Alexa
Right to Left: Clubhouse guy, Bat Boy, Matt Shaw, Vidal Brujan, Cade Horton, Porter Hodge, Colin Rea (kneeling), Justin Turner, Kyle Tucker, Ryan Pressly, Caleb Thielbar (I think)
So huge story in Chicago is Kyle Tucker took some teammates out on a boat ride yesterday and I’ve been meaning to talk about it because I think it’s extremely interesting how the team came together in the last off day.
The picture above is almost entirely new Cubs players. The only guy in the picture from last year’s club is Porter Hodge and he threw just 43 innings. For all intents and purposes, it was a new guy get together.
And quite literally every young & new guy was included in the day with Kyle Tucker, Justin Turner and Ryan Pressly. And if you’re asking me to be dead honest then I’m telling you I find this to be a pretty amazing midseason moment for the 2025 Chicago Cubs.
This is such a departure from the veterans that Theo brought in. The idea of Lackey or Lester holding court like this for the Matt Shaws of the world is legitimately laugh out loud funny. I think they would have to keep him down in AAA just to prevent exposure to the old boys and the long-standing damage it would do to Matt Shaw’s psyche. And I mean that.
Somebody ask Ian Happ about what it was like coming up in the 2017 clubhouse.
Somebody ask Anthony Rizzo about his core of veterans his rookie season.
Or maybe you could tell me this – did anyone mentor Addison Russell? Did anyone give a shit about Albert Almora? What about Kyle Schwarber?
Everything I’ve heard from the people around those teams is that it was every-man-for-himself until you became somebody-worth-a-shit. And then that put you in a special club that meant Lester would acknowledge your presence.
So when I see Tucker, Pressly and Turner hosting like this, it registers on a completely different level with me. This is where we need to be as an organization culturally if we’re going to build anything worth anything in the long run. We need these guys playing for each other and building camaraderie that transcends the day’s box score.
We have that here and more importantly…
We did not have that before, which is a primary reason why that core didn’t materialize. There’s examples along the way. Alcohol ban in the clubhouse mid 2019 because some guys couldn’t handle the access on game days. There’s the overall culture shift when the new spring training facility opened called CUB TOGETHER that I thought was super weird because it was so abjectly over the top towards Team Chemistry. One of those things you don’t talk about unless you don’t have it. And here the Cubs were talking about CUBBING TOGETHER and it made me sick.
That came from a complete lack of organizational connectivity in the big league clubhouse. There were weird factions and subgroups and just not a place conducive to playing hard for the team. Very much an individual’s roster with a clear hierarchy around who got paid what amount of money.
To what extent? Most guys would shit on Javy Baez for hours before saying one bad word about Jason Heyward’s performance. Something I would and will never understand: why is Jason Heyward’s abysmal career as a Chicago Cub so easily defended by his peers?
That’s a different conversation.
My point is this.
It’s so refreshing to see the young guys out with Kyle Tucker, Justin Turner and Ryan Pressly.
We’re talking about 3 world series champions on expiring contracts that want to assimilate with their younger and objectively-less-worthy teammates. At least in the context of traditional baseball pecking order. Fans like me are out here every day bitching about Vidal Brujan whereas Justin Turner’s asking him to spray his back with the SPF 50.
Does any of this make sense?
Because I think it’s special. I think it’s different. I think it’s exactly the kinda intangible group dynamic that will not make it into your next sabermetric but rather show up week after week in the quality of play behind each pitch. And I think that because it’s obvious these guys actually care about each other to bond in their severely limited off time.
Especially Tucker who is a shoe-in to get ZERO REST during the coming All Star break. The kinda big swinging dick that doesn’t have to do shit with the younger guys but again. Here he is hosting and facilitating a day off the field. When there’s so few, each one becomes that much more important as you know from basic Supply & Demand considerations.
All of this to say that I’m obsessed with Kyle Tucker and I think he’s quite literally the perfect person to build around because he’s the best player while being an understated and welcoming presence to everyone else. That’s so rare because you need so much ego to succeed and that rarely translates to being a good teammate to your inferiors.
Kyle Tucker is the complete opposite and that’s exactly why I want Tom Ricketts to give him a blank check.
You know what I mean?
I hope so because we’re about to go on a massive run and I need everyone moving in the right direction into the trade deadline.
That looks more like Michael Busch than Colin Rea to me?