Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
Opening Day is finally here
Good Morning Chicago sports fans…
Happy Good Friday for those that celebrate, and to those that don’t, you have no reason to be jealous of Easter — it’s a pretty underwhelming holiday considering what we’re supposed to be celebrating.
I mean, a dude rose from the dead after he died for all of our collective sins and we’re sitting here eating ham with eight family members talking about how our second cousins are doing at college and which relatives are sick?
The only events that ever work on Sundays are NFL games, somehow, or nonchalant gatherings comprised of eating as much disgusting food as possible and dosing off on the couch after.
Anything else is better left off my calendar for Sunday. The climax remains my mother hiding Easter eggs for her 25-year-old son and me running around looking for them, still praying to God (see, still praying) that a $20 bill is included.
There’s nothing worse than getting a little too tipsy on a Saturday and remembering there’s a tedious holiday on its way when the sun comes back up.
But at least there’s a new season on the horizon as Easter approaches — baseball season. Baseball season arriving isn’t just about baseball, either. When basketball starts, I’m happy that basketball is starting. When football comes around, I look forward to the college football and NFL seasons.
When baseball returns, brighter times — literally — are ahead. You can picture a 70-degree night at Wrigley on the Horizon, or a Saturday at Guaranteed Rate that turns into a late night.
Everything is better in the summer in Chicago, and it’s right around the corner now that baseball is here.
Before we get into it, go ahead and tell someone to subscribe to Still Gotta Come Through Chicago as we kick off a brand new season:
“The return to normal” has been society’s rallying cry to keep itself going over the last year and change, and if there’s any signal that it’s finally on it’s way, it’s embarking on a long ass 162-game baseball season — with fans, too.
The length of the MLB schedule has long been criticized. I even at times thought the games meant too little, especially when juxtaposed with the shortness of the postseason.
You can win 16 more games than one team and then that same team can end your season in one Wild Card game.
It may not be the best way to determine a champion in the end, but I’m here to defend the duration of the MLB’s season.
For one, it makes the playoffs a completely different ball game. I’ll never forget watching Cubs playoff games in 2016 and 2017, daydreaming about watching a game that didn’t matter all that much in late July again.
But then you get back to July, and you’re sweating bullets as some moron, below-average pitcher is for some reason coming in while your favorite team is up two runs in the 7th inning.
The 162-game season is beautiful because it all matters, and yet it doesn’t matter all that much, all at the same time. Being able to watch your favorite team 162 fucking times in a year becomes something you cherish once it becomes the one thing you can look forward to on a Tuesday night, as depressing as that sounds.
The more games, the better. The beauty of it is, if you don’t like the length, you don’t have to watch all the games! And if you do watch, you know that every game feels do-or-die in the ninth inning whether it’s April or August.
The bottom line is that I cannot wait to get my blood pressure rolling 100-plus times this year for a Cubs team that probably won’t that great. I can’t wait until the Sox lose three games in a row and their entire fanbase sets themselves on fire and runs into street traffic because Andrew Vaughn is off to a bad start and Dallas Keuchel looks old in one single start.
That’s not because I’m not rooting for the White Sox to have a good season, either. In fact, I am. But Sox fans couldn’t handle themselves when they weren’t very good. If this season ends up being as high-stakes as we all believe it will be, the ups and downs from that fanbase are going to akin to Joseph Stalin’s life: trials and tribulations, periods of supreme leadership, and lots of murdering other people for slightly differing opinions when they’re actually on your side.
And I could not be more excited for that shit.
Now, the White Sox will be in the greater Los Angeles area to kick off the season. That’s good for them from a weather perspective. It is not good, however, for every Dad reading this who is going to throw a temper tantrum when they see that the opener starts at 9:05 p.m. CT, exactly five minutes past their bed times.
The Cubs, on the other hand, will begin the season the right way: against a divisional foe (the Pirates) at 1:20 pm CT in 30-degree, windy Chicago weather.
I assumed after Monday and Tuesday’s weather that the forecast would be relatively warm for the opener. Upon checking, that is absolutely not the case — and I like it.
Every Cubs fan remembers Kosuke Fukodome’s 2008 opening day home run into the snow-packed bleachers. It’s strangely one of the most universal memories that Cubs fans above the age of 20 have.
Dreadful weather feels right in Chicago for the first baseball game. Every high school baseball player in the area has had to deal with it — freezing in the dugout, praying to God your name wouldn’t be called for a pinch hit in the latter innings, absurdly hungry, and incapable of forcing your legs to run a 40-time below 6 seconds if you were called to pinch run.
