i think that's a possibility
so we'll see yeah i agree i agree so the cubs uh they play two more against cincinnati
one tonight and then one day game tomorrow they have a day off on thursday and then uh a weekend home series uh
against uh to the battle for who can be the worst three against kansas city and then three
against iraqis will be interesting to see if the cubs can uh can manage to win they've won just two games
since they uh they traded away the core back on july 30th and uh yeah so we'll see if they can
yeah at some point they're bound to win another game right
they should be able to lock themselves into a win at some point you would think shape or form
so we'll see what happens but uh hey it'll be fun and we're here for it either way so uh we'll be back uh at
some point next week i'm uh i'll be traveling back home over the weekend and um
yeah we'll see what happens hopefully we've got at least one win to talk about i hope so we'll see
yeah we'll see who knows beggars can't be choosers i suppose okay thanks for joining us everybody
we'll see you next time see ya
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