June 13, 2022: Yu Started It

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On Monday night, the Cubs saw another ex-teammate. This time, it was Yu Darvish pitching for the Padres against the Cubs in Wrigley Field. He pitched well; Padres won… what else is new? Well, tornado sirens for one. In almost 46 years, I’ve never seen a tornado touchdown in the Chicago area, but hey… anything is possible. It was pretty bad for a minute there, but then cleared to be a beautiful evening at the ballpark. The only thing wrong was the uniform Yu was wearing…

Yu started it all… maybe? Well, I shared my thought on the Cubs’ hiring of David Ross, which occurred after the 2019 season… before all of the COVID madness. After the Cubs missed the playoffs for the first time in 5 years, Joe Maddon was allowed to walk. OK, stop. What did the Cubs need at that point to “get over the hump”? Answer: a brand new, inexperienced manager that played with the guys back in 2016 who couldn’t get back to the top of the mountain with that manager of the 2016 team. Wrong. If the Cubs seriously wanted to compete in 2020, they would have made a different decision at manager. They couldn’t possibly think by bringing David Ross in, things had a good chance of changing. Thus, my theory that the Cubs knew then, with that hiring, it was the beginning of the end for that Cubs team. The weird-ass 60 game season followed, with the Cubs making the playoffs BTW, before being dispatched by the Marlins. You can’t really put a lot of stock in that 60 game season, can you?

Well, ready for 2021, right? The Cubs needed some depth at the starting pitching position. Great, so they traded Yu Darvish… that makes sense. It was just another sign that this was over. Surely the Cubs got some players that could contribute to the team’s success in 2021… wrong again. These guys, none of which have set foot on the major league baseball field yet, may contribute in 2023… maybe; oh wait, there was Kyle Davies… smdh. It was a lopsided ass trade if there ever was one. Again, didn’t want to trade Yu, but IF we did, get something of value back. Wrong yet again.

The hiring of Ross, the trading of Yu, were all appetizers to the main course which would occur at the 2021 trade deadline where Rizzo, Baez, and Bryant were all shipped. There were other clues along the way surely, like the report that the Cubs were hurting for money… wow, yeah… ok. It’s the joke that keeps on giving, right into today’s 2022 Cubs roster. With the loss on Monday night, the Cubs have now lost 7 in a row, and 8 of the last 9 games. The Cubs are 23-37, 11 games back; the season is over. The season was over before it started. The Cubs front office chose this path… way back at the end of the 2019 season… how you doing?

And now we wait… to see how bad our record will be. We wait to see what other guys (Willson Contreras) get traded. We wait to hear the reports from Marquee network how the Cubs have built their farm system into one of the best in baseball, while tearing apart the team that brought us the 2016 World Series title… a team that made the playoffs 5 out of 6 years. Yes, we chose to suck vs try to continue that playoff run. We chose to subtract, to tear down to almost nothing, to add inferior pieces, vs adding the right pieces to get over the hump. We chose to save money, and sit back in our chairs, waiting for the next “right time” to spend… Before 2015, we were used to this… I guess we’ll get used to it again… Go Cubs…

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