Cub Tracks’ second-half acre

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 and attempt to distill the zeitgeist into a potent potable. Please enjoy immoderately.

Cub Tracks (and canine/feline associates) will once again represent against pitch clocks and other artificial constraints. We don’t think the game is too long. Like in a well-constructed tune, the spaces in between the notes are key. You may disagree. Either way, it’s only opinion. Mine smells good to me.

Jed Hoyer sold his house. What should we read into that? Is there scrying in baseball?

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• LaMond Pope (Chicago Tribune* {$}): What’s on deck for MLB? A pitch clock and bigger bases could be coming in 2023 — and eventually expansion to 32 teams. “Growing the game, we are a big fan of,” Tony Clark said.
• Evan Altman (Cubs Insider*): Cubs trail only Red Sox as most expensive fan experience in baseball. “The cost isn’t going down after the trade deadline.”
• Marquee Sports Network*: Cubs Weekly Podcast: Dan Kantrovitz analyzes 2022 Draft. “Lance Brozdowski and Tony Andracki chat with Kantrovitz...”
• Patrick Mooney (The Athletic {$}): Why the Cubs rolled the dice on Cade Horton in a pitching-focused draft. “His performance throughout the year continuously improved, which was consistent with the timeline of somebody coming back from Tommy John surgery,” Kantrovitz said. Richard Johnson has more of this.
• Tim Stebbins (NBC Sports Chicago*): Why Cubs loaded 2022 draft class with pitching. “It’s just hard to have enough pitching,” Kantrovitz said...
• MLB.com*: Cubs focused on development in 2nd half. “... they keep trying to construct the “next great Cubs team,” as president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer has phrased it.”
• Brett Taylor (Bleacher Nation*): Cubs expect to sign vast majority of draft picks, may have already landed one of their upside arms. “... you probably won’t see any kind of official announcement from the team until there are a large chunk of players to announce.”
• Bryan Smith (Bleacher Nation*): A deeper look at Jackson Ferris, the highest high school pitcher selected by the Cubs Since 2005. “Ferris was considered by many to be a top-three prep pitcher in this class...”
• Steve Greenberg (Chicago Sun-Times* {$}): For Cubs’ Willson Contreras, it’s straight from All-Star ‘dream come true’ to trade watch. “To be honest,” Contreras said, “I don’t feel like this is going to be my last time with a Cubs uniform.” Jake Misener has more of this.
• Tim Stebbins (NBC Sports Chicago*): Matt Mervis’ road from undrafted to red-hot Cubs prospect. “This weekend, he’ll officially be one step away from the big leagues.”
• Ryan Taylor (NBC Sports Chicago*): MLB announces the permission of jersey advertisements. “I think that jersey patches advertisements on jerseys are a reality of life in professional sports,” commissioner Rob Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
• Arriana Williams (WCIA*): 7-year-old beats cancer and bats for the Chicago Cubs. “It was really cool,” said Addy Szczesniak’s father Creighton. “It was just a neat experience to have all three of my daughters, their first Cubs game that they ever been to, to experience that.”

Food for Thought:

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