Jed's running a tab at the mediocre white guy free agent store

And don't miss last night's exciting RECRAP on the Bears-Niners shootout

The Cubs keep making headlines with a seemingly ceaseless array of high impact signings. Slow down, Jed, let us catch our breath!

The latest stud addition to the Cubs roster is a legacy from Harrisburg, former big league closer Bryan Harvey's kid, Hunter.

If you need proof that life in a big league bullpen is rough. Here's a shot of Hunter Harvey in 2013 shortly after he was drafted by the Orioles:

That's Hunter on the right.

Here's what he looked like just 12 years later when he could manage only 10.2 healthy innings for the Royals.

Yikes.

He looks like Lenny Powers, Kenny Powers' less successful little brother.

The Cubs are banking on a return form for Harvey who was last good three years ago with the Nationals. He suffered through shoulder and groin injuries last year.

His fastball velocity has dropped every year since 2022, from 98.3 to 96.1, but I'm sure it's fine. What's the difference between a 98 MPH fastball and a 96 MPH fastball, really? Probably just which side of Waveland your pitch lands on.

So far, the Cubs have added five veteran relievers this offseason. Of them, two are coming off solid seasons (Phil Maton and Jacob Webb), two are coming off bad seasons (Hoby Milner and Collin Snider), one is coming off of injuries (Harvey) and, in addition, they signed a returning bullpenist from last year, Caleb Thielbar who is mostly trying to recover from being 38 years old.

If you're wondering (because I'm sure the Garbage Family Who Owns the Cubs™ are), yes, they're all white guys in their 30s. Matt Shaw's going to need to rent a sprinter van to get everybody to the next rally.

Since the Cubs signed Hector Neris to his ill-advised one-year, $9 million contract on February 1, 2024 the Cubs have signed 12 free agents to Major League contracts (one guy, twice).

See if you can spot the main similarity among these players.

Caleb Thielbar, Carson Kelly, Matt Boyd, Jon Berti, Colin Rea, Justin Turner, Phil Maton, Jacob Webb, Caleb Thielbar (again), Tyler Austin, Hoby Milner and Hunter Harvey.

Huh.

The Cubs still have four spots open on their 40 man roster. Of the 35 guys they currently have, 27 of them are white dudes.

The white American-ness of their recent free agent classes is pretty undeniable.

In the 2023-2024 offseason they only signed three big league free agents total, and two of them were foreign born, Shōta Imanaga and Neris, and the other guy was a re-sign, when Cody Bellinger fell back into their laps. So that's a fairly diverse, if tiny, class.

But go back one more season and it's...stark.

The 2022-2023 MLB free agent class for the Cubs was:

Tucker Barnhart, Drew Smyly (re-sign), Dansby Swanson, Jameson Taillon, Brad Boxberger, Cody Bellinger, Trey Mancini, Michael Fulmer and Edwin Rios.

That means that of the last 24 MLB free agents signed by Jed Hoyer's Cubs, 21 of them were American-born white guys. That's 88%. With only Shōta, Neris and Rios as exceptions.

If you go back to Jed's first free agent class after Theo handed over the keys, things get more diverse. Coming off the lockout and after tearing down what was left of the World Series roster, Jed signed 13 players to big league contracts and more than half (eight) were not American born white dudes (Yan Gomes, Marcus Stroman, Mychal Givens, Jonathan Villar, Michael Hermosillo, Seiya Suzuki, Andrelton Simmons and Jesse Chavez).

The other seven were extremely white dudes: Jackson "Don't call me Clint" Frazier, Drew Smyly (part one, which was actually part two, but he didn't pitch for them the first time around), Daniel Norris, Chris Martin, and David Robertson.

But 88 percent since the end of the 2022 season?

I mean that sounds bad. But let's put up the photos of all 24 guys and see what that looks like. Can't be that bad, right?

Nope. That's really bad. Twenty-one white American born players, one guy from Japan, one guy who was born in Puerto Rico and went to high school and college in the US (Rios) and Hector Neris.

The Cubs don't even bother to pretend. Even Douglas Niedermeyer would be embarrassed by the obviousness of it all.

Major League Baseball is a very white sport. Opening Day rosters last March were 59.2% white, and the rest broke down as 28.6% Latino, 27.8% internationally born, 6.2% Black, 3.1% Asian, 0.3% Pacific Islander, 0.2% Native American.

But even still, the Cubs roster is an outlier.

Their current 40 man roster breaks down as: 77.1% white, 17% Latino, 25.7% internationally born (includes Owen Caissie), 0% Black, 0.6% Asian, 0.3% Canadian (also Caissie).

At some point, they aren't going to be able to pretend this is a coincidence, right?

I guess they'd have to give a shit, first.

You'd really think that Major League Baseball would step in and at least remind the Cubs that most of the really good players aren't just kids who either went to Vanderbilt or turned down a Vanderbilt scholarship to sign with a team. But clearly, MLB doesn't give a shit about this either.

What could the Cubs' excuse for this be, other than what it clearly is?

Well, I can think of one. "Look how cheap we signed most of these guys for!"

But we know that's only part of it.

And it's not even new. Almost seven years ago Tom had to issue a statement where he literally had to say, "We are aware of the racially insensitive emails in my father's account that were published by an online media outlet...Let me be clear: The language and views expressed in those emails have no place in our society."

And, Tom continued. "These emails do not reflect the culture we've worked so hard to build at the Chicago Cubs since 2009."

Well, how about since 2022?

We really don't need to be reminded about the Garbage Family That Owns The Cubs™ and their actions, because it's impossible to forget. But every once in a while it doesn't hurt to go back and read about how the system was rigged for them to buy the franchise in the first place.