The View from Right Field

Yes, You Can Buy a Championship in Baseball. The @Cubs Did It in 2016.

In writing about the Winter Meetings, Paul Sullivan reminds us that Tom Ricketts said, back in September, “The fact is you can’t buy a championship in baseball.”  Well, yes – and no.  You can’t buy a whole team, but you can buy missing parts, maybe even a lot of them.  Because that’s how the Cubs won the World Series in 2016.  They signed Jon Lester for $155 million (five years), Jason Heyward for $185 million (eight years), Ben Zobrist for $56 million (four years), and John Lackey for $32 million (two years). 

So, yes, you can buy a championship in baseball.  Once you have a good base, you can buy a championship by signing free agents to fill in the missing parts.  To the extent the Cubs are not doing this now, it means that Cubs management and ownership do not think the Cubs have a good enough base to do it. 

Willy’s Not Coming Back, Whether He’s Traded or Not

Yesterday I tweeted:

“The worst way for a company to handle a RIF [i.e., a reduction in force] is to announce it and then tell people that the list of who is being let go will be disclosed in two weeks. Welcome to the  @Cubs at the @MLB #TradeDeadline.”

Yesterday, Willson Contreras said, with respect to today’s off-day and tomorrow’s 5 pm trade deadline: "It's going to be a long day. It's been long, long, long, long week, long, long, month for me. But I'm ready for this to be over, to be honest."

Happy Birthday, Mr. Cub

From all your fans, past, present, and future.

When You Go to a Baseball Game, There Is Always a Chance You’ll See Something You Have Never Seen Before

Which may have happened at the Cubs-Pirates game last night.  Let me set the scene: The Pirates took a 3 to 0 lead in the first inning.  The Cubs got five in the seventh to take a two-run lead, but the Bucos tied it in the top of the ninth.  Nobody scored in the tenth or top of the eleventh.¹  In the bottom of the eleventh, the Cubs had runners on first and third with one out.  Ian Happ was batting right-handed, his weaker side.²  Ian hit a really high pop up to the infield – and the second baseman totally missed it!  Sergio Alcantara scored, and the Cubs won.  Here’s the play (see at 7:40):

November 2, 2016 Seems Like Such a Long Time Ago

When we were in Portland, Oregon, in 2017, to see family, we did what people visiting Portland normally do.  We drove 100 miles south to Eugene to see the Eugene Emeralds, then a Cubs farm team.  While there, I bought this tee shirt:

Reality Check for @Cubs Fans: Trading Riz, KB, and Javy Was the Right Thing to Do

With trades of Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, and Javier Baez (for more on that, see here), the Cubs are getting, to paraphrase Harry Doyle, “JUST a bit” of criticism.  A few reality-check comments.

1. Lots of fans think the Cubs should have kept all three of them and, I guess, signed them as free agents in the off-season.  Which basically means paying each of them more than they would get from any other team.  In other words, the Cubs should have signed Rizzo for more than any other team would have paid him; the Cubs should have signed Bryant for more than any other team would have paid him; and the Cubs should have signed Baez for more than any other team would have paid him.  Nobody else would have signed all three of them for the top dollar they could have gotten individually, but that’s what the Cubs were supposed to do.

Baseball Doesn’t Need to be Shorter; It Needs to be Brisker

Baseball games are too long, which is something everybody knows.  Except, it’s not really true.  Baseball games aren’t too long; they’re too slow.  The great baseball writer, Roger Angell explained it in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last September on his 100th birthday.  Mr. Angell was discussing the changes they instituted last year because of the pandemic:

“I can understand this business of putting a batter on second base, but it goes against every baseball instinct that I have, because the heart of the game is that you have to earn every base, and suddenly that’s been abrogated.  Seven inning games, I guess I understand, but seven is a very different game than nine.”

The Economics of Big-Time Professional Sports In a Pandemic

With Major League Baseball and the NBA completing their seasons and football moving along with its season, Ben Cohen and Louise Radnofsky came up with some lessons after sports’ first Covid-19 season in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal.  Among them is this:

“The past few months have taught sports that fans are important but not essential – at least for now.  The games can be played without them.  Being flexible and doing the unimaginable, whether it is a closed-door competition or shortening some baseball games to seven innings, paid off for the leagues.

The Cubs Go to the Postseason – In a Pandemic

First, a general thought:  Because of the pandemic and because Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred figures it is all about the money, sixteen teams are going to the postseason instead of ten.  (It’s amazing.  A few years ago, ten teams going to the postseason seemed too many.  Now it seems like the good old days.)  Because so many teams are going to the postseason, there are two teams with a record below .500 to the playoffs.  That should not be happening.  Teams with more losses then wins should be going home, not to the postseason. The teams playing them should just get a bye.  There has to be some standards – other than TV revenue.

To the Cubs.  The Cubs have the worst record of any division winner.  We started 13-3 and finished 21-23.  It helped that we are in the worst division in baseball.  This is especially important for the first round since Kyle Hendricks gets to pitch at home, and he is so much better at Wrigley Field than on the road. 

Sad News at Wrigley Field

As Phil Rosenthal notes in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, there has always been gambling at Wrigley Field.  Gambling in the bleachers was one of the underlying themes in the classic play “Bleacher Bums.”  But the Cubs have decided to bring sports betting to Wrigley Field in a big and different way when the Friendly Confines opens again.

On Thursday, the team announced it has reached an agreement with DraftKings to set up gambling at Wrigley Field.  While the Cubs need approval by the City of Chicago and the Illinois Gaming Board,¹ it doesn’t appear anybody thinks that will be hard to get.