How The Cubs Hit Rock Bottom And What Comes Next

The Cubs just went 2-9 over their last 11, and if you feel like you’re bouncing between rage and denial, you’re not alone. We sit down on the off day and get honest about what’s happening, why it feels so bad, and how to stop spiraling before the weekend. This is a fan’s-eye view of a team that can look talented on paper while still getting embarrassed in the moments that matter.

The biggest storyline is the Cubs starting pitching injuries and the chain reaction they trigger. When the rotation thins out, the bullpen turns into a revolving door, call-ups feel interchangeable, and the margin for error disappears. We also talk about trust, transparency, and why fans get so cynical when injury news feels vague. From there, we dig into the deeper fear: if the organization can’t keep arms healthy or develop enough impact pitching, how do you build a team that survives October?

We also hit the stuff everyone argues about: PCA’s trash talk and why it lands differently when the team is playing sloppy, plus the Cubs runners in scoring position problem and what “clutch” really looks like when you break it down into mechanics and approach. Then we take a hard look at Cubs trade deadline reality in late May, when there are barely any sellers and every phone call comes with a tax.

We end by turning the page toward the Astros series and a 25-game plan to stay afloat until the calendar, the standings, and the market finally loosen up. Subscribe, share the show with a Cubs fan who’s losing it, and leave a five-star review on Spotify or Apple so we can keep building this community.

Thanks for tuning in! 

- Carl & Mahoney

Transcript

Why This One Is Solo

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Good morning, good afternoon, and evening Chicago Cubs fans, and welcome back to the Monday Morning Cubs Show. Today is Friday, May 22nd, and the Chicago Cubs are 2 and 9 over their last 11. It's your host, Carl. It's a Friday show. This is our second episode of the week. Mondays is me and Mahoney. Fridays is kind of settled into these solo shows. You know, as personal stuff gets into scheduling, it's difficult to guess. We've talked about this a little bit last week with some of the sausage. So, like it's a solo show. You know, and to be quite frank, I talked to some friends in the Cubs circle, in the Cubs community, personal friends, people that do this shit for a living. And I can tell you just from these preliminary conversations off the top of this show, there's no reason for me to have anybody else on here. If you're a maniac and you've tuned into this, if you give a flying fuck about what I have to say about the Chicago Cubs, I'll just tell you right, we're just at a point it is would be a complete waste of time for me to try and share this conversation with somebody else. Because we got to be on point. We got to clean this up. There's so much to get mad about if you want to get mad about. And there's plenty to sell if you want to be positive, you know. And I'm gonna do my best. And that's part of the intro that I wrote down. I wanted to do this show when I calm down. Now, this is off day Thursday all day just walking around saying, when I'm calmed down, I'll do the show. When I've come down from getting our doors blown off by the Milwaukee Brewers, I'll do the show. When we can't score against rookie fucking pitching from the Atlanta Braves and beat Chris Hale, then lose across town Klassic, then get swept by the Brewers. When I calm down, we'll do a show. Cause I don't think there's any value in this relationship if I just come in here and bitch, and that's all I've wanted to do for like the last four or eight hours. More than that, 48 hours is generous. Fort Hours is very generous. All I've wanted to do is complain, and all you should want to do is complain if you follow the Chicago Cubs. So these are just the opening remarks here, guys. I have a show planned, prepared. The genesis of this show is so that we can move on from the fact that we're two and nine over our last 11. Like if we just came in here and just filled the bucket of sadness, we're not doing shit for ourselves going into Memorial Day weekend. Like first weekend of the summer. You know, a lot of us are local in Chicago here. This is it. This is where it officially starts, you know, and a lot of people have plans for this weekend. I'm going to Vegas for my father-in-law's 70th birthday party. We got a whole crew going out there. So we had great time. You know, lurking in the back of my head is we just we don't have any starting pitching. So we have some shit we're going to work through in this show. And the goal is that at the end of the show, we're ready just to play the Astros and turn the page. Because that's a common phrase used in baseball at all levels, once you get past the point of giving a shit. So, like, you know, I'm sure guys listen to this, played varsity ball in high school, have heard this. Turn the page, turn the fucking page, turn the page. You know, you lose to your rival, you got to come out and play tomorrow. And so the great thing about major league baseball, just the most elevated part of it, is every day is the opportunity to turn a page, right? So we'll get there. But if you think I'm getting there without being mad first, you're out of your mind. You're out of your mind if you think we're not going to make room to get mad about the Chicago Cubs. Because I said last week, I introduced the concept of sausage, the Monday Morning Cub show sausage, which is our way of saying behind the scenes stuff with the Monday morning cub show, you know, w which is there's a lot, believe it or not. Uh and the sausage this week was, you know, I like had an I had like a thorough conversation with Mrs. Carl over dinner tonight because I'm like, hey, I'm nervous. I don't want to sit down and just bitch. But all I want to do is bitch. But I don't want to sit down and bitch. Because then it puts other people in a position to bitch. And I'm just conflicted about, you know, what are what what are or are not my responsibilities if we're gonna build a community of maniacs, people who just love it are in at 162, you know, whose lives are significantly improved or worse off based entirely on how the Cubs play. And it means a lot, you know, so like it's so disappointing to go two and nine over 11. It's so disappointing to get swept at home against the Brewers, just fucking doors blown off against a team that's won the division four straight years with a fractional payroll, fraction of the resources, a fraction of a fraction of the fan base. And like when it comes to just putting nine guys on the field and playing baseball, they just blow our fucking doors off. So we're gonna get mad. So here's the structure. This is the conversation we're gonna have today on Friday. We have the Astros for a 120. We have the Astros for a 120 Saturday. It's a 120 special this weekend. Uh, we're gonna use the off day to our advantage, though. We're gonna use this opportunity to clear our heads, to bitch, to get over it. And I have a couple solutions. And when I say solutions, you know, I don't work for Jed Hoyer. This is this this is not a Chicago Cubs endorsed podcast. If he is listening, though, he's probably better off. That's how strongly I feel. You know, and I have a lot of respect for Jed Hoyer. Carter Hawkins, not so much. You know, a lot of the people in the front office are there for reasons outside of their capabilities. You know, it's such a big machine. So a lot of these people in that front office, you know, if you know somebody or you heard of somebody or somebody from your hometown, they got the job, they're the analyst. They don't mean fucking shit. They don't mean shit, they don't do shit, they're not capable of doing shit. Because if you if you were, you'd work for the Tampa Rays, you'd work for the Los Angeles Dodgers. You know, you'd be in a front office that actually had firepower, not Jed Hoyer holding Carter Hawkins' fucking hand. You know, whatever shit scouting department we

