Happy Friday Chicago!
I apologize for my longer-than-usual hiatus. Much to my dismay, I have to work for a living and have been perpetually caught up working for a living.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been accumulating thoughts in this big, fat, dumb head of mine.
Since last time we spoke, I’ve grown older. We all have, after all. That’s how time works. But I don’t believe we grow older by the days, I believe we grow older through two things: aches and takes.
Let me flesh this out to get us started.
Aches is somewhat self-explanatory. The more you feel pain or discomfort, the more likely you are to realize and acknowledge your age internally. That can manifest itself in a lot of ways. You could roll your ankle and decide you may not be able to walk to work the next day, you could throw your back out doing something very simple, like bending over to grab something you dropped, or, in my case, you could be so banged up from enjoying adult beverages on Memorial Day Weekend that you didn’t feel like a normal human being until as of this writing — about 8 p.m. on Thursday.
Tuesday morning live from my apartment.
Granted, I didn’t help myself. I got very little sleep, got sunburnt, and drank until the sun went down and then came back up again. That’s not usually a recipe for feeling awesome. Having said that, I thought going to bed early on Monday would fix it all. That was until I was on the train to work Tuesday morning and seriously considered getting off on the way downtown to throw up on the platform.
From Tuesday through Wednesday, the only way I can describe my waking existence is that my body felt like I was in a dream. I was able to walk from one place to another, get done basic tasks when need be — but never could really accomplish anything definitive. Nor could I really do things physically in an assertive way — just like a dream.
It led to one of those existential questions in the middle of a work week, as you’re considering a 5:30 p.m. nap as a grown adult: do I need to overhaul my entire life? That question is as inevitable and constant in a young man’s life as dreams in which you forget about a final exam or to put your underwear on before leaving your house.
It’s also most certainly fleeting. It’s sort of like when a woman gives birth and her body purposely makes her forget how brutal the experience was so she can procreate again against her better judgement. I’m not sure giving birth is worse than my hangover Tuesday, but it’s somewhat analogous.
That’s one measurement of age. It turns out going to bed early once cannot reverse a weekend full of self-sabotage, which is total bullshit.
But takes are another great, unconventional measurement of age. As you age, you’re supposed to become more mature, and get less mad at the trivial things in life. I have found that that instead is how you know you’re aging — particularly as a fan of sports.
For instance, someone may mention the fact that Deuce Tatum — the very much adolescent, cute son of the Celtics star Jayson Tatum — should not be around in pregame warmups and postgame press conferences as much as he is. Of course, he’s like three years old, and he’s not really affecting anything — certainly not your life or mine — so it shouldn’t bother you.
But a way to judge your age, outside of birthdays of course, is how you react to a take like that. If you form the take yourself, well, you’re well on your way to your next decade on earth — and closer to death than ever. But even if you maybe think, ‘You know, he really shouldn’t be around the team as much as he is — after all, it’s not take your kid to work day every fucking day, I certainly wouldn’t love a kid running around my feet everyday at work.’ Well, then, you’d be me recognizing I’m well on my way to being a bald, 48-year old white man.
I may have a kid just spawn at my feet if I keep thinking about Deuce Tatum, even without conceiving one. It’ll float down from the sky like they did in the Grinch live action film, just with a note on it that said: Hurting from Memorial Day weekend on Thursday morning and mad about a little cute kid lovingly hanging out with his supportive dad? You’re ready.
Oh, and there’s one more pillar of aging — especially for Chicagoans. That’s when you start monitoring crime in your area as if it’s your part-time hustle. You start bringing it up in random conversations, and most importantly — here’s the kicker — inevitably think that things used to be better when you were young. And when you start viewing the world as now vs. when you were young, ladies and gentlemen, the funeral arrangements may as well be right around the corner.
Plus, if you are worried about crime in Chicago specifically, you must not have seen what we’ve got going on around here.
Have you not seen the security guards walking around the L stops, Walgreens, and other areas around the city?
They sort of have these blue sweaters on with a patch that has the private company’s name on them, looking like someone who may stop crime if you’re 100 yards away from them, but maybe the last person in the vicinity who could stop crime once you get closer?
I imagine the job ads for those positions goes as such: Do you have a irreparable slouch in your shoulders, a chemical addiction to Instagram and or/ talking loudly on your phone, a willingness to log 500-1,000 steps per day (but no more), and an urge to throw on an ill-fitting uniform that makes you look like a cop, but with no weapons to go along with it? You may just be eligible to solve crime in Chicago!
But Chicago is really fantastic around this time of year, if you stop looking at the crime blotter or thinking about Deuce Tatum.
Similar to pregnancy, but again, much worse, is the Chicago winter. Then summer hits, the streets are packed, and you may even be smiling on a walk like a dork, and you think ‘Why doesn’t everyone live here?’ The amnesia kicks in and you’re full throttle thinking about picking up golf or even having a beer outside on a weekday.
But the true reason the newsletter has been gone so long is that it’s free. And I’ve only got time for making money these days. As a journalist, money and work go hand in hand. We’re just always looking for that next dollar.