Any climate change denier would have to give up hope if it was 65 degrees and sunny for the opening week of Cubs and Sox baseball in Chicago. It’s just not the way it works.
It’s why going to opening day always sounds like an awesome idea until, like, 36 hours beforehand. We all spent the last year dying to get out of the house and get to a sporting event, but 30-degree weather with wind watching a 3-1 ballgame may change your mind.
Either way, I’m dying to make sweeping conclusions about both teams against my better judgement today. I’m getting together with a few people for the Sox game and I know I’m going to be startled by a shriek the first time an Angel hits a ball in the gap.
Last year, Sox fans will remember, the Twins led off with a first-pitch homer off of Lucas Giolito. The two Sox fans I was with, whether they’ll admit it or not, were legitimately ready to give up on the entire season about 25 minutes into it.
Let’s do this.
The Cubs offseason has been mostly embarrassing: they’ve struggled, still, to get their dumbass Marquee Network on a real streaming service for the non-cable-watching broke boys; they’ve cried poor at every turn, losing two Cubs legends in Jon Lester and Kyle Schwarber; they were stunningly inactive in the free agent market, and they traded Yu Darvish for a bunch of kids who are probably making TikToks right now, telling girls at high school parties that they are, in fact, on the Cubs; now, they’ve insulted one of the best Cubs in modern history — offering Anthony Rizzo two embarrassing extensions and reaching an impasse on talks because of that.
Listen, I get that Rizzo is on the wrong side of 30. I also don’t care.
The city of Chicago seems to botch these situations in general. They’re not typically astute in the first place, so it’s not as if they’re the New England Patriots and are making the right decisions by cutting guys off at just the right time.
Instead, they regularly leave out their most precious stars to dry at the worst times. The Cubs reportedly offered Rizzo a 4-year, $60 million deal, and then a 5-year, $70 million deal that was front loaded but offered incentives later on to make more.
For a variety of reasons, this looks terribly bad on the Cubs.
Rizzo signed a 7-year, $41 million deal in 2013 with the Cubs, which included club options for 2020 and 2021, which the Cubs have since picked up.
In doesn’t take a baseball expert to tell you that Rizzo has been drastically underpaid thanks to that contract for the past near-decade. Since he signed that deal, he has been 32% better than the average hitter in the MLB according to OPS+. He has slashed an absurdly good .277/.377/.494 over that time period, all while being an above-average fielding first baseman.
And if you’re a ‘Well, he signed the contract’ guy, you don’t deserve to have the memories you have from 2015 and 2016. Similar to what we witnessed with Scottie Pippen in ‘The Last Dance,’ players lock themselves up in long-term deals for a lot of different reasons.
In Rizzo’s case, he had played for multiple franchises at a young age, and the Cubs saw something enough in him to bring him over and give him a premier shot at starting for a long time in the MLB. Given that he survived cancer early on and had experienced on-field struggles elsewhere, sure, he was happy to sign that deal.
He may have not even known as well as the Cubs at the time just how good he could be.
Based on his numbers, he’s been a top-third 1st basemen for his entire tenure with the Cubs, and has scratched the top-3 range in multiple seasons. He had his best years when the Cubs needed him most.
And frankly, he hasn’t fallen off all that much. This isn’t a charity case. He still has plenty of baseball left in him. Last year’s 60-game season aside, he’s still capable of playing like he did in his peak years. In 2019, he had a fantastic year.
And this is not even considering what he’s meant to the Cubs as a franchise. Whether it be the Reds fight that he led in the dog days of Cubs baseball pre-2015 or his leadership throughout the good times, Rizzo has been the Cubs and the Cubs have been Rizzo for the better part of a decade.
If Lester was the first piece to the World Series puzzle, Rizzo was the pair of scissors that got the thing open in the first place.
He’s done it on the field and off, consistently contributing to meaningful charities inside and outside of the community.
His career thus far is what we’d call a best-case scenario from the Cubs’ perspective. So to turn around and low-ball him like they did is an organizational failure.
It’s not about what he’d get in the open market, either, because Rizzo doesn’t mean to those teams and those cities what he’s meant to the Cubs and Chicago. His position here is unique, of course, because of all the reasons listed above.
For a franchise that started a TV network to add to its capital, bought up the entire Wrigleyville area, and has constantly beaten its own drum about how abundant its resources are, shortchanging Anthony frickin’ Rizzo on a contract deal is just flat out pitiful.
