Another month is off the calendar and the Chicago Cubs and White Sox are seemingly in lockstep on the road to nowhere, while the Bulls apparently are joining the Sox, Blackhawks, Bears and Sky in the Chicago rebuild trend.
With the baseball trade deadline on deck and both Sox general manager Chris Getz and Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer pondering change, and Bulls vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas starting the offseason with a bang, here’s what we need to know about these teams heading into July.
The Wiggles
Hoyer said Friday it might be difficult to significantly change the Cubs roster with veteran players locked in at several positions and young talent getting shots at others, including Christopher Morel, Miguel Amaya, Michael Busch and Pete Crow-Armstrong.
“There’s not a ton of wiggle room on how we can shake things up and improve things,” Hoyer said.
If he truly believes what he said, that’s a cop-out. If the Cubs continue to struggle, it’s Hoyer’s job to shake things up, as he did at the 2021 deadline when he dealt most of the stars from the 2016 champions.
“Casting everything in a negative light based on two months, that’s also a mistake,” he said, referring to the state of the organization. “A lot of good things are happening. It’d be a danger to paint everything with a brush of what’s happened over these two months, just as it would’ve been inappropriate in April to plan a parade.”
No one was planning a parade when the Cubs were 17-9 in April, but the Cubs haven’t won three straight games since a four-game streak from April 23-26.
It would be crazy for anyone to cast this team in a different light since then, no matter how close they remain in the National League wild-card race.
Rebuilds R Us
With the Sox seemingly on the verge of dealing ace Garrett Crochet in this dysfunctional season, the words of Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf from the last Sox rebuild should not be forgotten.
“You have to have four prospects who can’t possibly miss to get one,” Reinsdorf told Comcast Sports Net (now the soon-to-be-defunct NBC Sports Chicago) at the 2016 Winter Meetings. “I’ve seen so many players over the years who were going to be phenoms, they were going to be future Hall of Famers, and we don’t even remember what their names are anymore. That’s why when you’re trading a player of stature you have to get multiple can’t-miss prospects back.”
The Sox kicked off their rebuild by trading Chris Sale at the ’16 Winter Meetings for four Boston Red Sox prospects: Yoán Moncada, Michael Kopech, right-hander Victor Diaz and outfielder Luis Alexander Basabe. Diaz lasted one season in Class-A baseball. Basabe had 18 plate appearances with the San Francisco Giants.
Kopech is the only one remaining with a bright future, and he might be dealt this season as well.
Sigh.
The great debate
Justin Steele’s “wake the f−−− up” viral scream Saturday in Milwaukee versus Héctor Neris’s clubhouse speech after a 1-0 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 18.
Cody Bellinger said Neris’s speech gave him “goosebumps.” The Cubs were 26-21 after the speech but lost the next day and went 12-24 post-speech until Saturday’s win following Steele’s “wake-the-bleep-up” call.
Will Steele’s motivational message have a more lasting success?
Neris, of course, lost his closer’s role during that poor post-speech stretch, but apparently won it back Saturday.
Clutch-free cargo
It’s one thing to be a bad offensive team. It’s another to be so bad that virtually no one in the lineup can hit in the clutch. The Sox were last in the majors Sunday with a .209 average with runners in scoring position. The Cubs were 28th in the category with a .215 average. This is a recipe for boredom of the highest degree.
Three’s Company
Embarking on his first rebuild, Karnišovas can get advice from former White Sox general manager Rick Hahn on the perfect corporate speak to use the next time he talks to the media.
“It’s tough to serve two masters,” Hahn said at the start of the last rebuild. “The focus of our scouting department, of our player development people, of the major-league staff is on building something that’s sustainable. In the short term, we might have to pay some price at the big-league level.”
The top two NBA teams in 3-point attempts were the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks, who wound up meeting in the NBA Finals, where the Celtics won in five games.
The Bulls were 26th in 3-point attempts (32.1 per game) and 20th in 3-point percentage at .358. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the Bulls need to improve in both categories in 2024-25.
But the Bulls’ best 3-point shooter in 2023-24 was Alex Caruso, whose .408 percentage from long-range ranked 31st in the NBA. Caruso was traded to Oklahoma City for wing Josh Giddey, who has great upside but ranked 144th (.337) in 3-point shooting. Bulls guards Ayo Dosunmu ranked 36th (.403) and Coby White was 82nd (.376).
The Bulls used their No. 11 pick in the draft on 19-year-old Matas Buzelis, who shot 27.3% on 3-pointers in the G League. As free agency begins, it’s nice to know Karnišovas is solving the Bulls’ biggest problem by thus far ignoring it.
Strange, but true
When Kyle Schwarber went on the injured list last week, it meant Schwarber, Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant and Javier Báez were all on the IL at the same time.
That’s what former manager Lou Piniella might call an ex-Cubbie Occurrence.
