I meant to post this yesterday but we had apocalyptic hardware issues on the back end that almost forced us to miss the first Monday of the season. I used a noise reduction filter on the recording that almost prevents local audio recordings. Or something to that effect. Cost me the whole day with customer service trying to get the audio back and thankfully we were able to figure it out.
Production issues are bullshit and never go away. Like hitting with runners in scoring position. Even when things are going well, you can never fully trust the audio waves are going to be there end of the day. Like the one time I interviewed Silvy for like 2 hours on the 2017 Cubs but had the wrong channel input selected so it basically never happened. That was a sad day.
Years later and it’s still immensely frustrating and I think that’s just a personal thing. It will never not piss me off – especially when you’re paying $59 a month to license shoddy techy.
Anyways.
Show’s here if you want to get a taste.
We’re heavy segmented this week because there’s a lot to talk about. Like:
- Michael Busch on lefties should open the door for trade deadline moves to get a better righty bat vs. another 1st baseman. We could, in theory, replace Berti/Turner with one player if Busch is an every day player in the 2nd half. That then opens the door for Ballesteros to be our left handed pinch hitter without taking up a roster spot because he doesn’t have a position.
- I understand that’s pretty complicated but that’s the biggest relief we can find without moving any pieces yet. If Busch plays every day and can hit lefties in 2nd half, then there’s a lot more structure to the bench improvements.
- There’s a weird timing consideration on my mind where I think Justin Turner gets a lot of positive attention for being a good influence in the clubhouse. That’s fine. But getting rid of him becomes tricky if guys are actually emotionally connected. So you then do it in a way and at a time where it wakes the rest of the clubhouse up. I can see the documentary now. We knew it was time to turn it on when they pink slipped JT in mid August.
- Jordan Wicks could probably fill in for Jameson Taillon for the next 3 starts and we should be okay
- I cannot stress enough how janky our starting pitching is and how lucky we are to have an advantage against the Twins last week of the 1st half
- In that vein/vain/vane – we’re screwed this weekend against the Yankees having to see Fried/Rodon to start the series. And maybe not screwed. But those are tough match ups to start the weekend which brings me back to the advantage we have against the Twins starting tonight. It all evens out.
- A 3-3 week without too many stupid mistakes isn’t a horrible thing
Last thing
I made a big argument about how I don’t care about the All Star game because our team is simply too good and there’s too many positives about a week off for some of your better players. That’s more important than Seiya having to do media and photo ops and sit in a clubhouse for 9 hours to get one plate appearances in the 8th inning that yields quite literally no benefit to the current team. Sure it’s a nice honor for contract negotiations but if I’m a purist and I only care about the Cubs, then you can cram the ASG selections up your butt cheeks.
I talk about it a lot on the show.
Check it out