Sponsor Shoutouts And Community Support

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have. So I'm obviously in a little bit of a mood. Before we do, though, the only reason I can broadcast the type of mood that I'm in is because of Thirsty Vaquero, a Mexican-style soda with the signature spicy finish. That's all bite no rattle. And because of the partnership we have with Thirsty Vaquero, Mahoney and I will be at the Friday game with the Astros, uh, or against the Astros with some friends from the beverage industry that are interested in learning more about Thirsty Vaquero. So I've said forever to you guys, like, hey, it means a lot that you guys, you know, show some interest, check out a sampler platter, you know, leave a review on the show. I I've constantly told you guys that this it does help. So a good example of how it helps is like, believe it or not, over the couple years, we've built up some momentum. You know, five stars on Spotify ain't no fucking joke. When you get over to a couple hundred, five no one stars. Uh, you know, and the same thing with Apple Podcasts. So, this is just my opportunity earlier in the show, integrated with the Thirsty Vacero ad read to say thank you to everybody that has participated in the community and helped me build this up. Because, like, now a good thing that's happening out of this is like, hey, seeing you guys are getting traction, wanted to sit down, maybe we get a meeting if you guys are interested in coming to the suite, want to talk to you guys a little bit, learn more about what's going on with Thirst of Vacaro. This was this is real. I mean, it's just as real as real gets. So I haven't been to a Cubs game this year. I'm trying to lay low, not necessarily just because I want to lay low or there's some personal fucking thing there. It's just I've got so many years under my belt of chasing home games, whether it's going solo, going with people I hardly know, etc. This year we're just quarterbacking it from fucking Stirred Family Farms HQ. Unless, you know, there's some certain circumstances that make us get out of fucking bed the morning and say we got to get to Wrigley. Thirsty Vaccarrow gave that to me in the fact that we've built this relationship now. So some distributors, etc. How great is that? You know, we're gonna bitch about the Cubs. I'm gonna get him. I've got a couple trade deadline speculations, some commentary on this. We're gonna take that a little bit further than what we've done historically. You know, and by that I mean like it's a little early in this. We're gonna get to that, we're gonna get pissed off, then we're gonna look for some solutions, we're gonna prepare for the Astros, and all this stuff's gonna happen because of Thirsty Pacero. So if you haven't put a can in the hand yet, I cannot recommend it enough. I cannot. I'll be telling trade secrets if I dispelled some of the uh you know behind the scenes stuff that they have going on. They're so fucking big and have gotten so big so quickly, it's crazy that we're on the ground floor of this. Somebody's gonna bitch, they're gonna be like, I don't give a fuck about this ad reader. Blow me. Get on your knees and I mean not blow me like in the esoteric philosoph philosophical sense. I mean quite literally get on your knees and put my fucking dick down the back of your throat. If you got a problem with how long I want to talk about Thurston McCarroll, because there is no show without him. So if the whole show is just me talking about organic agave, that would make sense from a business standpoint because they're paying for the fucking shows. You know what I mean? So I'll give you an example. The last thing I want to do right now is sit down alone and try and ration my way through Chicago Cubs 2-9 over 11 with two 10-game winning streaks and a big fucking payroll in the infield. I mean, just be honest with that. And no starting

The Pitching Injuries Spiral

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pitching. The last thing I want to do is sit down. Eddie Cabrera's out. Matt Boyd out, Justin Steele out, Kate Horton out. The guy that is supposed to like crack into that mix, Jackson Wiggins, out. Just out. I mean, I'm not we're not even talking about bullpen here. I'm just talking starting pitching. You know? There's so much shit to get mad about, talk about, etc. So just shout out Thirsty Vicaro for making the show happen. Go check him out. We could have some cool stuff coming, you know. Who gives a fuck if we're two and nine over our last 11 about the cool stuff I've come with there's like that I will agree with you. The people that are like, alright, we get it, dude. You're sponsored by them. Like if if you really care about the Chicago Cubs, I understand you don't give a fuck about Mexican-style sodas right now. But if you do go to Amazon, you know, get a vigilante pack, that's a sample platter. So, like I said, let's just get mad first, just get off our chest. You know, 11 something minutes into the show, people are like, why is he not motherfucking people? You know, why am I not calling for people's heads? And that's because it just again, I come back to it's May. You know, it's May. No one wants to hear it. I don't want to hear it. I watch every I'm in it. I'm I'm in it. I cancel social plans because the Cubs are on. I build my work schedule around the fucking cub schedule. Like I build my can you help with this? I can't, the Cubs are on at 1.20. But I'm available after 4 30 p.m. Do you know how bad that is for my own personal business? I mean, I'll just just the personal sacrifice that goes into being available to follow this shit. You know. And I should say I'm glad I didn't record this. I was so mad after that Brewer series after Kyle Harrison shoved it up our ass after Jacob Mizorowski made us look like a fucking little league team, like he is pitching from 45 feet. And I get he throws 103, but he has two pitches. You know, we're overmatched. On in all situations where you know a four-seam fastball is coming against Mizorowski, we're completely overmatched. Now, he has a generational four-seen fastball. So, like, credit words due. Got it. Generational fastball. It's all he throws. It's all he throws. It's not the Mariana Rivera Cutter where you can't hit it because it moves just so much. I mean, we're talking about a dead ass straight forcing fastball. I mean, good rise, good carry, hard to pick up, all that shit. But that's just a fastball pitcher who just ate our fucking lunch. You know, Ky Harrison's a great pitcher. Mr. Alski's like in phase one of learning how to be a major league pitcher. And on the subject of which, if that guy doesn't get hurt, he's the first ballot Hall of Famer. If if he if he doesn't sustain multiple injuries, obviously he'll be out for a year. He's gonna miss a year at some point. So this is the I'm already getting ahead of myself where I'm talking myself out of getting mad. I'm mad we we just got embarrassed. Now here I am rationing my way into saying, well, Mizerowski's that good. I have to table that. You guys gotta keep me honest. You guys have to keep me honest on this. I cannot be sitting here at this stage of the show telling you guys that it's okay because Jacob Mizarowski's going to Hall of Fame. The problem is we're so overmatched. I mean, it wouldn't matter if he was pitching against us, if he's pitching against the 27 Yankees. We're overmatched. You know, and the emotions with this team all over the place. And the fucked up part is the first 15 games of the season, it was win-lose, win-lose, win-lose. I should say lose, win, lose, win. Because we're what, six and seven, six and eight? And it I don't think we lost two in a row or won two in a row. I think it was just consistently losing, winning, losing, winning. And we're sitting there going, man, this is kind of tough when you win and you lose every other day. Be nice if we get hot. So we win ten in a row. That's getting hot. And then and then obviously you lose the Dodgers series, battle against the Padres, and then go right on another 10 game. Man, this is this is good stuff. This sure puts a six and eight star to bed. You know, cuz because who are we? A six and eight team, or are we a team that wins ten in a row in Major League Baseball? Which is very obviously extremely difficult to do. Much less do it twice in your first 40 games of the season. So what what team are we? You know, what team are we? And I and I would I would say right now we're the team that's that's two and fucking nine with no starting pitching. You know, Cabrera, uh, he got a middle finger blister or something. But the velocity's been down. If you're in his camp and you're giving Eddie Cabrera any insight at all into how to manage the fact, velocity's down, spin rates down, all the stuff you use to measure a pitcher's effectiveness uh outside of results, right? Because for whatever reason, we don't like results. It's a fucking crazy thing about baseball. You know, you could throw six innings and give up five earn and still pitch well. Apparently, people say that. I will not subscribe to that. I won't. I'm not gonna ram it down your throat. I think it's a bunch of pussy fucking bullshit. But you

