The Cubs won the games. They did what they were supposed to do. They swept the White Sox in a two-game series, getting back to .500 with 100 games to go. They’re in fifth place in the National League, they’re close to a 50/50 playoff probability, and knock on wood but at the moment the roster is very healthy.
It is not an especially celebratory mood.
Mostly, this is a testament to how bad the White Sox are, something we’ll get into below. But it’s also a reflection of how frustrating the Cubs rebuild has become.
The big complaint from Cubs fans these days is that the offseasons aren’t exciting enough. The Cubs fell short on Shohei Ohtani. The Cubs didn’t go after Blake Snell. There were four big-name free agent shortstops last year, and the Cubs settled for the cheapest one. The issue with these complaints is that the Cubs’ recent offseasons have actually been pretty good. Dansby Swanson was better last year than all three of Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts, and Carlos Correa. Cody Bellinger and Shōta Imanaga have been value steals, with Imanaga a legitimate Cy Young candidate. Snell’s time in San Francisco has gone terribly, and for as nice as it would be to sign a player like Ohtani, the Cubs are not the Dodgers, and changing that is a very long process which involves no small amount of luck. The Cubs have not been especially inactive, compared to other National League teams. They’re just starting from a very deep hole.
No, the issue for the Cubs is not that they aren’t doing enough in the offseason. The issue for the Cubs is that they keep struggling to develop a legitimate impact prospect. A large share of 5-WAR seasons these days come from homegrown players, because players peak younger in the post-steroid era. Every 5-fWAR season by a Cub since 2015 came from someone homegrown, and the two non-homegrown players to do it in ’15 were Jake Arrieta and Anthony Rizzo, each of whom came into his own as a Cub.
Reinforcements are probably on the way. The Cubs do have one of the best farm systems in baseball, and while they’ve screwed up youth before (and recently!), minor league development has seemed to be this front office’s primary focus ever since the 2021 selloff. In the meantime, though, a guy like Arrieta or Rizzo wouldn’t hurt. Which brings us to Mike Tauchman.
Mike Tauchman is not on a 5-WAR pace. He’s not quite on a 4-WAR pace. He’s been the Cubs’ best position player on the season, though, and he’s one of only two Cubs in the top 50 in wRC+ entering today (the other is Michael Busch, who despite his recent slump ranked exactly 50th as of this morning). Last night, the opportunity was his to finish off the White Sox, and finish them off he did.
Tauchman’s impact has been bigger than his performance since returning home to Illinois. Sixth among position players in WAR this last season and a half, he’s fourth in Win Probability Added, and WPA doesn’t count defensive plays, meaning it gives Adbert Alzolay the credit for that catch last summer against the Cardinals, one impactful enough that it would have raised Tauchman’s WPA total by something like 30%. Since joining the Cubs, Mike Tauchman has come through when the Cubs have needed him, to the greatest extent of everybody on the roster.
We don’t say all this only to sing Tauchman’s praises—though they certainly deserve to be sung. We say this because if you’re not producing stars, and if you’re not acquiring stars in trades which become lopsided in hindsight, you need a lot of Mike Tauchmans. You need a lot of guys in whom you saw value and other teams didn’t. This was the original idea behind Moneyball: Find the good players nobody else wants.
Major League Baseball roster-building has grown so efficient that it’s guys like Tauchman who make the lion’s share of the difference between fine teams and good teams. Look at the Phillies. Despite routinely aggressive free agencies under Dave Dombrowski, three of their four most productive players are Ranger Suárez (a medium prospect who was nearly a career reliever), Zack Wheeler (an aggressive free agent pickup who’s reached an unexpected level in his 30’s), and Cristopher Sánchez (even less of a prospect than Suárez, one whom even the ingenious Rays were willing to give up for Curtis Mead). Signing Wheeler was the kind of move the Cubs make a lot. Helping turn him into his present self, and getting so much out of Suárez and Sánchez, is the kind of thing the Cubs need to do to make pennants a possibility. We often pillory the importance of managers on this website. But there’s some importance to coaching at the MLB level, whether it’s the manager or assistants. The Cubs have proven to be pretty good at acquiring players. With a few exceptions, they’ve struggled to get players to break out, and they aren’t turning journeymen into regulars—the thing they’ve done with Tauchman—with enough frequency to be a real player in the current National League.
Major League Baseball is not a game where the biggest spender wins. Check the Mets. It’s about identifying the right players, and to a possibly greater degree, it’s about getting those players’ best baseball. That’s what the Cubs have been able to do with Mike Tauchman. That’s what they need to keep doing—with journeymen, second-tier free agents, and most importantly with these big-name prospects—to get back towards the top of the National League. The Cubs won two exciting games this week. They should not have been exciting.
Weekend Series
- Thursday–Sunday: Cubs @ Cincinnati
Four-game series are tough. It’s a lot to ask a team to win three out of four games in Major League Baseball unless they’re playing someone really terrible, and it’s especially a lot to ask on the road. The nice thing here, I guess, is that a split would make for a 4–2 week, which almost always plays. The pitching matchups trend towards the Cubs as the weekend goes on, with Sunday—Shōta Imanaga vs. Frankie Montas—the best opportunity to pick up a victory. Hopefully, the Cubs will be chasing a 5–1 or 6–0 week by the time it arrives.
