Anthony Rizzo’s back in town today, and the mood is warm. He visited Lurie Children’s Hospital yesterday. He spent time reminiscing this morning in the visiting dugout. When he comes to bat in a few minutes here, he will undoubtedly receive an ovation even bigger than those granted to Kris Bryant, Javier Báez, and Kyle Schwarber over the years. For as beloved as those three were and remain, none were Anthony Rizzo. None were as easy to love as he was.
The Cubs made the right decision when they traded Rizzo, Bryant, and Báez ahead of that crushing 2021 trade deadline. 285 players have 850 or more plate appearances in the seasons since. By fWAR, Bryant is the 8th-worst of those 285. Rizzo and Báez each rank around the bottom 100, with Báez’s value coming solely from his defense. The Cubs cut bait at the right time, and the returns those trades generated are bearing fruit, most notably in the form of the electric Pete Crow-Armstrong, who came hardly an inch from hitting for the cycle during Wednesday night’s combined no-hitter.
For as well as Wednesday night went, though, for Crow-Armstrong and for the Cubs, the Cubs haven’t exactly thrived in the wake of those 2021 moves. They’re 250–272 in games played since the trades, the 11th-worst record in baseball. They’re one of nine teams who haven’t made the postseason the last three years, poised to extend that streak to four years after Monday night, when the season returned to disappointment during an eighth-inning meltdown. Rizzo, Bryant, and Báez haven’t performed well as former Cubs. The Cubs haven’t performed well without Rizzo, Bryant, and Báez.
The things that made the decision so straightforward in 2021 were each player’s performance and each player’s place on the aging curve. Each was still a good player, especially Báez, but each one’s 30’s were approaching, and each had struggled often enough in the preceding seasons that most arguments for long-term retention revolved around extensions serving as marketing moves. The struggles had mounted. We could see where things were going. Bryant wasn’t going to be worth the $26M per season the Rockies would eventually pay him over seven ongoing years. Báez wasn’t going to be worth the $23M per season the Tigers would eventually pay him over six. Only Rizzo would live up to his initial post-Cubs contract, and even he would fade. Rizzo is now a 35-year-old first baseman with eight home runs in half a season of at-bats. He’s below replacement-level on the year.
The Cubs made the right decision in trading those three players. But it was wrong decisions which made the trades necessary, especially in the case of Bryant and Rizzo.
Coming out of 2017, Kris Bryant was on a Hall of Fame trajectory. Anthony Rizzo was close, aimed for somewhere around 49 career WAR, shy of the traditional cutoff but carrying a curse-breaking trophy on his résumé to go with that baby-faced smile. Javy Báez wasn’t, but he’d break out in 2018, finishing runner-up for the National League MVP.
Then, the falloff began. Injuries have become the story for Bryant, and they undoubtedly affected his rate stats, but the rate stat drop-off while he was still with the Cubs is too large to attribute to injuries alone. From 2015 through 2017, Bryant was 44% better than the average MLB hitter. From 2018 through the day he was traded in 2021, he was only 26% better. Everything got a medium amount worse. For Rizzo, it was more purely about performance. 34% better than average between his 2012 Cubs debut and the end of the ’17 regular season, Rizzo dropped to 25% better. Those might not sound like massive gaps, but proportionally, they’re large. Bryant was only half as much better than the rest of the league than he used to be. Rizzo was only three-quarters as better than average. For Bryant, the dropoff was like if last year’s Kyle Tucker became this year’s JJ Bleday. For Rizzo, it was like last year’s Cody Bellinger becoming this year’s Jesse Winker. From MVP talk to merely good. Making matters worse, this happened during years which should have mostly belonged to each player’s prime. Bryant was still 29 years old when he got the call that he’d been traded to the Giants. Rizzo was 31 when he learned he was a Yankee. The Cubs’ jumble of hitting coaches may have connected with Báez, but they failed to get the most out of Bryant and Rizzo. They failed to keep them adapting at the pace of the league’s pitchers. Responsibility is ultimately shared, and luck plays a role, but in the arenas of both performance and health, the Cubs’ stars fell off. The Cubs had a lot to do with that.
Eventually, the Cubs will field a playoff team again. Bryant and Rizzo and Báez will eventually retire. The melancholy aspects of these reunions will fade. The joy of 2015 and 2016 will maintain their hold, growing in relative stature as the sadness recedes. But right now, it’s sad, and it’s full of lessons for the Cubs.
The Cubs can bring up as many great prospects as there are spots on the roster. They can rally around PCA and Michael Busch and ideally Jordan Wicks, Matt Shaw, and Kevin Alcántara (acquired in the Rizzo deal). Those players can thrive in their early years at Wrigley Field. But unless the Cubs keep developing them, the best we can hope for is three or four shots at the World Series plinko game followed by fall-offs, trades, and sad reunions.
