They're all gone

"Jerry, it's Frank Costanza. Kyle Hendricks is gone, Pete Rose is dead, call me back!"

They're all gone

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Six years ago the Cubs won the World Series with one of the youngest rosters ever, and on Saturday the entire franchise took every step possible to honor the final remaining member of that team still on the roster, and to do it in a way to make sure he knew they didn’t want him back.

If Kyle Hendricks needed a hint, and he didn’t because he’s a smart guy, the Cubs throwing every ball out of the game after he recorded an out so they could give him all 22 of them after the game was a pretty big one. So was putting a message up on the video board that said, “Thank you Kyle for a great career: July 10, 2014 - September 28, 2024.”

They had the clubbies box up Kyle’s locker so quickly that one of them actually pulled his underwear off of him.

The only thing left on his chair was a bill from Crane Kenney for the 22 game used baseballs. Hey, authentication’s not cheap.

It was great the Kyle got to go out on such a good note. He held the Reds scoreless for 7.1 innings, and shared an emotional moment when his long time pitching coach Tommy Hottovy (I’m sure The Athletic will run a piece this week where they give Tommy all the credit for Kyle’s career just like they did Jake Arrieta a few weeks ago) came out to pull him from the game. I hope they shared a meaningful few words. Mostly Kyle telling Tommy he’s surprised he made it through the entire season…and then telling Tommy he’s also surprised Tommy made it through the entire season.

Kyle started the biggest games of our lives. Game six against the Dodgers when the Cubs won a pennant we’d never thought we’d actually see and game seven against Cleveland when the Cubs won a World Series that now feels like a fever dream.

He will always be one of our favorites because he was really good, he was a very low-key cool guy, and the Cubs got rid of Ryan Dempster in the trade that brought him over.

Because we don’t want to see him leave, partly because we like him and partly because he’s the last direct tie to what’s clearly the only championship we’ll ever see this team win, it’s tempting to look at his September numbers and think, “Hey they should bring him back. He’s only 34.”

He made five starts in September and had an ERA of 2.89, and he held opposing teams to just a .250 slugging. Clearly he’s got some stuff left in the tank.

Or, what was in the tank was gasoline and he finally ran out of it so he had nothing left to pour on opponents’ rallies.

Kyle’s ERAs in the other months were…pretty terrible. It was 12.00 in April, 7.63 in May, then 3.60 in June when he was mostly being hidden in the bullpen, then 5.25 in July and 6.23 in August.

In typical Kyle style he was clear eyed about the whole thing. He thanked the Cubs for giving him “chances I really didn’t deserve.” But he did deserve them, for two reasons. 1) He’s Kyle Fucking Hendricks and 2) the Cubs didn’t have enough pitchers for them to not need him.

Kyle’s not sure if he’s going to try to pitch again, but he kind of sounded like a guy who knows he wrung everything that he had out. If he’s done, he had a great career, He won an ERA title in 2016, he finished top ten in Cy Young voting twice, he even finished seventh in Rookie of the Year voting and while he lost to Jacob deGrom, of the other eight top 10 finishers he outlasted everybody but Travis d’Arnaud and Chase Anderson. Chase Anderson? Mediocre lefties last forever, I guess.

Whether he tries to pitch for somebody else or not, the Cubs made it clear that they’re moving on, which means they’re all gone. There are no World Champion Cubs left on the team.

The dumber fans think Ian Happ was on that team, which of course he wasn’t, and I’m sure he doesn’t go out of his way to correct them.

The Cubs should be really embarrassed that both the Mets and Barves are going to the playoffs and they aren’t. The Mets barely tried to compete this year, and the Barves lost almost every good player they have to injury.

It should come as no surprise however that Craig Counsell wasted little time in getting the process of de-Rossifying his coaching staff underway.

The surest way to out yourself as a dope is to be shocked that Craig didn’t have any use for Mike Napoli.

“But Boog says he’s a great baserunning coach!” Here’s all you need to know about Boog. He thinks Nick Madrigal is a good baserunner. Nick Madrigal might literally be the worst baserunner in either league. I’m not sure that wouldn’t still be true even if Ryan Theriot and Ronny Cedeno made comebacks.

A lot of people were also surprised that Willie Harris didn’t get whacked…yet. My guess is that Willie will end up leaving for another coaching staff at some point. But if he stays? Fine. Maybe Craig can convince him to not hide in the grass when guys are rounding second next year.

My dream is that Hottovy gets launched. The entire Cubs’ vaunted pitching infrastructure is bullshit. Back when Mike Borzello and Chris Bosio were running things the Cubs really did seem to be ahead of the curve. But for years now they just seem to be treading water with a bunch of nerds staring at the same data every other team has and drawing correct conclusions from it at a barely adequate (at best) rate.

There’s no way they can make a case they do it better than any other team that’s actually trying.

When Larry Rothschild somehow survived from Don Baylor to Dusty Baker to Lou Piniella you figured some of it was that he was fairly good at his job, but mostly because Jim Hendry didn’t want to go look for a new pitching coach.

I get the same feeling about Hottovy. Maybe he’s not awful, but the Cubs clearly need new ideas, and if they really want to emulate the kind of pitching success Counsell’s Brewers teams had (and continue to have with ruddy faced Pat Murphy) maybe they should sit Tommy down, ask him what the purpose of a short sleeved t-shirt with a hood on it really is, and thank him for his service.

Only the Cubs would think it was a bright idea to bring Carter Hawkins in from Cleveland and Counsell from Milwaukee because those teams are far better at developing pitching than they are, and then just keep everybody else and wondering why nothing changes.

As for the hitting coaches, don’t they just fire them after every season out of habit? Might as well do it again.

It’s obviously more important that they find better players, but upgrading the coaching staff isn’t not important.

Remember, this staff was supposedly assembled to help David Ross learn on the job. How well they did that seemed to be in doubt when Jed fired him after four years.

They’d have better off just buying one of those mats you get dogs to teach them words. Ross could have done almost as well as Bunny, I would think.

Regardless, the new guy doesn’t need tutors or command buttons, he needs people to execute what he wants done.

Fire them all, Craig.

Into the sun if you have to.

Pete Rose died yesterday. I can only assume somebody paid him $100 to sign autographs at the bottom of a swimming pool.

With Pete off to the big parlay in the sky1, do you know who the living player with the most hits in baseball history is? Hint, it’s not Dansby Swanson.

It’s Derek Jeter with 3,465.

Do you know the living player who played at least part of his career with the Cubs with the most hits is?

You probably don’t. Though once you see it you’ll say, “Oh, of course.”

It’s Rafael Palmeiro (3,020).

The Sox one is so perfect for them. It’s not Jerry Reinsdorf’s beloved Harold Baines because a guy they signed when he was a youthful 43 years old has 11 more hits than Harold. It’s disgraced batboy flasher Omar Vizquel with 2,877.

The Sox have always enjoyed the stolen valor of acquiring guys they think will become Hall of Famers when they’re old and useless just to get their numbers up.

There will inevitably be a push to get Rose reconsidered…again…for the Hall of Fame. And you’ll hear 1,000 different variations of, “You can’t tell the story of baseball without Peter Edward Rose.” That’s true. That’s why the Hall of Fame is a big museum and Pete and his memorabilia (at the least the stuff he didn’t sell on QVC) are all over that museum. It’s the hallway with the plaques that he’s not in. And there’s no reason to change that.


  1. Honestly, it’s probably only -105 that he went up.