In other Cubs news this week, Nick Madrigal broke his hand down at AAA getting hit by a pitch, Daniel Palencia is off the IL and onto the AAA roster (he was already there on a rehab appearance), Cade Horton won’t throw for three or four more weeks as he recovers from a lat strain, and Jed Hoyer spoke pretty firmly about the fact the Cubs expect to buy as the trade deadline approaches. There’s no cost to speaking that way, but it does seem like the likeliest outcome, especially with Hoyer’s seat theoretically capable of heating up. The NL is bad enough right now that you could justify buying with a record ten games under .500. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.
Pedro Grifol Does Not Lead Well
This was the first time all season I’ve watched much White Sox baseball, so if this week wasn’t representative of how this ballclub plays, my apologies. My impression, however, is that this week was very representative of how this ballclub plays. The White Sox balked in two runs last night. They extended a rally when their first baseman tried to field a groundball nearly up the middle. That same first baseman missed a foul popup. This list is not exhaustive. This list is only from last night’s game. On Tuesday, they lost the tying run at second with one out in the ninth when he got picked off in his major league debut.
It’s one thing to have a bad roster. Bad rosters happen, and they can make sense in a rebuilding situation. But sloppiness, especially sloppiness to this extent, is an indictment of culture, just as it’s an indictment of culture when your clubhouse devolves to what last year’s devolved to. In a much lesser offense, it’s also an indictment of culture when Paul DeJong’s on the radio saying he and Tommy Pham expect to be traded. We are hardly halfway to the deadline. Every White Sox player is already playing only for himself.
The worst part of this, for those sympathetic to the Sox, is how difficult this makes player development. You could argue that culture is the most important when the roster is the worst, because bad rosters often happen at times when new cores are slowly starting to take shape. That’s when habits get built. That’s when young players learn to maintain their craft. That might be the thing the White Sox are doing worst right now. Which is impressive, because the White Sox do a lot of things badly.
It’s rare that managers have a clear and evident impact on a team, and it’s rarer that a “fire everyone” mentality makes sense. But if you’re a White Sox fan and you think every coach at the major league level should be fired, there’s a very good chance you’re right.
Weekend Series:
- Thursday–Sunday: White Sox vs. Boston
Garrett Crochet pitches tomorrow, so that game is winnable for the White Sox, and Sunday games are always winnable, but a split is probably the best to reasonably hope for if you’re hoping for things from these guys. What a turnaround a split would be, though!
The Bad Girl Sky?
First, an on-court result: The Sky lost on Tuesday to the second-place Liberty, dropping to 3–5, where they’re tied for eighth place in the twelve-team WNBA. As you may have heard, Angel Reese was questionably ejected, with one of her two technical fouls later rescinded by the WNBA.
Second: Remember the Bad Boy Pistons?
I don’t know the WNBA well enough to know what’s normal in terms of cheap shots and shit-talking. I don’t think the Sky’s current gameplan features Angel Reese (the shit-talker) as heavily as the narrative does, and the narrative is definitely in heavier on Chennedy Carter (the all of the above), who’s gone from journeywoman to one of the most famous players in the WNBA overnight. But if rough play and extracurricular aggression become hallmarks of the Sky, could it be competitively effective? The 80’s and 90’s Pistons suggest the answer to that is yes.
The issue here is that the women’s sports ecosystem still cares more about branding than competition, and that’s complicated by a greater public discomfort with that kind of play from women, even if the Bad Boy Pistons enjoy plenty of nostalgic affection. Independent of sex, I’m not sure Chicago is as fond of that kind of identity as Detroit was thirty to forty years ago. Chicago’s a more genteel city, and the 2020’s aren’t an era especially friendly to physical conflict, especially in the sport of basketball, where the men’s game is presently defined by an excessive level of friendliness between opponents.
More to come, but the blueprint is there if the Sky want it.
Weekend Games:
- Thursday: Sky @ Washington
- Saturday: Sky vs. Atlanta
The Mystics are looking for their first win of the season tonight. The Dream will either be 5–3 or (likelier) 4–4 when they come to Wintrust Arena on Saturday.
Oh Good. Marc Eversley’s Sticking Around.
Darnell Mayberry reported Tuesday that Marc Eversley recently signed a three-year extension with the Bulls after being linked to the Pistons and Hornets during their front office searches. Artūras Karnišovas’s right-hand man, staying at Artūras Karnišovas’s right hand.
At this point—and this is naturally true of the White Sox as well, plus coincidentally true of the Bears—the primary real way the Bulls can get better is through a change in ownership. Ownership is currently terrible, the organization is consequently dysfunctional, and even an average ownership group would be a major improvement in a market as strong as Chicago. In the meantime, the hope is that the blind squirrel finds a nut. We know Karnišovas isn’t that nut—the man needs to change his approach significantly to inspire any sort of optimism—and while our perception of Eversley lacks the certainty to be damning, it also isn’t good. Not a lot of positives here.
Mandatory Minicamp: It Happened
The Bears had their mandatory minicamp this week, and there is nothing notable to report. It’s minicamp. It’s fun to get excited or concerned or however you want to feel, but we don’t know how you want to feel, so we unfortunately cannot be a vehicle for you on that front.
The Blackhawks Go Balling
Chris Vosters is out and Rick Ball is in as the TV play-by-play voice of the Blackhawks. Ball’s been the Flames’ play-by-play man for the last decade, and at 57, that was far from his first stop. For those curious: The Athletic released results today from a fan survey which ranked the Blackhawks broadcast as second-worst in the NHL this season, with Vosters’s inexperience drawing the brunt of the criticism. Ball and the Flames broadcast ranked right in the middle of the league. Best of luck to Vosters, who seemed fairly well-liked by regular viewers but just not quite ready for a prominent hockey job.