Front Office Trust And Transparency

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look at the data from Cabrera when he pitches, he's out there and it's like, well, normally he's 96, he's 92 and a half. That's not an accident or on purpose. That's that's because it's the result of something, most often injury, which is speculation we've had for Eddie Cabrera for the last couple weeks. So for him to leave the game, and then the Cubs, who are historically known for being shady towards the media, fucking state sponsored North Korea propaganda, as far as I'm concerned, on the same category of Kim Kim Jong fucking oon, whatever their dictator is, that is how the Chicago Cubs run their media. So if you think you're gonna get any transparent information, I mean, just look at what we did with Kyle Tucker last year, or I mean, an even easier example, and I hate to point this out, but just like they tried like the Cubs actively tried to cover up the fact that Matt Shaw went to Charlie Kirk's funeral services. Whether you agree or disagree with Matt Shaw's decision to do that, we've talked about that a thousand times. He's an adult, he'll make whatever decision he wants. And if you want to sit around and complain about other adults, you know, then that just says way more about you than it does his decision to go see a friend. That's my opinion on the matter without getting religious or political. But I'm pointing it out because the Cubs went out of their way to try and keep that a non-story. And that's a guy going to a funeral. That's that's a that's a reserve player missing time. Well, I guess he's playing third base at the time. Not like anybody gave a fuck about him until they missed it. And the Cubs botched the whole thing instead of just coming out and being like, hey, Matt is a devout Catholic. He and Charlie have a close friendship through their faith. Matt personally asked after being invited by the family. So we're gonna give Matt that, and it's up to Matt. And Matt made that this the Cubs were like, we Matt, Matt's Matt's Matt's having lunch with the family, but now why do we talk about the Matt Shaw Charlie because Eddie Cabrera does he have a middle finger blister? I'll believe it when I fucking see the blister, is what I'm saying. You know, next start isn't j next start isn't happening. You know, and then what's gonna happen? We've learned through our evaluations after looking at his blister that his rotator cuff is fucked. Like that that's how the Cubs are gonna go about this. Because they're gutless. At their core when it comes to fan relations and just generally the way the Cubs represent themselves towards stake uh I wouldn't say stakeholders, because that then includes, you know, the fucking Ricketts family and the people like fan, fans. The people who give a shit. They're so bad to us and they treat us like such morons. You know. So we're gonna get like mad what mad. I sit 20 minutes into the show. I thought I'd be done being mad at like fucking five. I'm sorry for the F words here, guys. But if if I did this show 24 hours ago, it would be nothing but F-words. And Dragon Craig Council. I mean, Pat Pat Mur Pat Murphy was out of baseball. Pat Murphy did not want to work in Major League Baseball. Pat Murphy had been recruited to work in Major League Baseball forever. It wasn't until the scandal broke in Arizona State. Now, what was the scandal? You know, some people say he was paying players, some people he was banging chicks, you know, probably a little bit of both. Shady behavior. You know, you're not a football coach. That that's that's kind of where they cut the like like the threshold for college coaches and shady behavior, like football and basketball, very high. Very high. You could bang interns and crash cars, lie to recruit. You could do so much stuff, but in non-revenue or break-even sports like Arizona State Baseball, where Pat Murphy coached forever, the threshold's so much lower. And my understanding is he like had exhausted it and he's out of baseball. He shouldn't. My point is Pat Murphy shouldn't be managing. Pat Murphy doesn't even want to manage Major League Baseball. Like, actively turn down Major League Baseball jobs forever. Forever. And he's the manager of the Brewers because Craig Counsel left in the middle of the night to take the largest managerial contract in Major League Baseball history. So we could fire David Ross and hire Craig Counsel, and now three years later with a payroll that's twice the size of the Milwaukee Brewers and players with significantly higher accolades, the Brewers just come into our house and shove it down our fucking throats. I'm yeah, I'm mad about injuries. Sure, yeah. I I would rather just start with losing five in a row, uh looking like children on Saturday against the White Sox, being a bag of shit on Sunday, you know, from a run prevention standpoint, and then just coming, it's like, all right, whatever, that was tough. We lost a crosstown classic, we'll bounce out of it. We got this brewer series, you know, now you know, water finds itself, rises to the occasion, whatever you're saying is, whatever your dad said when you were a kid. You know, the cream rises to the top, Charlie. Some shit like whatever you're familiar with. That was the moment on Monday. And we got fucking destroyed. You know? In the words of Bob Knight, you got fucking destroyed. And come out again, destroyed. Just not not even close, game two, and not not nothing's close game.

Development Problems And Thin Prospects

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Three. So the bewilderment, you know, we're gonna ramp it up here. Fuck it. I'll get mad. The injuries blow me away. They don't blow me. I wish they did. I wish an injury, it's like he's out for the year. I get a blowjob. That'd be great if the injuries blew me. They don't. They blow me away. I'm astonished. Kate Orton, Justin Steele, Matt Boyd, nowhere to be found. And nowhere to be found anytime soon. Obviously, Kate Orton out for the season. Justin Steele, big question mark. Again, another little shot at the Cubs. Zero transparency for one of your longest tenured players, certainly the leader of your pitching staff. Zero transparency from the Chicago Cubs about what's going on with that. Zero transparency. Where's Jackson Wiggins? You see injuries to the top three guys in our rotation. You think to yourself, maybe our top triple A prospect, maybe it is worth accelerating his major league debut for a lack of like debt. We don't have anybody else. How many Colin Ray starts? James and Tan makes starts. You know, Javier Asad, option, Jordan Wicks injured. Eddie Cabrera out. I'll do it again. Eddie Cabrera out, Kate Horton out, Justin Steele out, Matt Boyd out. If ever there was a time where you're like Jackson Wiggins, you get the lowest stress start of all time for your major league debut. Because we have an elite core of veteran players. We have no start. Here you go, Jackson. Where's he? I know he's not pitching, but if the Cubs said anything about their top pitching prospect, and on the subject of top pitching prospects, let's just get fucking mad about this. Pull up the Cubs' top prospects. All right. One through fucking 12, you're going to see one pitcher. His name's Jackson Wiggins. He ain't even fucking pitching right now. Then you get this group of just slapdick average Jamokes. 12 to 16 is where you're going to see our pitching prospects. Nowhere near it. Top 100, top 250, top 500 list in Major League Baseball. And I mean nowhere near it. We don't even have, we don't even have guys that could maybe pan out three years from now. And the big question is, what are we doing right now? And you go look at the talent we have in our farm system. There's one guy who's capable of pitching in the big leagues right now based on his talent. I'm not even saying based on what he's accomplished, based on his talent. His talent. He's hurt. Shocker. Shocker, he can't pick up a ball right now. So that's either we draft these guys, we develop them incorrectly, we don't have velocity training programs that are safe for guys to use. I mean, there's something here. There's gotta be something here for all of the amount of just uh yeah, fine, I'll go back to it. For the amount of I've blown our pitching development, our pitch lab. You know, Mac Boyd is pitching better than he ever has in his career, provided he's on the mound. He's not on the mound. The number one statistic in baseball is your what? Games played, your availability. When you cannot play, you are the least valuable version of yourself. There's no more simpler terms than that. Almost in the rarest of circumstances, you'd have to be Jeff Francore in the second half of his career. We're actually playing as a detriment to your team consistently. So what are we mad about? Yeah, the injury. So who do you point your finger at? I think Jed built a deep pitching staff for the start of the season. It's like, well, we're gonna get Justin Steele back at the end of May, early June. Jackson Wiggins should be coming up. You know, Matt Boyd will take steps forward. We've got Show to slot it as our four-five. You know, just think about it like that. Obviously, you have every right to be. Now, is it mad? Usually mad means directed at somebody. I say I'm mad. And then the follow-up question is, what are you mad about? And said the alternative would be I'm frustrated, I'm disappointed. The the then the question is, what are you frustrated with? Now, do you guys understand that slight little nuance between what are you mad about and what are you frustrated with? When you're mad about something, you have to be very specific. You have to be locked in. If you're in an argument with your girlfriend or your wife or something, I'm mad about this. Like, get get prepared because you just called her out. You're mad about something, she's gonna fucking destroy you because you just put her on guard, touche, my friend. Now, if you go, hey, I'm really disappointed with this. Now you have her attention. And I'm not, this isn't turned into a relationship advice. Like, I'm just saying generally, as we talk about the Cubs, like, do I want to get I'm mad? Am I mad at Jed Hoyer? I'm not mad at Jed Hoyer. Jed Warrior traded for Michael Bush. Jed Warrior extended Nico Horner. You know, Jed Warrior's done a lot of good things for this team. Jed Hoyer drafted Cade Horton. There's a lot of nice things Jed Hoyer's done with this team. Jed Hoyer brought this team out of like, I mean, you won't every time I say this, I know people listening are gonna be like, yeah, sure. Like, whatever the equivalency of bankruptcy is. When I say I've said this before. When the Cubs had, when I tell you the Cubs had no cash when Theo left. Like Len Kasper left to go, do you think he'd left? Because it was in complete disarray during COVID. A complete shit show. So much that Theo Epstein resigned a year early and then told people the time is right. Guy breaks a commitment, then tells people it's the right time to break a commitment. Now, why would somebody like Theo Epstein do that? It's because the fucking house is burning down.

unknown 28:12

How?

