BCB After Dark: Short on shortstops

Welcome back to BCB After Dark: the afterparty for night owls, early-risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. The place is rockin’ tonight after that big night at Wrigley. Please come on in to keep the party going. There are still a few tables available. No cover charge. Bring your own beverage, but keep your camera turned off. No photography, please.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

For the second-straight night, the Cubs shut out the Pirates, 7-0. The Pirates have had three-straight games where they either didn’t get a hit or didn’t get a run (but not both). Wrigley was electrifying, which isn’t something often said about a team that’s 15-20. Brandon Hughes made his major league debut and (technically) struck out the first four batters he faced. But no one made a bigger impression that Christopher Morel, who fell behind 0-2 before working the count back to 3-2 and then murdering a ball onto Waveland for a home run in his first major league at-bat. I hope he got the ball back from the ballhawks.

Last night, I asked you if the Cubs should sign outfielder Ian Happ to a contract extension. By a vote of 60 percent to 40 percent, you’d like to see Happ be a Cub for the long term, assuming he’d sign a reasonable (but not team-friendly) extension. Whatever that is.

On Tuesday nights/Wednesday mornings, I don’t do a movie section. But there’s always some time for jazz, so those of you who skip that can do so now.

We’ve got a really big shoe for you tonight with two of the biggest legends of jazz, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, playing together on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1961.

I don’t feature a lot from Ellington and Armstrong and if truth be told, I’m a bigger fan of the generations that followed these two icons than of their generation itself. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t like them or that I don’t think they were both musical geniuses. And with this clip of them doing “In A Mellow Tone,” you get two for the price of one.

Now, we have something from Topo Gigio.

Welcome back to everyone who skips the jazz and the Ed Sullivan Show.

I spent a lot of time over the winter asking you which free agent shortstop you wanted on the Cubs. I always wrote that there was a good chance that the Cubs would sign none of them, but it is clear that they at least “kicked the tires” on at least one of them.

Anyway, as this article by Nick Selbe points out, none of the big five free agent shortstops are off to a very good start to 2022. Carlos Correa is hurt in Minnesota. Javier Báez has been hurt and while he’s cut his strikeouts down, he’s been making a lot of weak contact and neither getting on base nor hitting for much power. Corey Seager got off to a poor start, although he’s turned it around lately. Trevor Story and Marcus Semien have just been all-around bad.

So we’ve got two related questions tonight. The first one is which of those five shortstops are you least concerned about? Which one is going to turn things around and start to earn their contract? And the second question is which one are you most concerned about? Which one is likely to become an expensive boondoggle for their team’s front office?

So which free agent shortstop are you least concerned about?

And which free agent shortstop are you most concerned about?

Thank you so much for stopping by. Please try to get some sleep before tomorrow’s game. Get home safely. We will call a ride if you need one. Be sure to tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow night for another edition of BCB After Dark.