Everybody's mad about Skubal for the wrong reason

I'm going to send this newsletter on Sunday night instead of the usual Monday morning, because I need to leave Monday open for reactions to all of Jed Hoyer's many incredible trades. Right?

Oh, whatever. Though I do find the impatience of Cubs' fans on Sunday to be kind of funny. The market moves when the market moves, and being mad at your team because they haven't made a deal a day before the deadline seems like an odd thing to get worked up about. Be like me, save it up, so that if they haven't done anything productive when the deadline passes you can just lose your shit all at once. Keep it pent up, and let it out with a rage heretofore unseen by mankind. Seems healthy.

The Cubs lost two of three at home to the Yankees, which wouldn't seem all that bad except the Yankees offense is in complete disarray with injuries to every good hitter they have except for Ben Rice.

Then again, Cubs pitching handled them about the way you think a good team would. They allowed just six runs in the entire series. But the Cubs, with their "World Series caliber offense" (according to noted baseball dope Boog Sciambi) scored just one run in their two losses.

The biggest issue seemed to be that every time the Cubs mounted a threat, Ian Happ came up to bat, and that wasn't what the Cubs needed. Happ was 1-for-10 in the series with a single. He only struck out three times, which is, something, I guess.

But I'm not here to bitch about Happ again. I did enough of that on Tom Loxas' podcast last week.

The Lore Podcast - Have Cubs' Fans Always Needed Someone to Argue About? - July 31, 2026

What the series reminded us, though we scarcely needed the reinforcement, is that the Cubs offense is, once again, built to bludgeon bad to mediocre pitching and get completely shut down by good pitching. Petecrow doesn't care who he faces, he's just raking, and Seiya is in a good place, and I honestly think Pedro Ramirez is the Cubs third best player, but the rest of these bozos? They're playoff ready. By that, I mean they're ready to score three runs in the Wild Card Series and go home.

Twinkle Dee and Twinkle Dum are rightly obsessed with getting more pitching, but this team needs another bat, too. At the very least they need a right handed bat that can play outfield, because Craig Counsell was using his lineup card as a cry for help this weekend. On Saturday night he used James Triantos as the DH against a lefthanded pitcher. Triantos, the punchless utility player with 38 career home runs in six professional seasons. It's bad enough to have to play Happ against a lefty (.158/.232/.298 against them), but Happ and Triantos? What are we even doing around here?

Cubs fans freaked out on Sunday when Amish phenom outfielder Josiah Hartshorn was removed from a game for South Bend. OMG! Hug watch! Clearly he's been traded for some star pitcher! There were just two problems with that. Tarik Skubal had already been traded, and other than him there is no superstar pitcher to acquire. And, it ignores the fact that it was raining and the game was clearly going to be shortened and Hartshorn was unlikely to get another at bat, and he plays the outfield like he's pulling a plow.

The Cubs are shopping for a different brand of player than the Dodgers. Because it takes ambition, the willingness to add payroll and the kind of prospects Jed has been unable to develop, to make a trade like that.

Fans are right to be mad that the Dodgers traded for Skubal, where he'll just be another superstar on a roster full of them. But fans are mad at the wrong team.

They should be mad at their team. No matter who that team might be. The Dodgers being able to trade for Skubal is not because of some financial advantage. Adding him to a roster full of rich guys is, but the reality is that every team in the sport could easily accommodate the $9 million that Skubal is owed over the last two months. Barring injury, Skubal will be worth more to the Dodgers than they pay him, by quite a bit.

Cubs fans should be mad at the Cubs for not trading for him because even if they really were willing to do it (it's no safe bet that they were) they don't have a pitching prospect like River Ryan (with the exception that Ryan is always hurt and the Cubs do have a bunch of chronically injured pitchers...just nobody as good as him), and they don't have an MLB ready outfield prospect like Zyhir Hope (because they traded Hope to the Dodgers three years ago for Michael Busch, because they couldn't develop their own position players). Now that Skubal Watch is over, Jed can bet back to shopping for fourth starters and fifth inning quality relievers. How fun.

But honestly, the fanbase that should be the most mad at their team for not trading for Skubal isn't us. The ones who should be mad are the Brewers fans. All 17 of them. (I kid, because I don't care.)

The Brewers had an excellent chance to finally win the World Series this year, if they would have finally used some of the impressive prospect depth that they have to add Skubal to the wet faced baby giraffe Jacob Miseriocordia, and Kyle Harrison. Adding Skubal would have helped position them to take down LA in the playoffs this year. But not only did they not add Skubal, they watched as the Dodgers did, which widens a gap that was so obvious in last year's four game NLCS sweep by the Dodgers over them.

What, exactly are the Brewers waiting for? A year from now there's a really good chance that both the wet faced baby giraffe and Harrison are being treated for Tommy John Disease, and their coveted prospects will be a year older and some of them will have proven they peaked at the wrong level.

It's bad enough for Milwaukee sports fans that the Bears have started kicking the Packers' asses again, now the baseball team that they give side-eye attention to once football training camp starts watched the team they can't beat get even better.

This was Milwaukee's window. One season, when they could hopefully squeeze all the way through the playoffs before Misericordia's arm inevitably fell off, to add a true playoff difference maker to go with him. Oh, well.

And let's be clear about something. The Dodgers trading for Skubal doesn't mean that now there's going to be a lockout this winter through next spring. That was already scheduled. Sure, the owners will try to make the case that it just proves they need a salary cap, when no matter where Skubal had been traded...yes, even Milwaukee or Tampa...they'd have made the same argument. The owners want a salary cap because they want to pay less for their players. That's all. Competitive balance, be damned.

Also, it's pretty hard to make the salary cap necessity argument when the Brewers and Rays are in first place without one, and 21 of the 30 teams are within 5.5 games of a playoff spot on August 2nd.

But the owners aren't interested in a good argument. They can lie about anything.