SPEAKER_00 28:12

Chad Hoyer inherits it. Uh, took a little bit of time to get a competitive team back. There would be my first big criticism, but we don't have money to spend it on the free agents and we don't have a farm system because we fucking burned it in the, you know, Rizzo core. So when I say we get mad, you want to get mad at Jed? I can't believe he traded Owen Casey for Edward Cabrera. Buddy, they're both not that good right now. You know, and like Owen Casey will be lucky to be average in his career. I repeat, Owen Casey will be lucky to be average in his career with all that fucking swing and miss. Watching the F words. But like, don't be pulling up his slug and his home run total and comparing it to Eddie Cabrera now that Eddie Cabrera is on the he's not on the IL yet. We're being told it's a blister injury. I'll bet my left testicle, which is the one that hangs a little bit lower. I will bet that it's significantly more serious than a blister on his finger. And that the middle finger is just a show and tell thing. Now there's a there's actually a couple valid reasons for why you would conceal an injury like that. Maybe I'll get to that when I'm done getting mad about the fact that just the injuries are just unbelievable. They're unbelievable. So like a novice would be like, is that typical to have your top three starting pitchers out? Now, throughout the course of a season, absolutely, absolutely typical that three of your five pitchers miss starts in a modern 162. May 22nd misses darts? Three of them? Now, is that a systemic problem? Is that a Cubs problem? Is that organizationally just not getting guys ready? You know, or should we just sit here and bitch about the fact that the the Brewers just blew our doors off? We weren't ready to play that series. I'm starting with the injuries. I'm mad about the injuries, and then underneath that, this nameless bullpen like Hunter Harvey, out. Tealbar, out, fucking Mayton blows. Ben Brown was in the bullpen, now he's in the starting rotation. Javier Arsard was in the bullpen, now he's option. We have a we have a nightmare scenario with the pitching staff. And again, it's like I'm I am mad about that. Who do who do you get mad at? Do I get mad at Jed about this? We're getting close to the territory where we're like, are you seriously, dude? 35 million for Bregman and we who's we we have four starters now. $35 million for Alex Bregman. Like 35. That's that's is that's so much that's so much money. I just $35 million in Alex Bregman, and we're bringing in guys out of the bullpen. I mean, you lit you literally need baseball rep, you need to have baseball reference on hand when they bring these guys into the games to just even remotely familiarize yourself with like just the Corbin Martin's up, Corbin Martin's down. Who the fuck was Corbin Martin to begin with? And I fancy myself as an expert. I'm over here, you know, uh getting the magnifying glass out on the back of baseball cars to try and get my hands wrapped around some of these players. So who do you get mad at about that? Like, I I think that's a Jed thing, front office thing, just the overall culture thing. How the fuck do we not have arms that are coming up in the system that could throw harder than 94 miles an hour? Why is every guy I see that comes up from AAA throw 92, 93 with a sweeper? Like real fucking generic. I mean, just real generic stuff. Where's the gas? See, we have all of the bad with none of the good. We have all of the injuries and and not because you know, guys are throwing 100 and blowing their arms out. We just oblique hamstring blister. Fuck is that? You know, knee scope, something. I don't just stuff where you're like this this it's so atypical that then you can circle back around and go, it's preventable. It's so out of the blue and ordin unordinary that the only way you could find any fault is with the way the Chicago Cubs prepare their pitchers. It's it. It's it. Matt Boyd's out. You can't handle Justin Steele's fucking rehab. You can't look at Cade Horton's biomechanics and realize the arm is moving faster than the lower body there. And like may maybe, maybe there's something there where we need to build up his lower half or at least put him on a different throwing program so his arm isn't shot in April. Maybe, you know, like we're supposed to be good at developing people we trade for Edward Cabrera. He just got worse every start out until he had to leave because blister's on his finger. Uh, you know, and then sloppy play. Obviously. By the way, I'm I'm on the third of eight notes here. I wanted this to be a 40-minute show. It's 33 minutes in. People don't believe me either when I say the timing stuff, but I am serious when I say that. And we're on the third note here, and it just I have to get mad because I know people are mad. Now, when I say get mad, like I'm not stopping my feet. I'm not motherfucking. I may am smart enough to understand it's late May, mid to late May. We're in the last week of May, second to last week of May. We're getting to the last week of May. It's it's we're not a third of the way through the season yet. So getting mad, this isn't like Bears lose week 16. You can just flip a table and throw your remote through the wall and all that stuff. Because again, they played if we sweep the Astros, anybody want to get mad? Didn't think so. But right now, in this moment, two and nine, your last 11, and sloppy play. You know, just sloppy, just not that not crisp.

