STARTING OVER

 

               Baseball is back, which is a good thing, but much of the news surrounding its return isn’t good. Here in Arizona, our economy deprived of the first three weeks of scheduled spring training, crowds at the first week of the resumed practice games were off about 25%. By my own unscientific measurements, fan mood is sour.

 Maybe I’m just projecting my feelings about the game’s nose-thumbing lockout, but maybe not. Last week I dropped by Sloan Field, the Mesa spring base of my Chicago Cubs, always the Cactus League’s darlings, and found tickets for sale at the box office instead of through recent-year scalpers’ monopolies. There were lots of empty seats in the park at game time and the faux-team jerseys some fans sported bore the names “BRYANT” “BAEZ,” “RIZZO,” “BANKS” and “LESTER” rather than those of any present team members. No surprise there since the current Cubs are pretty much incognito.

Roster changes had been expected as last spring’s exercises began; the rosy bloom of the 2016 championship team had faded and the core of that hallowed group—Kris Bryant, Javier Baez and Anthony Rizzo— were entering their final season before free agency. Most speculation had it that the team couldn’t afford paying today’s rates to retain the entire trio but probably would keep one or, maybe, two. Turned out they let all three go for prospects in mid-season trades, on top of the two other standouts (Yu Darvish and Kyle Schwarber) they’d shed before the season began.

 Suddenly it was déjà vu all over again, back to 2011, when newly hired baseball boss Theo Epstein dumped every saleable Cub in a frank project to tank a few seasons while manning up for better days.  We Cubs’ fans put up with it—even cheered—because of the numbers 56 and 103. Those were the years gaps between the team’s last National League pennant and World Series victory.

But that was then and this is now, and I’m thinking that the highs generated by a half-dozen years of playoffs contention has spoiled us for radical sacrifice, especially when another drought could have been avoided.  In billionaire Tom Ricketts the team finally seemed to have the sort of big-egoed, deep-pocketed owner who would spend with the big boys and, thus, avoid the downturns that come in transition periods.

Pre-pandemic full-house crowds at Wrigley Field, paying top dollar for their seats (only the Boston Red Sox have a higher ticket-price scale), meant the fans were doing their part. Major ’16 heroes Bryant and Baez, aged 30 and 29 respectively, had enough foreseeable good years ahead to sustain Cubs’ relevance. The teams that rewarded those two with long-term, megabucks contracts-- the Colorado Rockies (Bryant) and Detroit Tigers (Baez)—certainly thought highly of them.

But noooooo, it was back to the bad old days, and with an exclamation point. Sans stars, the 2021 Cubs’ limped home with a 71-91 won-lost record, going 29-58 after a decent start. That was the Major Leagues’ worst mark over that 87-game span.

The Cubs finally spent some money in the off-season, but on second-tier free agents. Their big splash was signing 27-year-old Japanese outfielder Seiya Suzuki, late of the Hiroshima Carp, to a five-year, $85 million deal. He’s supposed to be the best thing since sukiyaki, but Cubs’ fans can’t help thinking about a previous Japanese signee, Kosuke Fukudome (2008-11). He’s best remembered for screwing himself into the ground every time he struck out, which was frequently.    

Failure to develop pitching was the black mark on the Epstein regime, and new boss Jed Hoyer, Theo’s longtime second in command now in his second season in charge, has yet to prove he can do better. The Cubs’ other big offseason move was the signing of pitcher Marcus Stroman, ex of the New York Mets, to a three-year, $71 m pact. The most notable thing about him is that, at 5-foot-7, he’s the shortest pitcher in the Majors.

Stroman’s addition increased the team’s for-certain starting rotation to two—he and the veteran Kyle Hendricks. It’s just a week before the regular season is to begin and the identity of the other three starters remains mysterious. Venezuelan Adbert Alzolay last season became a rare starter who came up through the team’s system, but he was a disappointment (5-13 in wins and losses, 4.58 ERA) and will open this season on the injured list. The other candidates are retreads with no great promise.

Aside from Suzuki and outfielder Jason Heyward, who stays with the Cubs because no other team wants his $22 m-a-year contract that seems to have no end, the eight-man lineup remains similarly iffy. Catcher Willson Contreras is a good one but the team seems determined to trade him, if only for that reason. Middle-infielders Nico Hoerner and Nick Madrigal spent most of last season being injured.

  Frank Schwindel and Patrick Wisdom, a couple of career minor-leaguers the Cubs used to fill self-made holes at first and third bases last year, did well, but with caveats. Wisdom, 30, set a Cubs’ rookie home-run record with 28, but also struck out about 40% of the time and would have threatened a Major League strikeout record if he’d had enough at-bats. Schwindel played with 14 different minor-league teams before the Cubs brought him up at age 29. That is not the stuff from which dynasties are made.

Thanks to their kids-for-vets trades the team has a raft of young prospects, but none seem ready to step up to the Bigs just yet. None has nearly the pedigree of Bryant, the team’s top draft choice in 2013, who’d been the MVP in college ball, the minor leagues and the Arizona Fall League before being promoted in 2015.  Las Vegas puts the Cubs’ 2022 over-under win total at 75.5, but that’s stretching it, I think.  Starting over is hard to do.