Cub Tracks will do anything for meatloaf

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

Justin Steele and Kyle Wright battled, with the Cubs scoring early and often. Steele threw five effective innings and the pen took over. Cubs added some timely hitting and interesting defense. Alfonso Rivas, who had been raking in Des Moines, returned and brought his bat and keen eye. Every starter, in fact, hit safely. This team is still bad but right now they look good. Enjoy!

* 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 enabled sarcasm font in the comments.

• Patrick Mooney (The Athletic {$}): Cubs trade rumors take center stage as 10-game losing streak snapped. “We know that we have enough talent here to start winning ballgames — that is the message that we’ve been spreading around,” Contreras said.
• Steve Greenberg (Chicago Sun-Times* {$}: Rebuild it, and some of them will still come. “Things with the Cubs are so bad, so bleak, so broken. Why are fans going to Wrigley Field and partaking in a grand fiasco?”
• Paul Sullivan (Chicago Tribune* {$}): 2022 Chicago Cubs share dubious history with the 1879 team — but there could be a sign of hope. “Of all the bad teams in Cubs history, we finally have a matching set, separated by only 143 years.”
• Brett Taylor (Bleacher Nation*): How Keegan Thompson just managed the best start of his career. “We know his potential. We know what he’s got,” Yan Gomes said, per Cubs.com. Tony Andracki has more. Gordon Wittenmyer has some, too.
• Tony Andracki (Marquee Sports Network*): Bigger than baseball: Contreras brothers soak in ‘indescribable moment’ at Wrigley Field. “We finally have a dream as a family come true,” Willson Contreras said in an interview with Marquee Sports Network before the series began.
• Jordan Bastian (MLB.com*): Wisdom on taking in Wrigley with his girls. “Getting to walk to the field with them every day or seeing them after the games, it’s pretty cool,” he said, in part.
• Tim Stebbins (NBC Sports Chicago*): Cubs’ Clint Frazier embraces corn, beer. “I probably lost a few pounds,” Frazier said. “Probably just because I’m a very picky eater, and being in Des Moines, all they have is corn and beer.”
• Mia Perlman (Cubbies Crib*): Cubs seem to have fleeced the Mets when acquiring Pete Crow-Armstrong. “He’s likely not going to kick down the door of Wrigley in the next year, but if he keeps playing like he did early this year, it might not be quite as long of a wait as you think.”
• Richard Johnson (Cubbies Crib*): What if the Cubs had kept star players from the 2020 season? “We can compare the performances of the departed stars and their current counterparts to get at least a rough sense of what might have been.”

Food for Thought:

Please be reminded that Cub Tracks and Bleed Cubbie Blue do not necessarily endorse the opinions of writers whose work is linked to in this series of articles. Feel free to discuss in a civil fashion. If you have any question as to what kind of discourse is allowed, here are the site guidelines. Thanks for reading!