PCA’s Trash Talk And Leadership

SPEAKER_00 34:41

And that makes it much easier for me to highlight the the PCA stuff, you know. Should I be doing TikToks on this? Do I need to do an Instagram reel on this news break? I don't want to. I got other shit going on. I see this, I'm like, this fucking mother ugh. Watch the F-words. But my knee-jerk reaction is this little punk ass bitch who had like two good months. You know, just like shut the fuck up, Pete. How about that? How about just shut the fuck up? Maybe don't talk shit if you're an eight-hitter. You know? You're a talented eight-hitter. You hit eight in Major League Baseball. You ain't AJ fucking Pierzinski, buddy. You don't have back control. You don't come you don't you don't own your plate appearances. It's the complete opposite. Almost every single pitcher that faces you has you in the palm of their hand unless they make a mistake. You are a mistake-driven baseball player right now. Okay, offensively. And then defensively, because you run your mouth, whether it's to a fucking White Sox fan girl or about Dodgers fans in the offseason unnecessarily, whenever it is, um, you know, you're you're making these statements as an eight editor who hasn't accomplished shit in baseball. And that's kind of the problem, the old school attitude that comes back. Because people like it. I did the big hand interview, we talked about it, you know, and Dan's like, well, I like it because he knows he's got to call people out and he's got to be competitive, and blah, blah, blah. And maybe that works in football. Maybe that works with the Chicago Bulls or something. I'm telling you, as a lifer, as a diehard guy, like it it has net, it has literally never worked out like that in Major League Baseball. If you are the young talented guy, you have to be sweet. You have to be sweet at all levels. Sweet meaning like, sweet, oh, you're sweet. Sweet also like you're so fucking cool. You have to be Ken Griffey Jr., you have to be Mike Trout. If you're gonna be a superstar level player and you're gonna carry yourself a certain way, that chip on your shoulder shit, that don't fly, buddy. Not when you are as physically gifted and all this stuff off the charts. You can't have 80 speed and a 70 arm and 60 power and all that stuff, and then turn around and be like, Yeah, I got a chip on my shoulder against a Dodgers, or I'm talking shit to White Sox fans. The fucking White Sox girl you're talking shit to is probably making $18.50 an hour. Been looking forward to the Crosstown Classic for the last year, probably got the tickets for Christmas from her dad, living in fucking Crestwood or hometown in one of those halfway houses, you know, one building, two houses, fucking 12 family members, six of them are cousins. Just die hard, gritty shit, dude. Taking a fucking pace bus, you know, so she can get on an orange line train. Like, I'm not even joking. The fact PCA is talk is talking shit, and it's like Cardinals fans, I get it. Brewers fans, 100%. You want a jab, jar, whatever. But like it without overreacting too much, the fact that he gets fined by he get he gets fined, was it five thousand dollars for his behavior towards white sox fans? Is all it's it. All they need to know. It's it's white sox fans aren't pussies, they're not bitches, they do talk a lot of shit, but it's not like you went after a sensitive group of people here, or or you instant or you poke the bear uh and the bear's a huge pussy. Like you're literally talking shit to the best of the city of Chicago has to offer, in my opinion, are White Sox fans. And my st of course I'm biased from the South Side as a Cubs fan. But you guys know, dude, the guys listen to this that have their buddies that are White Sox fans, you know how much they care. You know how much deranged they are, you know how much it meant to them that they won the Crossdown Classic. You these people are a different breed and they're special. And and I don't want to be one of them. But if you can't acknowledge the fact that White Sox fans are cut from a different cloth, uh then you're not from here. You know, and if and if you are from here and you can't make that distinction, then you're a moron. And I mean that. In in every way that I can say that without being disrespectful towards Cubs fans, and it really fucking bothered me. It really bothered me. That PCA acted out towards these people in his own cities. Go out to dinner with Caleb Williams and Mattis and all this shit. Where's the guy from the White Sox sitting at that table? So now are you guys just sitting around at dinner talking shit about the White Sox? You're talking about how you guys are the real team, the White Sox aren't team. I I don't know how the dynamics of the social stuff. I'll just say this Pika Armstrong sitting on a massive fucking contract extension. You are the face of a team that has Alex Bregman and Dans V. Swanson and Nico Warner and Justin Steele and Cade Horton and all this shit. You're the face. Way more than Ian Happy's been here 10 years. You're the face. Act like it. Fucking act like it. Act like it. I'm not even talking about strikeout rate. I'm not even talking about fucking swings and misses on bad 0-1 pitches or 1-0 pitches. I'm not talking about how just simply stupid you've looked in the box through the development of your career, that you actually haven't gotten more mature at the plate, that your swings have actually looked significantly worse, even if your walk rate's up, even if you're more patient, even whatever, all that fucking like subsidiary bullshit to the fact that, like, when it comes time for you to square it up and you are loaded up to take that hack and you do want to drive the ball, you look like a fucking moron this year. All right. I I cannot think of a time when I've been like, there we go. Got this one because of Pete. That was last June, Pete. That was last June. So if we're gonna get mad about, you know, obviously I'm not happy about Nico Horner's May. There's most of the guys on this team have been have been absolutely atrocious in May. My son, Moises by Steros, not playing well the month of May. Match Hawt, terrible in May. Dan Zuswanson, terrible in May. You know, I'm not doing the contract stuff with Alex Pregman, but 35 million, uh, you know, 74 weighted run created plus in May. 26% below league average. I'm not gonna play, I'm just saying 35 million, 26% below league average. You know. But I do want to get mad. I want to get mad. Now, Pete Pete Pete is actually 85 weighted run created plus in May, which is 15% below average. Now, then some people are gonna say he's talking shit because he's frustrated. There is nobody who is a $115 million contract who needs to be so frustrated that you are you're that you're talking shit. And there's a way to talk shit where it's where you don't get fined. Fernando Tetis Jr. does it all the time. He's always talking shit, always doing it playfully, always with the smile on his face. The difference is Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater here, you know, little little bite, little sharpness here. And I hate it. I'd be honest with you. I just I hate it. I hate everything it stands for. I hate all of it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I was I asked a rhetorical question earlier. Where's the White Sox player when fucking PCA and Mattis and Caleb sit down to dinner? The answer the answer is there is no White Sox player, and there will never be a White Sox player at that table. And the fact that that eludes Pete, that instead of Pete being like, well, the reason there aren't whites is because they just aren't nearly as significant in this market. It just isn't the way this is gonna go. Right? Like, they are clearly the second team here. The Cubs have an international following. The White Sox reach from fucking Joliet to Westchester out to Homer Glen in that whole area you want to circle around that weird oval space. You know, up to the lake, out to the southeast side, right? Right, down to Harvey, whatever. I'm sure there's people in Downers Grove that want to claim it. But we're we're talking about a like 20-mile radius here, if that. Like the the Chicago Cubs radius is you know, now I'm doing the math in my head. I know the circumference of the earth is about is about twenty is about twenty five thousand miles. So then what is that pi r squared? What does that put us at? 3R radius. Dynameter two. I'm gonna I'm gonna go out on a limit. I'm gonna say our diameter's gotta be close to six thousand. Six thousand miles. So what's the radius of that? Three thousand miles in all directions. In all directions. More than that, probably. It's been a while since I've done geometry, guys. I'm just trying to make a point here. One team has an international following. The other team is a local laughing stock. And either Pete doesn't have the perspective or the patience to keep that in mind. To have that, to be to carry himself in a way that would suggest you're the face of the baseball team in Chicago. This show's going longer than I wanted to. I didn't know I was going to be this mad about Pete until I sat down and I started talking about it. Because when I wrote this in, I was like, I am mad about the PCA antics, but the more that I think about it, the more mad I am about it. And I'd be mad if he I'd be mad if he was killed. I'd be mad if he had a 150 weighted run created plus and not a 73. I'd be mad if he was all act like the act like you've fucking been here before, dude. Now, if you want to talk shit about the Dodgers in a postseason or off-season interview and it's you know in print and you can say, well, maybe that was taken out of context or whatever. And I mean, there's so many different ways to justify some of the shit he's done. We're like, man, whatever. But follow it up with shitty play. You got to back your shit up. And he has not backed it up to the extent that he's talked about it. And when you get into that territory is when you start to lose me as a ball player, just as a fucking dude on the field. Just like a guy like I like you. Like I like Ian Happ. I like the way he plays every I know he strikes out at fucking big moments, guys. But every day he takes that field, the way he represents that uniform, the way he plays the game, that's that shit that you like, you love it, you got to. I would hope. I would hope a maniac could watch the way he plays and carries himself and go, yes. And then I would hope a maniac could look at the way PCA carries himself and go, this guy's got to grow up. So that was it. That's just the big, that's the big talking point. You know, buried

Runners In Scoring Position Mystery

SPEAKER_00 46:30

the fucking lead, waited till we got into the show for it. Then I spent so much time talking about it. Last thing, just man, the runners in scoring position and stuff. I it I'm like, I consider myself relatively smart or quantitatively adept. You know, what are my credentials for that? Well, I passed the certified public accounting exams with relative ease and extremely high scores and minimal preparation. That's just the easiest way for me to just say objectively, like when it comes to numbers and just the logic and tying things together, that has come easy to me in my life. Now, there's plenty of stuff that's come very difficult to me. I'm terrible with strangers. I can be extremely socially awkward. I can be extremely socially dominant. I uh, you know, emotionally can, you know, let it fly a little bit. Maybe I'm not maybe I'm not tuned up, you know, with respect to keeping a cool head. Now, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about numbers, processing information, and just being on top of your shit, right? Just being like, this makes sense, this doesn't make sense. So with that said, I I will gladly, proudly, publicly say, I know numbers, I know baseball numbers, I can piece things together. What I can't do is figure out why we're fucking terrible with runners in a scoring position. Then someone's gonna say, well, there's a clutch factor to it. The clutch is a is a mechanical feature. Say I'm clutch, Nico Horner's clutch. Well, mechanically, when the moment is tight, the pitcher's gonna be adrenaline heavy, his command is gonna suffer. Generally speaking, in a tight high-leverage situation, pitchers may have harder stuff, but they will have less command of it. The hitters in retrospect in comparison, I should say, your approach mirrors high-leverage situation or matches the high-leverage situation. So a guy who's big swing and miss, like Dan's V. Swanson, who swings and misses a ton, these high-leverage situations, historically speaking, in a Cubs uniform, can create, you know, it's it's not like he's the best guy. Whereas Nico Horner in high-leverage situations, because he's got a flat bat path and he's not trying to hit a home run and he's looking for something over the plate. And usually in high-leverage situations, you see your most amount of mistakes from a pitcher because they're under it. So when you apply that to this clutch conversation, we we struggle with runners in scoring position, I think it can be more distilled into the mechanical approach of the individual, which is why it's easy to pinpoint because some guys say you're not good in high left runners in scoring position, which is technically not high leverage as it's defined by Major League Baseball. But for me, I'm saying two outs runners in scoring position. I give a fuck if it's a second inning or the fifth inning or the third inning, and it's a tie game, or a six, whatever. Like the starting pitcher is elevated. He is in a higher leverage scenario. And in those scenarios is where a pitcher is going to generally, not for any other reason than the natural mechanics of competition, of the heart rate being fired up. That's why they talk about slow your breathing down, slow the game down. It's because the adrenaline can cause you to miss your fastball. The adrenaline can cause you to swing at something you typically wouldn't have swinged. It can get you to break your character. And when we talk about the Cubs runners and scoring position issues, it really does start to boil down into like an overall philosophical approach about hitting. You know, and like it's just as simple as that. There's some guys that do it very well that hit well with runners and scoring position and two outs, but we we stink. We stink. And and then the the great alternative to all of this is it's May 22nd. Why do you care right now? You know, they have plenty of time to figure it out, or do they? So I'm done being mad.