They didn’t have to offer an unsustainable deal that many aging stars get, either. I’m not asking them to pay for past performance alone. There’s a way the Cubs can reward Rizzo for what he’s done and also pay him adequately for what he will continue to do in the future.
A 5-year, $100 million deal, for example, would finally put Rizzo in the top-5 in average annual salary for first basemen. Are the Cubs really going to penny pinch — after emptying their salary books this offseason — for the cornerstone of their best run in modern franchise history?
“All-Star first baseman Anthony Rizzo’s contract talks with the Cubs are stalled for the same reason contract talks usually stall: A difference of opinion on the player’s value.”
That was the lede of The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Patrick Mooney’s piece explaining the situation the other day. The Cubs have some audacity suggesting Rizzo isn’t worth as much as he or the fans perceive him to be worth. It feels arrogant and disrespectful.
They should be ashamed of themselves for offering the original deal, and should do everything they can to make up for it.
That deal would be about half of what Paul Goldschmidt — who’s just been slightly better than Rizzo — got from the Cardinals in 2019.
The Sox just went through this situation with Jose Abreu, who has been about as productive as Rizzo over the last seven or so years. Now, Abreu was a terrible negotiator and never thought about leaving, but the Sox gave him $50 million over three years anyway. Abreu is also three years older than Rizzo.
The next season, he won the AL MVP.
Abreu has been there with the Sox through thick and thin, well, just thin really. Rizzo has been there for the Cubs through thick and thin and also created immense value as he helped lead the team to its first World Series in over 100 years.
How can you calculate that ‘value’?
How can you calculate the value of having Rizzo on the Cubs and not on some other team, from the fan perspective?
There’s a reason that Rizzo was the best bet for the banner that goes above the Cubs section on every single one of these newsletters.
If you have to lose out on the contract in the last year and a half, so be it. Don’t make the same mistake over and over, and then claim to value your guys.
Don’t make the same mistake that the Bulls made with Scottie Pippen, Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson, that the Bears made with Brian Urlacher, and that the Bulls also made with me after they did not renew my contract as a media assistant when I was 22.
There is hope that things are on the mend. And Rizzo could be signed to a long-term deal by the time you read this. Jed Hoyer said the Cubs are very optimistic that they’ll get a deal done, and I sincerely doubt he’d say something like that if he had concerns about the negotiations.
Regardless, what led up to the deal finally being done was very Cubs-like — and that’s not something I thought I’d be saying anymore once this new regime took over. They’ve turned into a petty, frustrating organization that always takes two missteps before they get it right, if they get it right at all.
I’m tired of it.
As for the season, the Cubs will kick off a year in which they have lower expectations than they’ve had since 2014. FanGraphs projects that they’ll win 79.6 games, which is underwhelming but also could put them in the middle of a division race.
That same projection also believes the Cubs will have the fourth-worst pitching staff in all of baseball. I’m personally more bullish on the staff.
If Kyle Hendricks — who was recently ranked by MLB executives as the 38th best pitcher in all of baseball (apparently they haven’t been paying attention to the NL Central for the past five years) — is his usual self, thats a no. 1.
If Jake Arrieta can be more durable, I think there’s a real chance he could have a bounce back year. Not to where he was with the Cubs before, of course, but a year in which he pitches over 150 innings of hard-fought, productive innings.
Zach Davies has been considerably underrated for his entire career, and continues to be entering this season. He’s no Yu Darvish, but he’s been consistently good throughout his career, minus a year or so.
I’m not banking on Trevor Williams to be good, but I do think Alec Mills will continue to be a relatively okay back-end starter. He did throw a no-hitter, after all.
With Adbert Alzolay’s potential to boot, I think the Cubs rotation could actually be middle of the pack this year, which could boost them to serious contention in the division.
At this point, it’s not much, but that’s good enough for me. I just want to watch meaningful baseball.
The starting lineup won’t look all that different:
Happ
Contreras
Rizzo
Bryant
Pederson
Baez
Heyward
Bote
That’s a pretty great looking lineup, all things considered. If you consider how dreadful the core guys were last year, and assume they won’t be this year, I think there’s a good amount to be excited about.
With the Cubs manipulating Nico Hoerner’s service time and putting him down in AAA to start the season, we’ll see a lot of David Bote.
Bote has been pretty good for the Cubs and has never had a real shot to get in a groove, day in and day out. He’s also a very capable defender, though probably a downgrade from Hoerner.
With everyone else, you know what you’re getting. If Happ can continue on the trajectory he began in 2019 and continued last year, and Hayward can continue to be slightly above-average, that’ll take some pressure off the big guns.
