If Schwarber even wanted to come back, would it be a good idea?

Look at all that stuff you can buy. Books, subscriptions to this newsletter. I mean, there are worse things to waste your money on.

Right?

Right?

Late last night news came out that the middling Marquee Sports Network is cutting costs and positions. Makes sense. The Garbage Family That Owns The Cubs™ would field a roster of 14 if MLB would let them get away with it.

Gone, reportedly are Tony Andracki and Andy Martinez. Andracki's title was "director of content" whatever that is, and Martinez was ostensibly the network's beat reporter for the team that owns the network and that had other reporters doing the same thing.

The impact is great on those who are fired, not so much on the home viewer, which is kind of the point. It's not those guys' fault that the network has been so poorly conceived and poorly executed that the only programming on it that anyone ever bothers to consume are the actual game broadcasts.

Colin Faulkner, who holds the twee title of Chief Commercial Officer for the team (is he the one with the keys to the all-important Prevagen account?) is now in charge of the game broadcasts. It's a job he's not remotely qualified for, but then, he's made an entire career out of that sort of thing.

There's the possibility that this shakeup might be a good thing for us, the people who are actually forced to consume this crap. After all, it would be hard for the new guy to make things worse. The Cubs' pre and postgame shows are already non-essential at their best and unwatchable the rest of the time. Boog Sciambi's Marquee persona during games is tired and mostly focused on shoes, while he's very good when working for literally any other outlet. Maybe the new guy will convince Jim Deshaies to work more than 85 games a year, since the he's the only good analyst they have. How about only charging Taylor's mic to 33% on game day?

But it actually could be worse. What if the ousted Diane Perry, who served as Marquee's GM the last two seasons, was the only firewall between the Ricketts' irrational love Ryan Dempster and our TV screens? What if NBC, who just picked up a shitload of MLB game inventory and the Wild Card round of the playoffs decides the national TV version of Boog, who is really good, should be their number one announcer? That would leave us with...Alex Cohen?

I'm all for Marquee mixing things up. The network is dull and mostly pointless. If Faulkner turns things over more to the Cubs in-house production team, who are really good, it would be a good thing.

But it's hard to put much trust into anybody shambling around any corner of the Cubs' front office these days. Because if there's one consistent theme it's that they're not very good at whatever it is they are supposed to be doing.

According to the jug-eared baseball rumor savant Jeff Passan (it still cracks me up that years after everybody knew who Jeff was, Bill Simmons was insistent that he pronounced his name Puh-sahn, a reminder that Bill Simmons is a moron), our prodigal giant baby boy, Kyle Schwarber is expected to get a very large contract and probably take it home in a tote bag from the winter meetings next week.

The Phillies are still the overwhelming favorite to sign Kyle, mostly because they aren't dumb shits like the Cubs were when they DFA'd him after the 2020 season, because really how could they possibly find at bats for him with stars like Ian Happ and Jason Heyward on the roster?

There is this narrative amongst the dumbest of Cubs fans (and that lot is very large, it just doesn't include smart people like you or me) who remember Schwarber's Cub career like this.

• Rookie phenom who showed up in mid June 2015 to DH for a few days against the Indians and Twins, who so impressed his manager that Joe Maddon harassed Theo Epstein for a month to bring him back, and Theo did, and Schwarber destroyed the Pirates and Cardinals in the playoffs and at the ripe old age of 22 became the franchise's all-time leader in postseason home runs with five. (A record he still holds with six, tied with Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo.)
• Schwarber won the opening day job in left field in 2016, shredded his knee in the third game of the season, and while some of us always thought he'd be back in time for the playoffs, he actually did return for the World Series and hit .417.
• Struggled in 2017 went to the minors, returned and was mostly a homer, walk and outfield error specialist through 2020, when Jed couldn't figure out how to get anything for him and released him after the season.

Right? That's how most Cubs' fans now remember Kyle's tenure with the team.

But it's bullshit. Bullet points one and two are right, but the third one is where the dumb persists.

Kyle did struggle in 2017 and Theo stubbornly refused to let him go to Iowa to get his shit together, even though his struggles were completely understandable. Despite his miraculous World Series return, Kyle's age 23 season included a whopping 21 at bats. Four in April and 17 in October. Nothing in between. Theo finally relented and Kyle spent a month in the corn.

