Cub Tracks limbers up

Welcome to today’s episode of Cub Tracks news and notes™. Here we have material from current beat writers, bloggers, and the occasional in-house habitué, moonlighting. These pieces center around #Cubs, #MiLB, and #MLB baseball.

There’s no need for me to expound at any length on the rank idiocy of the CBA/CBT “negotiations” here. Al and Sara provide more than enough lucid commentary on the proceedings. So I’ll just have pictures.

This is what we came to see, right? I DEMAND SILLY WALKS AT LEAST.

The links are current as of press time, mid-afternoon usually, unless there’s a game. Not much danger of that right now, but I’ll happily cover minor-league and college ball, which I watch anyway, if the MLB season is tanked. I can walk to the U of Arizona from here. And I’ll cover sims if we have them. Bleed Cubbie Blue is a full-service organization.

Also, long live the Ghost of Kyiv.

As always, * means autoplay on, or annoying ads, or both (directions to remove for Firefox and Chrome). {$} means paywall. {$} means limited views. Italics are often used on this page as sarcasm font. The powers that be have provided sarcasm font in the comments.

• Michael Brakebill (Cubbies Crib*): Opening Day, full season is officially in serious jeopardy. “Another day, another yawn...”
• Evan Altman (Cubs Insider*): Huh, looks like owning an MLB team is profitable after all. “... there are a lot more numbers we don’t know because nearly every MLB team is privately owned and keeps their books very closely guarded.” Brett Taylor had thoughts about this as well.
• Tim Stebbins (NBC Sports Chicago*): Happ weighs in on labor talks as MLB deadline nears. “I think that the point there is that this is a lockout that’s imposed by MLB,” Happ said. “We could continue to negotiate and play baseball. It’s not mandatory for them to do this.” (as above)
• Brett Taylor (Bleacher Nation*): Multiple new Carlos Correa reports pop up today (Both Mention the Cubs), which is a little odd, right? “This is the kind of thing you might hear from an agent when free agent negotiations are about to kick off.”
• Tim Stebbins (NBC Sports Chicago*): Why Cubs unlikely to land Correa, per Nightengale. “If you’re going to do that, why did you trade away everybody else?” Nightengale said.
• Ed Leiser (Sports Mockery*): Cubs will look to the ‘Men In The Middle’ in 2022. “... middle infielders Nico Hoerner and Nick Madrigal, center fielder Ian Happ (who will also play left field), and catcher Willson Contreras figure to make up a key part of the ‘22 Cubs DNA.”
• Maddie Lee (Chicago Sun-Times* {$}): From Kris Bryant trade to Cubs pitch lab: Prospect Caleb Kilian hones his arsenal. “Pitching six perfect innings in the Arizona Fall League championship game was an early step for Caleb Kilian in a process that includes two new pitch grips.”
• Sahadev Sharma and Patrick Mooney (The Athletic {$}): What DJ Herz’s emergence as a pitching prospect could tell us about the Cubs’ future. “... the entire baseball operations department must prove that it can keep pitchers healthy, blend pure scouting and traditional coaching with a data-driven approach, and eventually convert all this raw, young talent into productive major-league players.”
• Duane Pesice (Cubbies Crib*): Oh, for the love of Pete. “... he’s probably due to join the big league club in 2024-25.” The Athletic’s beat writers did this take {$}. Brett Taylor has some love, too. Meghan Montemurro gets in on the lovefest. Maddie Lee is all in.

Cubs birthdays: Pete Alexander HOF, Harry Weaver, Joe Graves, Don Lee, Mark DeRosa, Jose Reyes, Hector Rondon.

Food for Thought:

Thanks for reading. Cub Tracks and Bleed Cubbie Blue do not necessarily endorse the opinions of writers whose work is linked in this series of articles. We try to present a balanced view, and let the facts speak for themselves.