The Cubs cannot be serious

Then again, we all knew this was going to happen

The Cubs cannot be serious

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If it wasn’t so predictable we could have at least pretended to be surprised. The Cubs posted their Tuesday transactions on Monday night and as we expected Dansby Swanson was activated from the injured list and Miles Mastrobuoni was demoted to triple-A Iowa, but also as we feared, when Luis Vazquez was promoted to the big leagues it was Petecrow Armstrong and not the most useless player in the big leagues who was sent to Iowa in return.

I get it, you can make the case that Petecrow will benefit more from the extra at bats he’ll get by playing every day than Nick Madrigal would if he had gone down instead. Petecrow is the future of center field for the Cubs. Madrigal is the future of athleisure wear for toddlers.

But it’s really hard to pretend that you’re trying to win anything when you purposely tie the hands of your manager by wasting a roster spot on a guy who doesn’t do anything to help your team.

This was, of course, the most likely move for the Cubs “braintrust.” When you refuse to come to terms with the fact that your highly paid left fielder isn’t giving you anything, you are content to send one down and go back to four outfielders.

If anything, it makes you wonder what the plan for Vazquez is. By giving him reps at third base in Iowa, it sure looked like they were prepping him to take Madrigal’s role as backup infielder and late game third base defensive replacement. The benefit of having Vazquez do it instead of Madrigal is that Luis can actually play defense.

I suspect the reason they didn’t demote both Madrigal and Mastrobuoni is because of the tenuous nature of Nico and Dansby recovering from leg injuries.

But let’s take a minute to look at the “logic” they had to employ to rationalize keeping Madrigal up.

They called up Vazquez because they need somebody to play short if Dansby needs a day off, or to DH, or if he reinjures himself. Madrigal can’t do that.

They called up Vazquez because with Nico nursing a sore hamstring they didn’t want to move him to short if Dansby needs a day off, or to DH, or if he reinjures himself.

They sent Mastrobuoni down because, presumably they view Madrigal as a better offensive option off the bench.

Madrigal has played in 24 games as a sub, and is slashing .000/.000/.000 when he doesn’t start a game.

With Nico out last week, Madrigal got to play regularly and was 6-for-21 with a walk and slashed .286/.348/.286.

Whee. If that’s him at his best, I don’t think we need to pretend this shit is ever going to work.

Vazquez is considered a plus defensive player at short, and because he can throw the ball more than 40 feet in the air he’s already a better late game option at third than Nick.

So what is Nick’s role? He’s not going to play every day. He’s been useless off the bench. He cannot play any position better than Vazquez.

When the Cubs were trying to rally in the ninth on Saturday they got the tying run on first with two outs when Michael Busch walked. Craig Counsell put Petecrow in to run at first to steal second to get the tying run into scoring position.

Madrigal was the scheduled batter.

Petecrow stole second on the first pitch.

But Madrigal was no longer the batter because Counsell had pinch hit Patrick Wisdom for him.

Think about that. What is the only thing Madrigal does that can help a team?

He hits singles.

In his career, 80% (188 of 236) of his career hits are singles. That’s how you can play five seasons in the big leagues and only slug 70 points more than your batting average.

So you would think that if the plan was for Petecrow to steal second as soon as possible, you’d want Madrigal to be up there to try to single him in to tie the game.

But the manager decided that Wisdom was a better bet in that spot.

So what exactly is Nick on the team for? If he’s not there to take his regular at bat when you need a single, there’s nothing for him to do. He literally doesn’t do anything else well.

So, I don’t get any of this. If the Cubs felt that Vazquez was going to be a more useful player for Counsell to have on the bench than Madrigal or Mastrobuoni I not only get it, I agree with it. But if you had to keep one of those two nothings around until Dansby and Nico prove they are going to be consistently ambulatory, I really don’t see how you can defend keeping Madrigal instead of Mastrobuoni AND Petecrow.

You clearly do not expect to give that extra extra infielder many at bats, so then you’d want the superior defensive player in Mastrobuoni. Also when you factor in that you now don’t have Petecrow around to steal a base late in a game, Mastrobuoni is a far better option in that spot because he is 14-for-15 in stolen base attempts in his career.

There are no other roster considerations here. All three of Madrigal, Mastrobuoni and Petecrow have minor league options. You’re not going to lose any of them. Although, I would love for the Cubs to DFA Madrigal and see if anybody actually puts in a claim, because I don’t think anybody would. He’s just not useful.

Well, unless you are looking to crash test a car seat.

Transactions: Madrigal, Nick - claimed by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Meanwhile, the Cubs announced their pitchers for the home series with the Barves that starts tonight.

Game 1 - Javier Assad
Game 2 - Justin Steele
Game 3 - TBA

Wait, TBA aren’t Kyle Hendricks’ initials.

Uh oh.

We know that so far this year Kyle has been what scientists would call, “fucking terrible.”

He went on the real injured list with a very made up injury and when he came off it a week ago last Sunday he lowered his ERA from 12.00 to 10.04 when he got a no decision in a 5-4 win at Pissburgh by pitching five innings of two hit, one run ball. Hey, he’s back!

And then he faced the Pirates again on Friday he somehow made that 10.04 ERA go up. He gave up 11 hits and eight runs (only seven earned!) in four and two-thirds.

Oh no.

With the off day yesterday the Cubs can skip him and keep everybody else on normal rest. So they’re just punting the decision for a few days. But somebody is going to need to take that Memorial Day start in Milwaukee and if it’s not Kyle then they’re going to have to make a decision.

They basically have three options.

They could put him back on the injured list and say that his pretend back injury pretend flared up again.

They could give him a start in the Cardinals series this weekend considering how dog shit the Cardinals are.

They release the final player from the greatest team we’ll ever see them field.

I don’t want to see him go. At least not yet. I’d go with option two and give him a shot at the Cardinals. It’s probably dumb and mostly sentimental, but he started the two biggest Cubs wins of our lives and if you can waste a roster spot on a tiny little shitheap like Nick Madrigal, you can give Kyle Hendricks a few more shots to figure things out.

You can’t act like winning is super important to you when you refuse to admit that you completely botched the only 2021 sell off trade that included actual big leaguers, by keeping Nick around.

So that means Kyle gets to stay.

That’s just how this works.