You can easily just click through that tweet to see the original replies in their entirety.
For now, the point of this blog is to hammer home the two big questions going into the trade deadline: starting pitching and third baseman.
I feel like I’m on autoplay talking about these things but it’s important.
And you guys typically agree
This keeps going.
People mad we don’t have real 3rd baseman.
People mad about starting pitching.
People pissed about the bench.
And probably most important to me – the fanbase. For the first time I can ever remember, Cubs fans are mad at Cubs fans for being sensitive, which I take as a huge sign in the right direction. At some point you just have to enjoy the Cubs or turn them off. And at 1st place going into July 1st, I’m begging you guys to try to enjoy them. Which of course means sitting through shitty games every so often but at least look to the bigger picture.
For now I want to focus more on just a couple of the big complaints that I already talked about:
- 3rd base
- Starting pitching
3rd base is the biggest problem to me because of how we even got here. Matt Shaw looks awful and untrustworthy right now. So do we get KeBryan Hayes who is a marginal upgrade right now? Or do we get Eugenio Suarez and use Shaw as a utility infielder and pinch runner?
I think that route makes a lot more sense and I’m warming up to the deal. The sooner the better.
But I say that with sensitivity to Matt Shaw’s development because I think he’s fragile and weak. They move for Suarez now, Matt Shaw might as well just go home for the year. I really mean that. There’s some timing considerations involved if you don’t want to shatter Matt Shaw’s ego. As much as you don’t care or don’t believe, I personally want to account for his long-term development and this could very much get in the way.
And another consideration is I want to see Matt Shaw after the All Star Break. He needs to actually go home and bang his girlfriend in her parents’ basement to reset. He needs a good family picnic and maybe lunch with his high school coach. Some grounding would go a long way I think and I don’t want to move off 3rd base from him until I know for sure he’s cooked for October. Right now he looks cooked but there’s a sliver of hope he can turn it around.
And with that, I’m aware this is very confusion, which accurately reflects my thoughts on the matter. I myself am very confused because I don’t know exactly how to improve 3rd without compromising Matt Shaw. What I do know with a remarkable degree of accuracy is that we simply need to improve at the position. There’s definitely no argument there.
The other place for no arguments is starting pitching and I’m coming around on this:
Joe Ryan is very good and comes with 2 more full seasons of control so you’d have to dump a lot to get him and Duran. But that’s worth it. This is the kinda package we’re talking about that drastically upgrades the rotation and staff.
It’s expensive but I like it.
And with that, I hate just about every other starting pitcher name I’ve seen except Chris Sale.
So definitely shaping up at this point to be a sellers market as it usually is in the MLB trade deadline.
Some other starting pitcher considerations:
- Don’t say the name Ben Brown to me for the rest of the year unless he’s magically turned into a shutdown reliever.
- Jordan Wicks has been decent in AAA since coming back from injury. He’s overall still disappointing but that’s a name we forget about a lot
- Cade Horton could be an interesting bullpen name in October and I’m moving into that role for this year if he only has 2 pitches and neither of them is a 4-seam fastball with MLB command. You’re never going to survive this league the way we need him until he gets better.
- That leaves us with basically Boyd, Shota and Taillon the rest of the way and I hate that very much.
- Which brings me to my last consideration which is identical to 3rd base – we need serious upgrades if we’re serious about this team and I fully expect Jed to pull some triggers to calm the fanbase down
Me and Mahoney talk about it a lot today on the MMCS and I just wanted to raise some awareness if you’re into positive baseball talk, overwhelming complaints be damned.
LFG