You don’t only have to develop your stars.
You have to keep developing them.
News/injuries/moves/speculation:
- I was disappointed in the decision to remove Shōta Imanaga at the time it happened. I’m not positive he was telling the truth when he said he didn’t realize he had a no-hitter going. But given he threw one in the NPB and given he so effectively neutralized any criticism of Craig Counsell with that response, it’s easier to live with the call. The great thing about Imanaga is that he really seems to conceive of his job as performing on behalf of his team and his manager, doing what’s best for them. The playoff chance might be only 1-in-50 coming out of the series loss, but that’s enough for Imanaga to prioritize the team. That’s cool.
- Jorge López is onto the IL with a groin injury after allowing the decisive four runs on Monday. That’s a bad look for the Cubs, implying some potential injury mismanagement. There are a lot more nagging pains this time of year than get reported, but it’s still frustrating given how big a game that was. Trey Wingenter replaced López on the active roster.
- More troublingly, Justin Steele is on the IL with what’s been deemed “left elbow flexor tendinitis.” He’s expected to return to the mound this season, which is big, but the Cubs will miss him in these upcoming series, just as they missed him in Tuesday’s loss to Paul Skenes. Jack Neely replaced Steele on the active roster.
- The Diamondbacks have cooled off, but Atlanta, San Diego, and the Mets keep winning. The Cubs need to catch two of those four teams, trailing all of them by at least four in the loss column. The Mets host the Reds this weekend. The Padres host the Giants. Atlanta, though, hosts the sneaky-hot Blue Jays, and the Diamondbacks are in Houston. So maybe some ground can be gained there.
Games:
- Friday, 1:20 PM CDT: Cubs vs. Yankees (Marquee/MLB Network)
- Saturday, 1:20 PM CDT: Cubs vs. Yankees (Marquee/MLB Network)
- Sunday, 1:20 PM CDT: Cubs vs. Yankees (Marquee)
Wicks gets the ball this afternoon, looking to set the tone. Luis Gil’s having a tremendous first full MLB season, but his performance has trailed off in recent starts and he just spent two weeks on the IL with a back issue.
Tomorrow, Javier Assad looks to keep dodging the walks (and more recently, the home runs). He’ll face Clarke Schmidt, who’ll also be coming off the IL following a long absence with a lat injury.
Sunday, Jameson Taillon squares off with another of his old teams. Gerrit Cole is supposed to start, and while he’s coming off a good start in Texas, he did leave that start with a calf cramp. Remarkable consistency from the plotlines here.
The White Sox vs. History
With Wednesday’s win, the White Sox are now projected for 40.5 wins in FanGraphs’s average simulation. The 1962 Mets went 40–120. The 1916 A’s went 36–117. The Sox have consistently underperformed even their meager expectations this season. The chance remains high that they set some sort of record.
News/injuries/moves/speculation:
- The Sox designated Touki Toussaint for assignment and later outrighted him to Triple-A. Matt Foster’s onto the roster in his place.
- Brooks Baldwin’s onto the IL with a sprained wrist. Bryan Ramos replaces him.
Games:
- Friday, 6:10 PM CDT: White Sox at Boston (NBC Sports Chicago)
- Saturday, 6:15 PM CDT: White Sox at Boston (FOX)
- Sunday, 12:35 PM CDT: White Sox at Boston (NBC Sports Chicago)
Davis Martin and Garrett Crochet take the ball in the first two. Chris Flexen gets the third.
Caleb Williams’s Real Debut
If you could design a debut for a rookie quarterback facing obscenely high expectations, you’d probably want it to come at home against one of the worse teams in the league, ideally with that team missing a contributing member of its secondary. Another good break for the Chicago Bears.
This is the NFL, so there’s no pushover angle to the matchup. The Bears find themselves favored by 3.5, slightly more than home-field advantage no matter how you measure that variable. There’s a real risk that Will Levis outplays Williams. Williams should get a lot of grace, but I’m curious how far that grace will extend. Is Williams’s hype of the sort where Bears fans will ignore results if the results are poor? Or is it the type where the expectations are set too high, priming him to be labeled a disappointment? My guess is that locally, it’ll be the former, and nationally, it’ll be the latter. My guess is that Williams discourse will stabilize in a few years with Bears fans in a bunker claiming he’s the best in the league while other NFL fans argue his fringe top-ten status is a big letdown from what he was supposed to be.
The Game:
- Sunday, 12:00 PM CDT: Bears vs. Tennessee (FOX)
News/injuries/moves/speculation:
- Neither Jaquan Brisker nor Kevin Byard III have appeared on the injury report so far this week, while Ryan Bates was listed as a full practice participant yesterday. The Bears have some others practicing in limited fashion, with DeMarcus Walker a full participant Wednesday only to pop up on the report on Thursday, but the team may be at what passes for full strength.