It all begins today against the Pirates at 1:20. Let’s go.
The only thing that could make beautiful spring Chicago days better is a baseball game, live, in a ballpark. And yes, we are going to get our wish this season.
Both the Cubs and the Sox will be hosting fans at around 25% capacity to begin the season, a number that I’m sure they’ll be pushing up as the season goes along.
On the Cubs’ end, Crane Kenney knows what he’s doing (with this, at least), and he wants to the Cubs to have at least 50% of Wrigley filled by, I assume, June. If 20% capacity allows the Cubs to break even (strictly on park operations), then I assume 50% would allow them to begin clawing back some money.
There’s good and bad in the news. It’s obviously overall a great thing — fans will finally be back in a Chicago stadium for the first time in over a year since the pandemic started. And beer drinking will be allowed in both stadiums, even to start.
But season ticket holders will likely be the only ones with real access to tickets to start, at least for the most part. I know the Cubs are instituting a raffle for non-season ticket holders and I imagine the Sox will too. There will be opportunity on the secondary market as well, of course. But for now, private clubs and season ticket holders will likely be the ones reaping the benefits. Which makes sense.
But it would be nice to get some commoners back in the ballpark as soon as possible.
I may or may not have some connections to a season ticket holder that may or may not give me some tickets early on. We’ll see. If I do, I’m going to be taking a sip out of my beer and then immediately snapping my mask back over my face.
I can’t be the guy who goes viral on some sports page for not wearing his mask or not wearing it properly.
Chicago, IL — A man was either not wearing his mask or wearing it inappropriately as Wrigley Field opened to fans for the first time today. The man, sporting a shirt with Bulls Head Coach Billy Donovan’s face on it that said ‘SLICK SON OF A BITCH’, was reportedly screaming ‘That’s ten beers! Can we sign someone to an extension now Tom Ricketts!?' repeatedly. He was escorted out and later identified as the man who runs the not-very-popular Chicago sports blog Still Gotta Come Through Chicago.
I don’t know what I’ll do with myself when I get back in a sports stadium. Is screaming going to be frowned upon? Will I be able to influence the game more with my voice? Will it be absolutely joyful to enjoy a sports game with no one you don’t know within six feet of you?
That may be the biggest concern. What if we get used to going to sports games without anyone near us but our friends and family, and then all of a sudden we have to go back to watching games in person with some moron next to us who won’t shut up the entire game?
To be fair, I could be that moron. After all, the only time I have been to a sports event over the last year was the LSU/Alabama game, which was at about 20% capacity. I spent the entire fourth quarter berating Nick Saban from about 50 yards away, screaming at him that Alabama had been ‘ducking’ the University of Iowa for years and that his team wasn’t ready for a national championship.
They won a national championship quite handily mere months later.
He undoubtedly heard me, because at this point there were probably 2,000 people in the stands and I was in the 13th row closest to Alabama’s sideline.
But I’d like to think he sat up that night wondering if Iowa had been trying to play Alabama for years and his athletic director just hadn’t told him about it.
But back to baseball. I also saw that the Sox are eliminating (or at least postponing) $1 hot dogs. Is that any way to treat your fans during an economic crisis?
The Sox won my loyalty as a game-goer in large part due to that deal. Spending $8-$11 dollars on beer doesn’t feel as bad when you can shove condiment-packed hot dogs down your throat for $3.44.
I imagine Jerry Reinsdorf acted like a slum lord in offseason meetings with sox personnel.
“I will give my blessing to sign Liam Hendriks….”
“YES—”
“BUT… we have to get rid of $1 hot dogs. It’s the only way we can cover the losses.”
Either way, the moment we all get to step back into a ballpark again together, things will officially begin to feel more “normal” around here. And I can’t wait.
On the field, we all know the disappointment that washed over Sox nation last week. Eloy Jimenez tore his pec in order to come within five feet of a home run in Spring Training.
Leury Garcia, at least for opening day, will take his place in left field. Zack Collins is set to DH and Andrew Vaughn will likely get a go at both of those slots early on in the season.
As discussed in last week’s newsletter, Eloy’s injury really does put the Sox in a bit of a bind lineup wise. But Vaughn should be a bonafide ballplayer once he finds a place for himself in the everyday swing of things.
Collins has not gotten much of a shot in the big leagues, and after an impressive Spring Training, I think he’s actually likely to have a year that will surprise some people.
