The Cubs suffered a catastrophic loss last night, coughing up a five-run lead over the final two innings in Philadelphia en route to losing via Bryce Harper Towering Grand Slam™.
And while there were plenty of places to place blame—the offense, for not putting the Phillies away when they had the chance; reigning Rookie of the Year David Bote, for his one-out error that sparked the ninth-inning rally; various pieces of the bullpen, for their roles in allowing baserunners and eventually the grand slam; the Gods, for allowing baseball to exist; Javy Báez’s immune system, for taking him out of the lineup; Yu Darvish’s immune system, for wearing him down a couple weeks ago; etc.—Cubs fans weren’t going to draw the line at players, deities, and biology.
They let the beat writer hear it too.
At The Barking Crow, we try not to call attention to particularly dumb tweets by non-influential people. It doesn’t feel productive societally, and we don’t want to incentivize them to continue with the dumb-ness. So we aren’t linking this tweet, but in the replies to one of ESPN’s Jesse Rogers tweets, someone asked: “why Jesse,” presumably rhetorically (that tweet wasn’t the dumb one—in fact, it was written by a friend of ours, which is how we know about the actual dumb tweet I’m about to transcribe). To which another fan responded:
Because Jesse is puppet (sic) that never asks the hard questions to Joe. He will never call out Joe for making terrible decisions with pulling our starter too early or throwing the wrong guys in the bullpen. He’s a puppet afraid to lose his job.
*brain exploding emoji*
One of the hottest takes in recent memory, and one you’ll never hear in the media, no matter how much importance sports journalists ascribe to themselves. Also, good job by this tweeter using whatever that sales technique is where they get you to think past the sale, because I almost didn’t catch that he was ragging on Joe Maddon for pulling a starter who’s been sick lately with a should-have-been-safe lead when all parties (the pitcher, the pitching coach, and Maddon) agreed the man was out of gas.
So, was Jesse Rogers at fault for last night’s loss? Signs point to yes, because Jesse Rogers is the intermediary between this man and Joe Maddon, and Rogers clearly didn’t adequately communicate this man’s thoughts to the manager.
Will be interesting to see if the journalist apologizes.