And I’ve got to be heads down all day making money because news has just hit the wire that LeBron James is now a billionaire. Yes, off of the backs of Chinese workers and our backs after he told us all to invest in crypto — and then the entire crypto market consequentially crashed, after he had cashed his USD paycheck — LeBron has a billy next to his name.
If that doesn’t get you out of bed in the morning mad at the world and ready to succeed, I don’t know what will. As a wise man once said, it is not enough for me to succeed — others must fail.
Welcome back to Still Gotta Come Through Chicago, if you’re still reading. Let’s get into some sports.
Growing up a Cubs fan, the Sox awful start to the season would be funny if it wasn’t just so sad.
After all, in order to write this newsletter with the divine authority that I do, I need to be watching these godawful games (don’t worry, we’ll get to the 3-game winning streak Cubs in a bit).
In the first game of an all-important, tough road trip, the Sox rocked one of the league’s best pitchers this year to kick off the game in Kevin Gausman. And they did that because they can and because they have a talented roster. And then on their way to tie the game, Reese McGuire jerked himself around in lieu of sprinting to home plate on a tag-up while Danny Mendick, for god knows what reason, decided to simultaneously tag up from first to second. Mendick was thrown out for the third out of inning at second, and because the tag came before McGuire crossed home plate, the Sox did not tie the game.
The score would have been 6-6 had it not been for that egregious base running error. The final score was 6-5.
As a fan, you can most certainly live with a team struggling for the first third of the season, whether it has to do with injuries or not. Sox fans have taken solace in the fact that the defending World Series champion Atlanta Braves were under .500 well into the season last year.
Full disclosure, I did not watch all of the Braves games last year. But I doubt their situation was all that comparable to what the White Sox are going through right now, despite the fact that one of their star players was out.
But if you’re struggling to win games, and also struggling to make basic plays on the base paths and in the field, it goes from a shrug of the shoulders to unacceptable.
At least the Sox have Andrew Vaughn, though, who has looked every bit the part this year — and who also was batting seventh in the third game of what ended up being a series sweep against the Blue Jays Thursday.
Meanwhile, Leury Garcia, Tony La Russa’s favorite, manned the leadoff spot. The worst thing about that should be that he’s hitting 68% below league average, has a .194 OBP and a .460 OPS. But it’s not. What’s worse is that he actually had two hits Thursday, which means this certainly won’t be the last time he hits in that slot.
So even though Gordon Beckham — in between incorrectly predicting the next pitch and talking about how much he sucked as a player — said the Sox would have a better-than-.500 record while Tim Anderson was out with a groin injury, things have not gotten off to a hot start.
The Sox not only are 5 games out of first place in their division and now in third place overall, but they also have a -55 run differential. For context, the Cincinnati Reds, who are desperately trying to lose, have a -53 run differential on the season. (To be fair, they beat the Cubs by like 15 runs last week.)
To all the OBP naysayers, the Sox are in desperate need of some of that OBP. They walk just 2.3 times per game — the worst rate in the entire MLB. Last year, they walked 3.6 times per game, which would be good enough for 4th in the entire league right now.
And to all of the Yasmani Grandal OBP truthers, he’s one of the worst hitters in all of baseball among qualified players. And his OBP is a stunning .271. He hasn’t been below .349 in that category since 2018. Last year, he was at a .420 clip. Not to mention, pitchers are throwing better to Reese McGuire than they are to him. So even if he wants to catch more on the days he hits, the Sox now find themselves in a conundrum.
Then, of course, we have the Soft Tissue Sox. Not a single person that takes the field on a given day with a White Sox uniform on has a less than 50% chance of leaving with a groin, hamstring, or calf injury. It is beyond anomaly at this point — it is a years-long trend.
And you could blame the Lynn, Anderson, Kelly, Jimenez, Moncada, Robert, etc., etc. injuries for the slow start. Certainly, they play a part.
But while you’re simultaneously unable to force walks and also making mental mistakes that cost you winnable games, it’s not a reasonable cop-out at this point.
People always say I say nice things about the Sox in this newsletter and then crush them. Well I’ve bucked that trend. Nothing nice to say about them this week.
There are a few ways to watch the Chicago Cubs this year:
— Bitching at the owners every time they lose for not putting a winning product on the field (though this has changed a bit, considering that Baez and Bryant are worth basically zero wins this year despite having signed contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars). This is somewhat reasonable, though exhausting.
— Trying to watch the team as if it were any other year, which will drive you equally insane. They are schizophrenic, in that they will prove to you they are a bad team, and then they will win three games in a row (as they just did), and then you wish they had won two winnable games against the Brewers on Monday, and the one against the White Sox on Sunday.
— Attempting to enjoy the team for who they are: a non-World Series contender, probably not a playoff contender, and a dichotomy between good, exciting players and some really bad ones that get trotted out way too often.
Somehow, I’ve managed to straddle all of these, sometimes feeling like I’m one of the only people who watches this team day in and day out among my friends anymore, a stark difference from the previous five years when the Cubs were appointment viewing, no matter how frustrating.
I remarked in the last newsletter how the best barometer for whether your team is bad is if you start seeing more highlights from shoddy minor league cameras than big-league ones. That is still the case.