- Jamal Adams is out for the visitors. DeAndre Hopkins is questionable.
No, Angel Reese Doesn’t Deserve the Rookie of the Year Award
Angel Reese is a great, great basketball player. She’s historically good at rebounding, one of the most noble things a basketball player can do. That holds true even if you adjust for her grabbing her own misses. But she’s not as good as Caitlin Clark right now. Caitlin Clark is doing more. And Caitlin Clark’s team is doing better as a result.
There’s a push for Reese to get ROTY consideration, and in almost any other year, she’d probably be the leading candidate. But ROTY is a one-player, once-a-year award. It goes to the best rookie in a given season. That’s Clark, not Reese. It’s neither player’s fault that so many nutjobs have made the rivalry as nasty as it is away from the players themselves, but that doesn’t mean the WNBA should turn patronizing and give the trophy to both of them, as a writer for The Athletic suggested this week. WNBA players are professional athletes, not children.
The Sky lost again on Tuesday, as we knew was likely. Atlanta also lost, keeping Chicago in a tie for the final playoff position with seven games left on the schedule. The Mystics have also entered the picture, but they’re half a game back right now.
Games:
- Friday, 8:30 PM CDT: Chicago vs. Los Angeles (ION)
- Sunday, 5:00 PM CDT: Chicago vs. Dallas (The U)
Not a bad time to draw the two worst teams in the league at home. Good weekend to grab a little breathing room, although Atlanta also plays Dallas before traveling to Indianapolis.
Bulls: October
Moving on from our look at the Bulls’ 2024–25 roster…here’s the October schedule:
- Wednesday, October 23rd: Bulls at New Orleans
- Friday, October 25th: Bulls at Milwaukee
- Saturday, October 26th: Bulls vs. Oklahoma City
- Monday, October 28th: Bulls at Memphis
- Wednesday, October 30th: Bulls vs. Orlando
Four playoff teams from last year, plus a road game against Ja Morant. The first bright side here is that if Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević are with the Bulls to start the year, something we do think probably makes the Bulls a little worse (I know that’s heresy to some of you), the tank could get off to a good start. The second is that with Orlando already in town on the 30th, maybe Jerry Reinsdorf will demand the front office dump Vučević back on his former owners in that moment, saving extra flight costs that would otherwise be spent on anyone the Bulls acquire.
News/injuries/moves/speculation:
- The Bulls signed Talen Horton-Tucker to an Exhibit 10 contract, the contract which can be converted into a two-way deal at the end of training camp. The Bulls have a two-way slot available, so if my count is correct, this means the Bulls will cut two of Onuralp Bitim, Kenneth Lofton Jr., Marcus Domask, and Horton-Tucker. We’ll let you know if I realize I misunderstood something about NBA roster requirements.
Blackhawks: January and February
Continuing our look at the Blackhawks’ 2024–25 schedule…January and February:
- Friday, January 3rd: Blackhawks vs. Montreal
- Sunday, January 5th: Blackhawks vs. NY Rangers
- Wednesday, January 8th: Blackhawks vs. Colorado
- Friday, January 10th: Blackhawks at Detroit
- Saturday, January 11th: Blackhawks vs. Edmonton
- Monday, January 13th: Blackhawks vs. Calgary
- Thursday, January 16th: Blackhawks at Nashville
- Saturday, January 18th: Blackhawks vs. Las Vegas
- Monday, January 20th: Blackhawks vs. Carolina
- Friday, January 24th: Blackhawks vs. Tampa Bay
- Sunday, January 26th: Blackhawks vs. Minnesota
- Tuesday, January 28th: Blackhawks at Tampa Bay
- Thursday, January 30th: Blackhawks at Carolina
- Saturday, February 1st: Blackhawks at Florida
- Wednesday, February 5th: Blackhawks vs. Edmonton
- Friday, February 7th: Blackhawks vs. Nashville
- Saturday, February 8th: Blackhawks at St. Louis
- Saturday, February 22nd: Blackhawks at Columbus
- Sunday, February 23rd: Blackhawks vs. Toronto
- Tuesday, February 25th: Blackhawks at Utah
- Thursday, February 27th: Blackhawks at Las Vegas
That is a nice, long homestand after the Winter Classic, or effectively one, with only those one-off trips to Detroit and Nashville thrown in. Coming off one of their easier stretches of schedule in December, it’s not outrageous to think the Blackhawks could get a little hot to start 2025. Of course, that road trip to Raleigh and Florida is a beast, and then the Hawks have to come home and face the defending Western Conference champs and one of the most productive teams from this offseason, but hold out some hope for a hot December and January. This is the sweet spot. After this year, the rebuild will get old. It’s only upside, and December and January are the two months when that could really materialize.