The Sox have a ton of talent, especially on offense. If Tony La Russa can put the pieces in the right places (not an easy task, necessarily) early on, the Sox will be just fine without Eloy.
Here is a projected lineup for the Sox tonight:
Anderson
Eaton
Abreu
Moncada
Grandal
Robert
Zack Collins
Garcia
Madrigal
That’s another lineup that looks quite nice, despite what it’s missing.
I think the most intriguing aspects of the White Sox season will be on the margins, and I also believe that will be the reason they’re either a failure in 2021 or one of the best teams in the entire league.
For instance, if Collins and Vaughn play better than expected. Or if Dylan Cease can improve significantly — he had a magnificent final outing in Spring Training, by the way.
Cease’s ERA was a decent 4.0 last year, but his FIP (fielding independent pitching), which takes into account events that the pitcher solely has control over, was much higher, suggesting he was worse than that.
He could be much better this year and still have a worse ERA, in other words, and that’ll be just fine. His ascension — or lack thereof — will be of major importance to the Sox throughout the season.
Ethan Katz’s arrival as the Sox pitching coach could do wonders for some of the young pitchers in the organization, as he did for Lucas Giolito away from the team previously.
The same goes for Michael Kopech, who was one of the most talked about Sox prospects until an injury forced him to get Tommy John surgery two years ago.
If Kopech can get innings under his belt early-ish and become an impactful pitcher by year’s end, that would also be a major win for the Sox, considering the moves they’ve made elsewhere.
The Sox signed Jake Lamb last week to major league deal. Lamb has struggled majorly with injuries in the past few years, but has had okay numbers in the past. I think it’s unlikely he’ll have much of an impact on the season — and if he does, it won’t be great news.
The final storyline that I’m anxious about is how Tony La Russa will handle the lineup situation on a day-to-day basis, which has become a harder job than it was two weeks ago.
La Russa has proven, obviously, to be a good manager in the past. His decision making hasn’t always been satisfactory, however. Crashing your car into a curb while drunk, after all, is not something I’d choose to do.
But on a serious note, I wonder if La Russa’s lineup construction will bother Sox fans over the course of the season. Ricky Renteria’s death sentence was his head-scratching handling of both the bullpen and the lineup.
If La Russa follows a simple blueprint — he should be fine. The question is whether he’ll try to do too much.
Either way, I’m excited for this Sox season, and particularly excited to see the Angels’ Shohei Ohtani make his pitching debut on Sunday Night Baseball against the Sox this weekend.
Again, let’s go.
Here are some interesting things to consider between Cubs and Sox fan friends over the season:
Who will be better this year from an Batting Average/OPS/Home Run/and RBI perspective?
Bryant or Moncada?
Abreu or Rizzo?
Anderson or Baez?
Will Cease have a sub-4 ERA?
Who will have the better year, Adbert Alzolay or Cease?
Feel free to comment your thoughts at the end of the newsletter.
The Bulls have been a whirlwind to follow the last couple weeks.
On one end, they made the biggest trade in the entire NBA at the deadline, immediately improving their team with the additions of Nikola Vucevic and Daniel Theis, among others.
On the other hand, they’ve now lost five games in a row, and the schedule shows no signs of getting easier.
So what’s the problem? For one, Denzel Valentine took as many shots last nightt as Vucevic. One is a multi-time All-Star, and the other’s shots are reminiscent of a high schooler playing hooky who wants “one more shot” when passing by your gym class.
Billy Donovan’s hand has been forced a bit, thanks to injuries to Zach LaVine, Coby White, and Garrett Temple.
LaVine’s absence began last night against the Suns, but really started against the Warriors as he was clearly hurting. Him being out obviously hurts, considering that he is the best scorer and one of the few creators on this current Bulls roster.
Coby White’s absence hurts as well, especially because it comes simultaneously with LaVine’s. Not having that jolt of scoring has hurt the Bulls as they’ve tried to adjust on the fly to having four new players on their roster.
Garrett Temple’s absence has killed the Bulls on the perimeter. The Bulls net rating is close to six points better when he’s on the floor, and he’s one of the only good perimeter defenders that the Bulls have.
That showed in last night’s game against the Suns, when Devin Booker scored 45 points. But overall, it’s really hard to be mad at the Bulls five-point loss to one of the best teams in the league without three vital players.
Pat Williams made a terrific defensive play, and also played well on the offensive end. He has already been blamed for the Booker outburst, and taken responsibility, but anyone would have trouble with Booker with defensive help that abysmal.
