Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

For Now, It's All Good

Happy Friday Chicago!

May is about to hand the ball off to June, and I’m going to meet it in the backfield with authority. I’m talking a tackle for loss with a Shawne Merriman Lights Out dance afterward.

This is around the time people start saying dumb shit like “nothing like summertime Chi!” to make themselves feel better. I’m all for it. We earn our seasons ‘round these parts, let’s roll.

You’re going to the lakeside this weekend to have a picnic with nowhere to piss, I’m going to my high school alma mater’s playoff baseball game and screaming at the umpire about balls and strikes from left field.

You’ve got a 7:30 dinner reservation for some $26 parmesan-crusted Brussels Sprouts, I’m housing light beers with my shirt off in my parents’ backyard. They don’t know it yet, but they will when the foundation of the house starts moving with the 2014 hip hop I’m bumping mid-afternoon.

I’ll be playing the clean versions, because the neighbors have kids, and I plan to knock on their front door later and ask if my friends and I can play on their trampoline.

Throughout the day, like magic, I’ll go from a varsity baseball player with limited accolades to a .375 hitter with college offers that decided to be a fraternity president instead. I’m the upside down Dorian Gray. My real-life appearance is rapidly aging, but the painting I keep of myself in the closet keeps looking better and better.

You’ll be figuring out how to split the bill, I’ll be figuring out a way to climb on top of the garage.

I hope you get plenty of videos from the Weeknd’s performance at Soldier Field. I’ll be indiscriminately dancing to the twice-convicted Kevin Gates, yelling “this is my shit right here!”

You’ll be strolling down the river walk, I’ll be strolling down Lake Street in my mom’s new car, my dad following closely behind me because I promised him I wouldn’t drive.

When you’re setting an alarm for Sunday coffee, I’ll be calling my mom a bitch for taking down the basketball hoop without asking me. After that, I’m going to ask her if she can order us a pizza — please, mom!

You’re telling the waiter you like the wine as he justifiably looks at you like a moron, I’m shotgunning beers and throwing them over the fence — like they’re grenades for dramatic effect — to the neighbors’ yard to erase the evidence.

Enjoy the Navy Pier fireworks, I’m going to be staring into the bonfire deeply considering the question my boy just asked: Which teachers do you think actually wanted to hook up with us in high school?

When you’re on your weekend run, I’ll be running from the cops because I heard a siren four blocks down, even though I reached the legal drinking age nearly a decade ago.

I’m sure you’ll have fun though. There’s only one thing I want more than for you to have a good weekend, and that’s for me to have a good one.

Because the summer months are here, and after that comes football. It’s time to let the apartment rot, time to let the diseases fester. No more house work or appointments for the foreseeable future.

And if I know me like I think I do, evoking thoughts of making metaphorical tackles on months of the year means that I’m in for a hell of weekend.

On Monday, I’ll be back in the office with a coffee in my hand, making sure I say Good Morning to each member of the management team. But for now, Monday may as well be the Year 3000.

It’s time to go. But first…

Let’s get into it.

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Caleb Williams spoke to the media this week. In an apologetic tone, he reaffirmed that Chicago is where he wants to be, and condemned some of his father’s quirks.

He didn’t need to do any of that.

For one, the proof is in the pudding. Last year was all the evidence needed to show that Chicago was not a good landing spot for the no. 1 overall pick. We’re all hoping it turns, but only a Chicago Bears novice would take offense to Williams or his father having reservations about the franchise.

I want to take Williams, grab him by the shoulders, and let him know that the reservations he had for a few months, we’ve had them for years — years.

Nevertheless, I appreciated his professionalism.

“This wasn’t something we wanted to have happen now,” he said at his presser. “We’re trying to get this ship moving in the right direction.”

I will mention that this is yet another chapter in the saga of athletes telling reporters or writers something, then being shocked when that reporter or writer reports or writes something.

But here’s to a lesson learned.

“It’s been a distraction, so I think it’s important to come up here and address it,” he continued. “After I made my visit here, [I had] a deliberate answer, and that was that I wanted to come here.”

Williams came off as a guy that felt genuinely bad that he was the cause of a “distraction,” but I hope he does realize that hardly any of the fans blame him for it. Perhaps it’s still worth addressing to make sure his teammates know where his head is at, but then again, many of them have probably had similar thoughts about the Bears.

On his dad’s involvement in all of this:

• “I shut my dad down quite a bit. He has ideas and he's a smart man and so I listen. I'm very fortunate to be in this position in the sense of playing quarterback but also very fortunate to have a very strong-minded father. We talk very often, my mom and my dad are my best friends, so being able to have conversations with them to understand that everything they say is also portrayed on me.”

• “He cares so much about me and my future, and we have been along this journey so long together, all he wants is the best for me. So, if anything happens and he's super hotheaded and it's more of like 'All right, go ahead and go away. Go reset.' Things like that. Love him to death, super fortunate to have him. We have talked about it. Understanding that there's a right place and a right time and there are times that there is not.”

I don’t know, that seems like a super healthy relationship, and a super healthy perspective on that relationship.

Carl Williams may be a bit of a goof, but for the readers that are fathers, I’m sure some of his actions resonate.

Caleb doesn’t need to be sorry, for just about any of this. But I’m glad he is hellbent on putting it all behind us.