What’s Actually Fixable Right Now

SPEAKER_00 50:45

You know, I'm done being mad. The starting pitching is objectively atrocious. We just have to admit this. Like Shodi Ibanaga, one, Ben Brown, two, Colin Ray, three, Jamison Tan, four, and now with Eddie Cabrera out, our number five could just as easily be somebody listening to this show right now. Our number our number five could be an iron mic pitching machine or just the batting practice guy. Bring the fucking L screen out there and just have him feed low and away. Because if you go watch big league batting practice, those guys make outs. They hit fly balls, hit ground balls. Like when they're trying to drive it the other, like they'll make outs during batting practice. And at least that guy throws strikes. And you may think I'm crazy, but that's the initial solution I have in my head is like we'll just continue to promote internally even if we don't have anybody. Does that make sense? Because we don't have anybody to pitch. Now, here's why I'm confident, and this is arguably the greatest spin zone I've ever put together. But I love our core lineup and I love the guys that that walk into that clubhouse every day. I I like legitimately love each individual's character. I can't find a flaw from our position players from a character standpoint, from a professionalism standpoint. And then rolling those two things together, the character and the professionalism, the approach to the game, the way they play it. So I'll give you an example. Nico Horner has an 81 weighted run created plus in the month of May. Is he 19% below average? Or is he just 81 right now in the month of May? That's a rhetoric, it's easy. He's just 81 in the month, it's just it just is what it is. One of my all-time favorite saints. It is what it is. In the same respect, Michael Confordo's been our best hitter in the month of May. This guy who couldn't time a fastball four weeks ago. So Michael Bush, sensational in May. You know, we do have one of the best catching tandems in Major League Baseball, if not the best catching tandem in Major League Baseball. Our left side of the infield, just from a baseball guy standpoint, I know a lot of people listening to us didn't necessarily play, weren't in dugouts. Maybe you're more familiar with spreadsheets and the numbers and fantasy and all this stuff. I will just speak purely from a baseball guy's standpoint, from just being in a dugout, knowing guys in the game, et cetera, talking the game. I don't know if there's a left side of the infield that garners more internal respect from the industry than Dancy Swanson and Alex Bregman. Means nothing to you guys right now. Get that. We're two and nine over last nevin. These guys look like shit. I'm saying if you ask the guys that work in the game, minor league instructors to the fucking field coordinators to the bat boys and everybody in between up to the front office, you'd be hard pressed to find a shortstop third base combo that garnered more of the, ooh, those guys are special. Those are special baseball players. Now, the problem is for me selling that to you guys, the numbers have been shit, so it's very easy for me just for you guys to be like, I don't know what the f just tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. But I swear on that, and that gives me confidence. It in my own personal assessment and from what I've heard and from what I understand to say the next four months will be better than the previous two months with these guys. You know, I know enough about Nico Horner and Michael Bush. Ian F's having a career year. PCA has been a fuck. And with that gets the opportunity to not be a fuck, to make corrections. You know. Say Suzuki. Hey, say Suzuki. I'm not gonna fluff him up too hard. But when you look at that core and you say Biasteros off the bench, Matcha off the bench, Conforto off the bench, uh, you know, we plug in play here, we have two good both of our catchers would start on almost any other team. You boil it down like that. It's very easy to have a ton of confidence in the position players, which then gives us structure to our complaints and say it's obviously just the pitching. Or like the thing that catches me. They can score five runs over their next ten games. I'm not gonna lose confidence in the lineup. The lineup's the lineup, the lineup's solid, it's solid, and it can be added to to get better with a right hand at bat that plays first base. That's a fact. But in the same respect, the pitching staff is absolutely atrocious. So here's some here's some solutions for this because it's really the only place we go. We just want to sit here and complain and just say, we suck, I'm sinking the pitching staff, fuck Jed. So, what are the solutions available to us right now? So on May 22nd,