But Christopher Morel has blurred those lines as an exciting prospect that unexpectedly got the call up to Wrigley Field. And he’s delivered.
He joined the recent, strange barrage of Cubs who joined the big league club from the minors and almost immediately homered. Morel homered in his first at-bat, which was one of the more electric moments I’ve seen in the league all season.
But Javy Baez homered in his first game. So did Jorge Soler. So did Nico Hoerner. So did Willson Contreras (more on him in a bit).
That trend is just odd at this point. It’s hard enough to hit a homer in the majors. It’s even harder as a newcomer. It’s even harder in your first game, with your whole life’s dream coming to fruition before your eyes.
Morel has been on base in 15! straight games and also won one for the Cubs in walk-off fashion the other day. So, the question is, does he make the Cubs worth watching at this point?
Perhaps. But if it’s not him, its Willson Contreras, who is having the best year of his career to date. He has a .931 OPS, 9 home runs, and is probably one of the 25 best hitters in all of baseball.
And after all that’s left us in the last few years, it feels like he’s taken on a full stake of this team’s soul.
But even though we thought we had ripped the bandaid off with last year’s fire sale, the talk around Contreras is not about his career year, but instead about what they could get for him at the deadline.
That’s when the prospect perverts come out — the fans who want to constantly be three years away from competing with nothing tangible to enjoy at the big-league level instead of competing in the year they’re living in.
So, it’s even tough to watch Contreras succeed at times, knowing the last homer may be leveraged for the next prospect that’s three Memorial Day weekend benders away.
But maybe it’s the guys who made them semi-watchable in the latter half of the last year that are still around, spurring seemingly insane takes from fans like “would you rather have Frankie Schwindel and Patrick Wisdom at their salaries or Rizzo and Bryant at theirs?”
I’m certainly not here to break that down. But Schwindel narrowly avoided a trip to the minors and has once again found his footing. Meanwhile, Wisdom has cemented himself as a bonafide power hitter. He’s one of the best in the league since he came up in that respect. He has 39 home runs over a 153-game stretch.
To be clear, it’s not at all that I’m not excited about the wealth of talent the Cubs now have in the minors — I very much am and will be writing about those very prospects in the near future.
And it’s not as if I’m blind to the fact that trading a 30-year-old Contreras at a time when you’re not competing may be worth the yield.
I’d just like to get back to current Cubs baseball mattering again, sometime soon.
For now, we wait.
Bears Head Coach Matt Eberflus has made it a habit to acknowledge the guys that have been at all the voluntary workouts and practices during his media availability this offseason.
He’s also clearly taken note of who hasn’t been there, and thus, Jaylon Johnson forgoing voluntary workouts has both become the biggest Bears story of the spring and landed him among the second string in recent practices.
And here I go, aging myself once again, full circle…
What in God’s name is Jaylon Johnson not doing at voluntary workouts before his sophomore season?
It’s clear he doesn’t like to show up to work on time (got fined last year for being late, then posted it on Instagram for all to see, calling it BS), nor does he like showing up to work at all for half of the year.
For $1.6 million per year, Johnson can’t be bothered to show up for OTAs with a brand new coaching staff.
I get why some don’t show up — they have families and have built enough equity in the league to get their work done on their own and enjoy their offseasons. But Jaylon Johnson?
You had a decent rookie year, kid. That’s about it. Now you have a new coaching staff to prove yourself to.
I couldn’t be more behind Eberflus’ handling of this situation. Why should a second-round, second-year player be given equity he hasn’t yet earned?
I’m obligated to make my statement here on Zach LaVine.
I’ll refer you to my last newsletter. I think LaVine will still be a Bull next year.
This is really all that matters, and gets to the bottom of exactly what LaVine is angling towards with his comments: The Bulls can play LaVine $212 million over the next five years, according to Spotrac. In the former years, he’d be making close to $40 million annually, and in the latter, over that. If he went to any other team, the most they could offer him is five years, $157 million. That is an over $55 million difference. And that’s basically all you need to know. These things aren’t that complicated.
Until free agency, I will be enjoying my Chicago summer.
Thanks for reading, as always. STILL GOTTA COME THROUGH CHICAGOans, I’ll be back next week — that’s a promise. Don’t forget to leave a comment:
I was mad at the Cubs for letting Javy go. When I saw what Bryant signed for, I was mad the Cubs didn't pay him that. I thought he was worth that. I thought Schwarber was worth another shot as he was getting better every year. And Rizzo took less to stay with the Yankees.
Right now Rizzo is batting .209. Baez has been benched for a untility player while he is currently batting .197 and has regressed back to having the highest chase rate in baseball, something Ross was having success changing about him. Bryant hasn't played in close to a month and has no timetable for a return and hasn't homered IN COLORADO! Schwarber homered last night but still can't get his average above .192.
My question is "How in good god's name did we win a World Series with these guys???
Lastly, I turn the TV off every time Jason Heyward comes to bat. I can't watch a gut get paid $25M a year to ground out to second three times a game.
Tell me about the kids we got for those worthless players!