On Monday night in San Diego, there was a familiar face on the mound; he’s one of the only guys we can count on. He showed us why, spinning a shutout through 8.2 innings (why take him out for the final out again?). Kyle Hendricks is Old Reliable. The only problem I have with the way he pitched on Monday night is that if he keeps this up, the Cubs may dump him. Isn’t it a sad state to be in?
You want to have good players on your team; the Cubs had a number of them a year ago… not so many right now. You want to make the playoffs; the Cubs had made the playoffs 5 of the previous 6 years before the big dump last year. You want to win the World Series; the Cubs won their first in most folks’ lifetimes in 2016. So… if all this is true, then somebody still needs to explain why the Cubs decided to take a huge step backwards… it’s all about money. The Cubs are in full blown rebuild mode; don’t let anybody fool you. What’s the purpose of having great players on a rebuilding team? Well, they should be your cornerstones for the “next great Cubs team”. However, we’ve been conditioned to think that these great players will be shipped out. Since the Cubs aren’t going anywhere this year, why waste them on our team? Get something for them. Save money, add draft picks/minor leaguers, and push the timeline back even further. Like I said, it will get worse before it gets better.
The Cubs are not even on that long and winding road back to being contenders; they’re still in the garage. I get doing something like this when your team isn’t doing anything. If you define “doing anything” as “winning World Series”, I understand… that you expect perfection. See, to win the World Series, you need to make the playoffs. The Cubs team was good enough to make the postseason 5 out of 6 years, but with only 1 World Series appearance (and win btw), let’s blow it up… great call dipshits. Now that perennial contender that we had, for the first time in our lives, is gone. Now, we’re starting from scratch; it’s asinine… it really is. Dammit, I can’t even be happy when the Cubs win nowadays… I just can’t let it go. It may be the stupidest thing any of my teams have ever done.
In that stupid spirit, the Cubs will make more moves. We WILL trade Willson Contreras; that is a certainty. I wouldn’t be surprised if we traded Kyle Hendricks too, especially if he keeps pitching like this. Kyle deserves another shot in the postseason; he was built for that. In his 12 postseason starts, Kyle only gave up more than 6 hits once; the Cubs actually won that game vs the Nationals 9-8. That was also the only postseason game he gave up more than 3 earned runs. Not too shabby. Of course, he’s most known for Game 6 in the NLCS vs Kershaw at Wrigley, and Game 7 vs Cleveland when Maddon took him out way too early… thankfully that will never haunt us forever. Yeah, the professor just won his 85th game in a Cubs uniform; one more will break him into the top 25 Cubs of all time. With any luck, he’ll keep climbing that list; he’ll have to remain with the Cubs to do so… that’s a 50-50 proposition at best at this point.
Hey, it was fun to see him on top of his game; although I was fading in and out, I did see enough to see Kyle doing his thing with his trademark change up. And the Cubs scored some runs for him! I may still be pissed about it all, and honestly, will be for a long time, but… a Cubs win is a Cubs win; that will always bring a little bit of joy to my heart, just as watching Kyle Hendricks pitch in a Cubs uniform. May not see a whole lot of wins this year… hopefully will see a whole lot more of Kyle pitching for my team. Here’s hoping…
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