Trade Market Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 55:55

you can make an argument that there are six sellers right now. You can say their sellers right now. Um Tigers, Angels, and the American League. In Tigers, you know, I think they've got five regular players on IL. Terek Scuble, elbow procedure. You know, they they did just give Fran Burvellas 30 million a year, so it'd be interesting after they had a great season last year if they turn out to be sellers. I wouldn't put it past Scott Harris, who's their president, who was raised by Theo, who quite literally is just a he will kill his mom to win an extra five games. Sorry, Scott. And I hope your mom's still alive. But what I'm saying is, like, you know who you are, Scott. You know you're a psychopath. You know you're a competitive fucking lunatic. You know you're out to make your name for yourself in this game. So just be honest about that. And and when we're honest about all that, then we understand you are cutthroat, and you will declare this team a seller long before I guess the rest of Major League Baseball. Which then is a good time to remind people there are 14 teams that make right? 12 teams that make Major League Baseball playoffs. There are. Right? If we did this, they had this conversation 15 years ago, everybody would be a seller. Right? But you have 12 playoff teams. So I'll give you an example. Like the Nationals, right? They're shitty. Are they? Are the National They're one game under 500, four games back from the last wild card spot. While the Phillies, who spent a ton of money, are three and a half out of the wild card spot. Do you understand the point I'm trying to make in that? Like, it's May, so there are no sellers necessarily except for the Rockies, the Giants, probably the Marlins. The Mets will probably be sellers in mid-June. I guess they would start opening conversations for that. It's just hard to do it with their fan base because they're just such lunatics. I really mean it. The Mets fans are just such lunatics. You know, the Angels are sellers. Are the Tigers just other five games out of the wild card in May? They have a lot of injuries, though. So before we even talk about how do we solve this problem of having no pitching, it isn't coming from AAA. There aren't free agents we can sign. If somebody says the word Trevor Bauer to me in person, I'll be in Wrigley tomorrow with my holiday. We're going to the game. We're got some buddies. Going to the game. And if somebody comes out to me at the game and they're like, we need Trevor Bauer, you're at risk of getting punched in the face. You're at risk to be assaulted. You know, join the fucking club. You're you're at risk to be one of the guys who's walking around being like, Didn't Carl put his hands on me. What'd you do? Told we should sign Trevor Bauer? Well, he warned you. He told you. Say it again. Say it again. See what happens. Say it again. Alright? Say it again. Now you're gonna see what happens. You know? Now I pushed you up against a bar and I got in front of your face and I said, You got a fucking problem with me about Trevor Bauer. I told you, don't be pulling that bullshit. And then you're gonna cower. You're gonna be like, I didn't know I did I I I didn't know you were taking it that serious. You're gonna cower, you know? And then and then maybe whatever. And then maybe years later you make a huge fucking deal about the fact that I push shit a bar because, you know, you were talking about Trevor Bauer to the Cubs, and I was repeatedly shit telling you to knock that shit off. And you know, maybe you're one of those fucking guys. Maybe you are. There is there's nobody we're going to get. You'd have to go to like we would have to we would have to get Jake Taylor from the fucking Mexican leagues right now. That is the extent in which we are that's a major league joke. That's the movie. We're fucked. We're in big trouble. We are in big trouble. We're in as big a trouble as we've ever been for a good team. Because I I have absolutely no idea how we're gonna get through the next X amount of weeks without making a trade. It it just seems almost impossible. And and a lot of this is hyperbole for entertainment purposes. This is not give me a hot dog vendor in the five spot, give me the ball boy, you know, give me the ticket sales lady, give me anybody in the five spot, and they will be just as effective as whoever we're putting on the triple AI with shuttle bus. Because if you think right now on the trade deadline, I just went at best there are six sellers right now. At best, the Tigers probably will sell. People are gonna say, all right, fine, trade for Tarek Scuba. That's the high end. He literally has had elbow surgery this year. He's a free agent at the end of this year. The cost for him is substantial. I I can't now maybe he comes back healthy and he's awesome. It's so unlikely that he's gonna be 100%, and it's so illogical to target a guy with an arm problem before he hits free agency and gets paid $50 million a year. Do you think he would do it put himself in any position in a Cubs uniform to do further damage to that arm? The answer is no. So then do you think he's gonna go above and beyond to deliver the type of performances that justify giving up everything it would take to give up? And this is assuming he could pitch in the first place. No. Because he doesn't need to go login in because he's a back-to-back Cy Young Award winner. So if he could he does get traded and he does have elbow chips, guess what he's doing? He's going home. He's the first sign of fucking arm problems. He's going home. So even if the Tigers are sellers, the idea that we would get Tierra School in a way that benefits us in the long run is insane. It's insane. And we don't even know if the Tigers are sellers. You know, same thing people talk about the Giants. We gotta go get Logan Webb. Logan Webb's throwing 200 something fucking innings every year for the last six years. Since what? Since COVID? You know, the Giants hate his guts. They treat him like shit. So we're gonna what? Unload our farm system in May. We had to give up six prospects in May. And Matt, by the way, any trade right now for the next eight weeks will very likely include Matt Shaw if we're targeting starting pitching. Uh, you know, that could pitch at the top of rotation. So now we're not just we're getting we're legitimately giving, we would have to, this is the solution. If you're saying we have to go trade to fill in these gaps, I I don't think there's a world Jed would do it, even if he could. Like he can't. The Mets aren't declared sellers. You know who who we get? The Marlins, what are we gonna get? Sandy Elkantara. Like I want I I want to puke my guts out at the situation that we're in. I'm no longer mad, I'm disappointed. I'm I'm behooved. The high end of the trade, you know, conversation is Scooba. That's the high end. And he's hurt, or the Tigers aren't even declared sellers yet, and he's gonna be a free agent next year, and he's gonna get $500 million, and he's not gonna do a damn thing that jeopardizes that. Yeah, go get him. Real bulldog. This isn't like when CeCe Zabia was leaving Cleveland, went to Milwaukee, put on the dog and pony show so that he could go get the massive Yankees contract, you know, where he still had something to prove to show people, hey, I can, I'm a I'm a complete game fucking dominant. I'm a I am a certified, certified gangster. I will go nine innings. He had to do that with the Brewers so he could get his massive contract. Tyr Scoobyl can go sit on the beach in the Dominican Republic at an all-inclusive resort for the next 18 weeks, and it will not impact a nickel of his open market value. And I got Cubs fans. We should trade for Scoobyl. What's a package for Scooba look like? When will we get Scooble? How do we get Scoobyl? I mean, I would just ask you to come down from planet Mars and join us here on Earth and be reasonable for a second and realize not fucking happening. Like it isn't. It just I it could if he's healthy, if he comes back, if Scott Harris feels compelled to throw, you know, to throw Theo a bone, I suppose. But we need help right now. And we have no sellers, and we're obvious buyers. We can't even operate in the middle of the night right now. It's not like Jed's like putting fielder calls out because we have internal information that Eddie Kabir's arm is shot, or that like Matt Boyd's IL stint is going to take a little bit longer than we thought. That information has to get out yet, so Jed can put poke around. Hey, what do we what do we? What do you got on this? Jed call you see Jed on your caller ID, you know he's fucked. You know he's in a bad situation. So what do you do in that in that moment? You take advantage of him. You ask for more than he can give up. You leverage the fact that one of the presidents in Major League Baseball is strapped in an extremely difficult position, and then you ask for the world, which Jed's smart enough not to give up, which is why I'm back to this point of like we're probably not going to. Even if Tom Rickets went into Jed's office tomorrow and said, make a trade by the end of the week or else you lose your job. I think Jed would on principle be like, I'm not making that trade. I'm not. It's too early. So that's why I'm going, I think we're far. I'm not panic button because we're two and nine over last 11. The panic button is like, I'm looking at the next 10, I'm going, this could be trouble. Even if the Astros suck at 20 and 31 coming to town, you know? Because like in the meantime, we do have a game today against the Houston Astros, and they're not very good. And when I say not very good, they're like on the cusp of being a team that could very easily be sellers. And the reason for that, you know, they don't have great pitching. If anything, they've got terrible starting pitching. I think is fair. You know, outside of Spencer Argeti. The bullpen's like at best bad. It's a bad pitching staff. Top