Oh, and what fans tend to forget about 2017 is that Kyle hit only .178/.300/.394 before the demotion and .253/.335/.559 after it. He hit 17 homers in 186 at bats when he returned from the minors.

In 2018 he had an .873 OPS at the All-Star Break with 18 more homers. So over the span of the second half of 2017 and the first half of 2018 he hit 35 homers in just over 400 at bats.

In 2019 he hit 38 homers and drove in 92 runs and got screwed out of the Home Run Derby title when Bryce Harper cheated and tied it long after his round ended.

In 2020 every Cubs player struggled, including Schwarber. But the season was only 60 games long, so any bad stretch was magnified. In half the games, Schwarber had an .879 OPS. (In the other half he had a .506 OPS...which is kind of bad.) But that was a pretty sad little sample to base the ultimate decision on.

It made no sense to let him go. The move was to release Heyward and just eat the final three years of his deal. Instead, the Cubs kept Jason and paid him $64 million to post a -0.3 WAR over the final 152 games he played for them over two seasons. Schwarber, meanwhile was worth 7.8 WAR over that same span hitting 78 homers for the Red Sox, Nationals and Phillies.

Schwarber has only gotten better with the Phillies. He has hit 187 homers for them in four seasons. You know who leads the Cubs in homers over that same span?

Ian Happ with 86.

Schwarber has hit 101 more homers in four years than any Cub.

His one big limitation of course is that he plays left field like he's laying under the tarp. and over the past two seasons he has played a total of 13 games in the field. So if you sign him, you're signing him to be a DH.

Well, considering the Cubs are moving their 2025 DH back to right field, they just happen to have an opening. They also have nobody not named Dansby signed from 2027 on, so there's plenty of room for Kyle.

Would it really make sense for the Cubs, though?

Schwarber will play next season at 33, and he's likely to get a five year deal. So you're tying your DH spot up until 2030, with a guy who can't really help you anywhere else.

Who gives a shit? The Cubs need bats. We've been over and over how their allegedly good 2025 offense was really only good in April and May when it was really good and then barely league average for the four months and playoffs that followed.

The Cubs need power, and Schwarber supplies it better than any free agent on the market. He's also a Cubs legend, and other than the dopes who think he stunk for most of his time with the team, the rest of us know that Jed dumping him was one of the worst moves in Cubs' history, and buddy, the list of such moves is long and distinguished. Right, Slider?

The Cubs have barely any money committed after this year. It's just the $26 million they pay Dansby to be a slick fielding shortstop who can't hit, and then whatever the minimum is for Petecrow and a couple of his buddies. I think they pay Matt Shaw in Trump bitcoin.

Sign Schwarber, make the fans happy for once, plug him into the DH spot, and spend 2026 teaching Moises Ballesteros to adequately play some sort of position for 2027 and beyond...profit!

But, don't take it from me.

Take it from our large adult son himself.

KYLE MISS PLAYING IN BREEZY CITY. KYLE MISS GOING ACROSS STREET TO RIDE THE FIRETRUCK. KYLE MISS HITTING BALLS ON TOP OF SCOREBOARD TELEVISION. KYLE MISS WHEN THROW MAN SERVES UP BIG COOKIE AND KYLE EAT THE WHOLE THING. KYLE ALSO MISS COOKIE MONSTER SINGING SEVENTH INNING SONG.

HIT IT COOKIE!

My plea to the Cubs is this. If you can't be troubled to spend enough money to actually be good and try to win something, be fun.

Bringing back one of our all-time favorites, when he still has something to offer would be fun.

Why would you even want to own a baseball team if you weren't going to do something fun with it?

Then again, Tom probably spends April fully erect at the thought of what kind of tax deduction his team gives him.

Todd doesn't give a shit. He doesn't even bother to pay his taxes.

The Cubs won't make a real offer to Schwarber. He'll stay with the Phillies while they actually attempt to win a World Series. The Cubs will end up bringing back Steven Souza Jr. or some shit like that.

God forbid we ever have any fun around here.