Lauri Markkanen had 10 points in the first quarter and yet finished with just 16. That could be the title of a Lauri Markkanen book. He has also been disgustingly bad on defense, which will not help the Bulls moving forward if they’re forced to play him and Vucevic at the same time.
The bottom line is that the Bulls need to get better defensively — and quickly. Any improvements they made before the All-Star break have evaporated in the second half.
They’re also plagued by the ample minutes that guys like Valentine and Ryan Arcidiacano are playing. These are guards getting minutes in crucial moments that cannot hit wide-open three pointers.
The Bulls had their best night of the year turnover-wise, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the lack of shot creation down the stretch, bad refeering, and worse defense.
It’s worth mentioning that the Bulls have been losing to good teams. But in order to be a good team, you need to beat other good ones.
The collapses — I can think of at least five off the top of my head — are coming back to bite the Bulls now, as they’re now eight games below .500.
The Jazz and Nets are next. The Bulls will be heavy underdogs in each, especially if the injuries persist. But it’s not hyperbole to say that the Bulls must win at least one of those games.
They are still firmly in a play-in spot for the playoffs, and their competitors have also been struggling. But the Vucevic trade was supposed to turn the Bulls into playoff contenders, not just the 10th best team in the east.
On a brighter note, Daniel Theis, who the Bulls got for basically nothing, has been fantastic. He’s made terrific passes and been one of the sole bright spots on the defensive end.
I have all the confidence in the world in Billy Donovan, but a win is in order to get this very capable team back on the right track.
Stan Bowman was somehow named the GM of the U.S. Olympic hockey team yesterday, proving that you can fail upwards no matter your profession.
But perhaps his resume has been temporarily boosted by the Hawks’ season, which continues to be one of the more impressive storylines in the NHL.
The Hawks are just under 10 points away (39) from their preseason over/under Vegas total (49.5). They are above .500 after an impressive win against Carolina in which they didn’t have a shot on goal until the second period.
Until then, goalie Kevin Lankinen held down the fort and ultimately gave the Hawks a chance to win, 2-1, in the latter stages of the game.
Lankinen wasn’t even a surefire starter heading into the year, and yet he is top-10 in wins in the NHL and also second in the entire league in saves. He’s been a godsend for the Hawks, who are 17-15-5.
They’re 5th in the division but still on track to make a playoff run the rest of the way.
Patrick Kane still remains third in points and second in assists in the NHL, and has now played over 1,000 regular season games for Chicago (sorry we missed it).
In reality, he’s played close to 1,200 given all of his playoff appearances.
It seems like the season just began, but the Hawks only have 19 games left. They have the 17th hardest schedule the rest of the way, which gives them a good shot to sneak into the playoffs in a year no one thought they would.
That’s without mentioning the return of Kirby Dach, who has been back for three games and has recorded one assist on about 20 minutes per game.
Dach has been bumped to the top line and power play with Kane, and he’ll definitely be making a larger impact as he gets his feet underneath him — and take some pressure off of Kane in the process.
The Hawks and Bulls final stretches should make for some entertaining Chicago sports-watching as baseball season gets underway.
The Bears — deep sigh — are holding a press conference Friday. Please don’t watch.
I will report back next week and tell you all the idiotic and ignorant things they spout about Andy Dalton.
Enjoy the rest of your week. Thanks for reading, thanks for subscribing, and thanks for telling your friends and family to subscribe. I really appreciate it.
And don’t forget to comment below:
Cubs treatment of Rizzo is disturbing but it seems in line with everything else they are doing meaning I have no idea what their plan is. I am losing interest fast.
Love the Josef Stalin reference.
Don't heckle people from the stands! Where did you learn such behavior? ("Calipari is a scumbag!")
Yeah the Sox were in the dumps for a little but we always kept the hope knowing our farm system had incredible potential. Kinda like how Cubs fans were saying that in 2010-2013. I also remember seeing Cubs fans lose their mind over trading darvish and letting schwarber go. Our loyalty to our players cannot be matched by any another city/fan base
That said there are obviously high expectations this year and a lot of questions. Who is going to be consistent dh who will replace eloy. I think the biggest question is pitching and only time will tell. I like what you said about not making judgements after one game cause that’s all we do. Patience is a virtue. Let’s have a long healthy season
Disappointed with the bulls but going back to my past statement it’s early to tell. there are a lot of new additions. It is difficult to gauge where we are at when these guys have played 3 games together. I am a little worried though with half the season being done. Tough schedule ahead and I’m going to need a prayer to God out of you for some defense.