Astros Series Reset And 25-Game Plan

SPEAKER_00 1:07:40

to bottom. So like let's be positive here to kind of wrap things up. Cause I have to come out of this. We all have to come out of this. But I can't come in here and like, well, here's the reason, you know, everything's gonna be fine. Like, everything will be fine if they f if they go and do if the Cubs if our players go do what they're supposed to do, then it's all gonna be fine. You know, if they wallow in this, it's not gonna be fine. If the position players are bitching about the pitchers, we got big problems. I don't think Alex Bregman's that guy, Swine's that guy. I think Hap is, I think Horner is. I think those are two guys that sit around and look at the starting pitchers and are like, this guy fucking sucks. But overall, I do think the leaders in the clubhouse are guys that support, you know. Support their comrades. And how important is that when your comrades suck? I don't know. You know how like how much does this how much could the support possibly help Jamison Tam when he's when he's given up four homers per nine innings? Support them all you want. You know, the reality is he's gotta go out and make pitches, actually keep pitches. He's gotta do it consistently. And he hasn't. And and the fact that we're asking him to do it in like a number two, number three role, you know, when he he's a four-five, maybe that's an opportunity to get mad at Jed. Maybe then you're going, what the f what are we doing? You know, why do we sign Dylan Sees? Or people saying, why didn't we get Lucas Giolito when he was, you know, he was a free agent. Just don't ask me about Trevor Bauer, because the guy's an absolute clown. Absolute clown scumbag, and not even not good enough. Just not good enough to wear the uniform, not good enough to be in that clubhouse with those guys, and certainly not good enough to take them on and warrant anybody listening to his detention. He is an absolute scumbag, clown, pussy, bad fucking teammate. Not one guy has one good fucking thing to say about him publicly. And the shit I've heard about him behind closed doors is so fucking egregious. Just a dis just a just a real bitch in a pill. And sit somebody players don't like to be around. So, like, even if he wasn't dead last in Japan last year in ERA. Even if he was first, I'd make the argument the guy should be nowhere near the Chicago Cubs. Take the name out of your mouth. Have some standards for yourself. You yourself. You may not right now. You may get up whenever you want, go to sleep whenever you want, fucking shower when you want, scratch your balls when you want, jerk it off in the middle of it. You may have extremely low standards for yourself. But at least for purposes of the Cubs, can you please just elevate them a little bit? And if you do that, it becomes very easy to just say no to Trevor Bauer, which I'm only bringing up because people have complained why didn't Jed get more help at the time? Well, at the time, Matt Boyd wasn't out, Eddie Cabrera wasn't out, Jackson Wiggins wasn't out. So in the meantime, we're playing the Astros this week. You know, like enough bitching. It is what it is. We have four pitchers, you know, they're all slightly above average to below average, even though she showed him I've been great to start the year clunker recently, which means another one's gonna follow soon. But we're gonna be positive because we have so much baseball in front of us. The Astros suck. We win these three at home, we go two out of three, you know, to close the week. Then we're showing up on Monday, Memorial Day, with some momentum, and we're actually feeling pretty good about ourselves as soon as we take this series from the Astros. You know, because that because then we're on the road again, Memorial Day Monday, seeing Majinski. Ben Brown versus Majinski, 1235 start central standard time. You know, then we see we see Brandon Ashcraft again, we see Bobby Chandler again. I hate to see Paul Skeens, but we're starting to get into the thick of things for a little bit here with some division games, and just to just to keep everybody level set, we do have 12 games against San Francisco and Colorado alternating. And if you paid attention, I told you there's potentially six sellers, two of which are absolute sellers, and those two teams happen to be San Francisco and Colorado, and we play them 12 games in a row in the middle of June. So, you know, if we can't get some positivity out of that, then maybe we should just fucking cancel the entire season. Like we can't roll it forward from there. So my advice, all of all this is say if we can just struggle to be at or around 500 over the next, you know, we'll call it 13 games, then we have a 12-game win. So there's 25 games in front of us we have to survive, basically. That takes us into late June. We have 25 games in front of us. Right now the record is 0-0 over these next 25. I whatever, 29-29, I don't give a fuck. We're zero and zero right now. I'm looking at 25 games ahead. And I'm thinking to myself, we should be in these 25 games every bit of 16 and 9. Every bit of 15 and 10. And if that's the case, that's good baseball, then we're just back to square one. So you know. I I I am mad, I don't want to be mad. I am disappointed, I don't want to be disappointed. I'm trying to find optimism. I've I've spent all of this off day walking around being like, I think maybe maybe it's not that bad. You know that we scored five runs at home against Milwaukee in three games? Maybe it's not that bad Davis Barton shoved it up her shoved up her ass on Saturday. You know? Or that like we just couldn't add out, like, we hit the shit out of Eric Fetty and we lost on Sunday. You know, like we get sweat. Ugh. I know a lot of people are mad. The trade the problem finally with the starting pitching solution, I don't think we can, I just don't think we can make it trade. I who's taking calls right now on trades that aren't trying to improve? Just a handful of teams. So what's the price tag? The price tag's through the roof. And Jed Oyer's a guy who like backs away from a deal over like the most fractional minimal shit. So now we're gonna expect him, like a guy who's been risk-averse his entire career in front office, is just gonna unload in May. Now he's gonna play his percentages, see if he can be strategic and find some diamonds on the rough. And that's gonna happen for, like I said, these next 25 games, which should happen over the course of you know, we'll say like four and a half, five weeks. That's where our mindset is this time next month. How are we doing? But on a subject of which Mahoney and I will be back on Monday, and I'm you know what, and I'm sorry I didn't have more passion or more entertainment or laughs along the way. This isn't really that funny. You know, if you're a maniac, like it just kind of is what it is right now. And my final sign-off on this will be I'd rather have this be the hardest part of the season right now than have it be September. Because if we do come through this, say over these next 25 games, we're 13 and 12. You know, we're 14 and 11, we're something. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. Then we have momentum going into June. Then we start to get guys back. Boyd gets back, Wiggins is back, you know, even though he hasn't even made a big league debut. We're closer to the trade deadline, there's more sellers, we have more tape on our prospects to sell, we can poster stuff. So, like, it's not, it's it's it's it's gonna suck for the next four weeks, is what I'm saying. It's gonna absolutely fucking suck. So we're in this together, though. And it starts with the Houston Astros, who are not a very good baseball team. And if we take that series, we play, we always play well in Pittsburgh. We haven't seen the Cardinals yet. We got three night games against the Cardinals that weekend. You know, I love all those pitching matchups. Libatour's a pussy. He's going on Monday or he's going on Saturday. You know, McGreavy. I've been waiting my entire his entire career to tag his ass. He sucks. You know, we got the athletics coming to town in in early June. Those are that's just a group of guys who are gonna be out doing architecture tours, not ready to play a baseball game at all. So like I know it sucks right now. I know we have no starting pitching, I know no one can recognize half the names that come out of the bullpen. You know, we can't score a goddamn run against the Milwaukee Brewers at home. I get all that. But it's over. It's over, and it's over right now. And it starts with a 120 Friday at home. Jamison Tan against Aragetty, who's been good for the Astros, but is about to get his shit rocked at Wrigley Field. A little breezy, a little chill in the air. Just the exact circumstance and environment you want to spark a little bit of a run. And I'll be honest, I'm not saying like I think I see it coming. I need it. I need it. You need it, we need it. Not 10 in a row, but just a sign of life. Just let me know we got some life here. And if we have life, then we can get some momentum. And if we have momentum, you know, then we start building things up. And if we get to that place, then that trade deadline's right here around the corner. We get some good prospect seasons under our belt, deploy that for a couple trades. Next thing you know, we're sitting here talking about when when we play the Dodgers in the playoffs. This is how we're gonna match up. Not if, not how, not can't believe the when we get to that moment where we have to beat the Dodgers in the playoffs. That's the attitude I'm pursuing this season. And Jed's gonna take it, sir. We just have to weather the storm, and we're lucky that the storm is coming at this point in the season because it's only gonna make us stronger. And we're dealing with shit that very few good teams are dealing with right now. And that's gonna make us tougher. That's gonna make us better in the long run. And I promise you, I promise you, as much as I promise anything in my life, that is an absolute fact. As much as Jed Hoyer is gonna unload at the trade deadline, we're gonna improve this team. We just have to hang on these next 25 games. Be above 500 the next 25 games, sky's the limit this season. That's our new goal. So we're tracking that. This is the Monday morning cub show, obviously, a solo show, a little bit longer than I

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wanted to, but like it's a my it's a Friday Monday morning cub show. Of course, it's going a little bit longer. If you guys get a chance, please subscribe to the show. Set if you're learnt, if we're learning stuff, we're if we're having better conversations or your game experience is being improved through some of the stuff we're talking through in the show. Share with a friend. You know, share with somebody, check out Thirsty Vacero on Amazon, get yourself a sampler platter, continue to just I'm I will be in a suite tomorrow, and it will be under the contest of talking business. Not hey, go to the suite, get loaded, have a good time. Like we have there's a business meeting, a suite tomorrow, and it's predicated for the Monday Morning Club show through the partnership with Thirsty Vacero, and we're not there without you guys. So I just can't thank you guys enough. As grateful as I can possibly be. Um, and so hopefully that's reflected and will continue to be reflected in our relationship and in the quality of the show and in the community that we build. So we have a lot of stuff to look forward to, most notably first pitch tomorrow at 120 and getting this ship on track. We can lose five in a row. That's gonna happen. It's May. So just sleep on it, get it off your chest, and let's just come back, come out tomorrow, and just fucking absolutely take it to the Houston Astros this weekend. That's the solution moving forward, at least until the trade deadline picture becomes a little bit clearer. In the meantime, you guys know the sellers, send them. Who do you want? I went through the Rockies starting pick. I'm like, nope, none of these guys are like, there's just a bunch of Colin Rays. So you see something, you say something. Until next time, we'll be back Monday with Mahoney. I'll be in Vegas. That should be a wild show. If you guys get a chance, leave a review on Spotify or Apple. Five stars goes a long way with the sponsorship. So you don't need me to tell you that twice. Until next time, guys, Carl here signing off. Love you guys. Go cubs.