“I wanted to come here and be the guy and be a part and be a reason why the Chicago Bears turn this thing around,” he said. “The last thing that was said in all of that I think is the most important thing: that I wanted to be here. I love being here.”

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There’s no turning away from opinions when you document your own in a newsletter every week. Sometimes that can be a bad thing, but in the case of Pete Crow-Armstrong, it’s a great thing.

Whether it was the urge to just hate on the next Cubs prospect, or society’s current need for instant gratification, I heard a lot about PCA and his inability to hit over the last year.

Even before he began to hit at the end of last season, PCA was a rare case of an above-replacement level player with bad hitting statistics. Even as his OPS wondered in the .500s, he was accumulating WAR thanks to his superb fielding and base running.

And it wasn’t as if he was lost at the plate. Instead, he was a player who hit very well in the minors adjusting to the majors, a challenge every player in history before, I don’t know, 2020, was expected to undertake.

Over and over I applauded his play style and promised the hitting would come around. I wrote it here, said it out there, and shouted it from the mountain tops to anyone that would listen.

Fewer than 2 months after those conversations putting PCA down reached their peak, he’s not just hitting, he has 15 home runs. That puts him in the top 6 of baseball, with the likes of Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Schwarber, and Corbin Carroll. And few, if any, of those players make the dent in other areas of the game that PCA does.

He just homered again here in the fourth inning of Wednesday’s finale against the Rockies. Even before that and whatever else he will inevitably do to improve the Cubs chances of winning tonight, he is third in baseball and first in the national league in WAR.

A bonafide superstar, he is also a different kind of superstar than what we have seen in the league of late. He’s reminiscent of my favorite players growing up, the guys that ran fast, caught balls that weren’t supposed to be caught, and shot up with excitement after sliding into home plate.

While many of those players were awesome, I’m often shocked at how average their hitting stats were now looking back at Baseball Reference. PCA has that style of play, that charisma, and he can flat out hit.

Of course he’s an MVP candidate, but it’s far too early to be watching the leader boards there.

What it’s not too early to do is appreciate his greatness and how it is affecting the Cubs day in, day out.

Of course there is the two-homer game in Cincinnati — including a grand slam — that propelled the Cubs to yet another unlikely comeback.

But then there’s also plays that look routine, like in Tuesday’s game against the Rockies when he easily beat out a double-play ball. Those winning plays stack on top of each other, and are a reason I — unlike many traditional baseball fans — appreciate the WAR stat. It tries to take everything into account, and not just the tallies of home runs and doubles.

The Cubs have 16 come-from-behind wins this year, four of which have taken place in the 7th inning or later.

In addition to being glued to the screen when the Cubs are trailing by a few runs this year, a very foreign feeling, the Cubs are also becoming more reliable.

It’s not worth bragging when you beat the 9-win Rockies in extra innings. It’s probably not worth taking stock of how you feel going into the 10th, either. But for me it is, and I enjoy going past the 9th feeling confident the Cubs will pull away with the win.

We’re obligated here to mention Reese McGuire for his contributions over the last week. After an impromptu call up due to Miguel Amaya going down, and a Carson Kelly illness, McGuire has gotten two hits in three games. Those were both home runs, both vital in an 11-8 Cubs win over the Reds on Sunday.

Then, on Tuesday, McGuire threw out two runners in what ended up being a one-run win.

The Rockies series wasn’t pretty, but it was a sweep. It was also further evidence the Cubs are capable of winning ball games in multiple ways, fresh off of scoring 28 runs against the Reds in a three-game set.

As for Amaya, he went down with what seems to becoming the non-arm baseball injury: the oblique. He’ll be out four to six weeks.

That’s unfortunate for him. He’s had a great season, one that has been overshadowed by Carson Kelly’s hot start. Before hitting the IL, Amaya had an .819 OPS, good enough for 30% above league average.

As for the other Cubs hitters, Dansby Swanson is likely to end the month with an over .300 average, and an OPS close to 1.0.

Seiya Suzuki heard your erroneous claims that he only hits when the stakes are low, and has an over 1.0 OPS with runners in scoring position over the last 10 games. Against the Rockies in particular, he came up big on multiple occasions when offense was hard to find.

The bullpen ERA, for now, has finally sunk below the starting pitching ERA. This is good news. The Cubs are down two starters, and the bullpen desperately needed its number there to improve.

I could do without Daniel Palencia walking off the mound dramatically after he throws a ball two feet outside that he thought was the game’s final strike. But aside from that, it’s nice to have a guy throwing 100 mph in the ninth inning, a guy that’s turning in nice closer innings.

I wouldn’t bank on him being a surefire closer for good, but he’s a better option than Ryan Pressly, that’s for certain.

Chris Flexen and Drew Pomeranz? Still at a combined 0.0 ERA, now through 25 innings.

Shota Imanaga is throwing a bullpen from the mound this week. Justin Steele, of course, is not coming back. But unlike other awful in-game Marquee interviews, it was great to hear him on the broadcast the other day.

The Cubs continue to stretch out Cade Horton, and he looks as if he’s gaining confidence. He had yet another good showing against the Rockies.

He’s gone further in each start than he did in the one prior — 4 innings, 5 innings, 5.1 innings, and 6 innings. That’s especially important for a guy who famously was not tested from an endurance perspective in the minors.

The Reds will come into town with some warmer weather this weekend. When they do, the Cubs will try to cement themselves as the class of the NL Central and one of the best teams in baseball.

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