With Nick gone, who will be small and terrible for the Cubs now?
If size doesn't matter, they have no shortage of candidates. And, Jed's being so obvious now that even the naive fans are figuring him out.



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It finally happened. After 1,210 days of brilliance, the Nick Madrigal Experience ended for Cubs fans.
Oh, what a ride it was. The fourth overall pick in the 2018 draft, he was acquired by the Cubs with Codi Heuer at the 2021 trade deadline for Craig Kimbrel. At the time, Nick was a career .317 hitter in the big leagues. What a coup for Jed Hoyer! He went out and traded the best reliever at the deadline for a tiny little line drive machine. And the results were undeniable.
Madrigal hit .251 in 202 games in three seasons for the Cubs.
He hit a triple.
One.
In three years.
He hit two homers.
Total. In three years.
His on base average was .304.
That’s not good.
His slugging was .312.
That also not good.
He spent more than 200 days on the injured list.
If only it had been more.
He was so bad defensively at second base that the Cubs moved him to third and pretended he was adequate. He wasn’t.
He was one of the worst and dumbest baserunners we’ve ever seen. And we’ve seen Ronny Cedeno and Ryan Theriot play.
His OPS+ with the White Sox was 109. They thought so much of him that they traded him with no long term solution at second base in their organization. They still haven’t found one. Kimbrel was terrible for them in his two months. They traded Kimbrel for AJ Pollock, and he wasn’t a good player for them. And the Sox still won the trade.
Madrigal’s OPS+ with the Cubs was 73.
100 is league average.
Over his time with the Cubs, here are a few of his teammates who had higher OPS’ than he did.