When pretty good is good enough this is what you get

The Cubs need a higher level of talent than they have, but the fans are enamored with the mediocrities

When pretty good is good enough this is what you get

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Cubs fans are an interesting bunch, aren’t we? On Friday, the Sun-Times ran a back cover feature on how the Cubs have solved their first base dilemma with Michael Busch.

There’s nothing controversial about this. Busch has been a good player for the Cubs, and the struggle to replace Anthony Rizzo has only gone on for three seasons. It’s not like they had a decades long chasm like the imagined gap between Ron Santo and new Utility Tunnel of Famer E-ramis Ramirez. (The Cubs actually had several good to competent third basemen in between, but that’s for another time.) The Cubs went from Rizzo to rubber faced Frank Schwindel to the horrible Trey Mancini/Eric Hosmer/Matt Mervis experiment (briefly solved by Jeimer Candelario), to Busch.

Not bad. Rizzo left in 2021 and Busch arrived in 2024. For the Cubs, that’s light speed.

Busch has improved dramatically in-season on defense at first, a position he didn’t spend a lot of time at in the minors. At the plate he has been streaky, but overall pretty good.

He’s currently slashing .245/.321/.402 and will likely finish the season with around 18 homers and 55 to 60 RBI.

What surprised me was the reaction my reply to the Sun-Times’ Tweet generated.