Everything you need for the get together in the desert. Well, the other desert than Tuesday.
You have to give it to Anthony Rizzo’s agent. There’s no time like the present to add on to the Cubs’ miserly ways and paint your client as the sympathetic one. It’s working for everyone else, and the organization may never be a bigger villain than it is right now.
When I first heard the news about the Cubs shrugging off any extension talk at the moment for Rizzo, it made sense in my mind. Because the Anthony Rizzo debate in 2021-2022 has always been a dicey one from the time he signed that contract back in 2013. Right now he’s one of the best bargains in the league.
But when he comes up for free agency with everyone else he’ll be 32 and turn 33 the next season. These days, that’s very much when it’s thought that players start their career descent, if not a year before. He’s had regular back issues the past couple of seasons, which have kept him out an increasing number of games the past two seasons. While he’s a great defensive first baseman, it’s not considered a premium position (though defensive metrics haven’t really figured out how to grade the errors 1st basemen save their teammates, because if they did Derrek Lee would be considered the greatest defensive player of all time and could rightfully sue Aramis Ramirez for half of his career earnings with the Cubs). A wait-and-see approach on Rizzo for those reasons makes some sense.
And yet, for someone who has seriously considered turning in his Cubs fan card if they trade Kris Bryant so as to avoid having to extend him or lose him for nothing, and for much higher money than Rizzo would get, the reasons kind of aren’t all that different, right?
Bryant is two years younger, so any extension he gets when he becomes a free agent, here or elsewhere, will certainly extend into years where he’s just not the player he was. You’d be getting some years of his peak, in theory, which you wouldn’t with Rizzo, in theory. He has been even more injury plagued the past two years. The difference being that A) it certainly feels like he was mishandled by the Cubs medical staff at least last year and possibly both, and B) shoulder and knee problems, while worrying, don’t portend quite as much to a full structural breakdown as recurring back problems would. But again, they’re not something you’d completely disregard either.
Theo Epstein commented when asked that the two sides were just too far apart to keep talking, and clearly the Cubs have other things they need to get done this winter (or have convinced themselves they have to get done). It’s hard to fathom what Rizzo was asking for come 2022. You would have to think his team had something like Paul Goldschmidt’s or Joey Votto’s $25M a year in mind, given that Rizzo has been fairly compared with at least the former for pretty much his whole career. Rightfully so.
Still, the Reds have watched Votto completely lose his power ever since he started earning the big check, and the Cardinals must fear the same after they watched Goldy’s wRC+ drop 30 points last year. And he’s 32, the exact age Rizzo will be turning when his time to hit the market comes.
Of course, by that rationale, you wouldn’t sign any player past their 30th birthday, really. And maybe that’s the approach some teams want to take and just might. But you could do this all day. The Cubs definitely want to sign Javy Baez to an extension, and he’s he exact same age as Bryant. And how much athleticism can he lose as he ages before it affects what he brings to the table? You can do this with Schwarber and Contreras too, if you want.
And for right now, the Cubs don’t appear inclined to consider the intangibles with Rizzo, of which there are many. He’s entrenched in the city and community, is the unquestioned leader of this team and pretty much the face of it, and the affection between and he and the fans couldn’t really be much higher. We want to believe that factors into contract negotiations, because we simply can’t bear the thought of Rizzo wearing another jersey. It wouldn’t make any sense.
All those things applied to Brent Seabrook as well. How’d that go?
Again, to me you just pay Rizzo something reasonable, unless he completely falls off or is using a cane in the next two years. Because they have the money, and perhaps at age 32 he won’t really be seeking more than four or five years and even if he’s not the All-Star he is now it’s hard to imagine him every being a true detriment to the team.
But it’s trickier than it appears on the surface. Maybe it all is.
vs. 
RECORDS: Hawks 12-13-6 Coyotes 18-11-4
PUCK DROP: 8pm
TV: NBCSN Chicago
SOOOPER GENIUS: Five For Howling
The Hawks and Coyotes will do it again, just four days after they came together for an occasion that will be lost to the annals of time soon (hopefully). In the interim, they both got kicked around by Pacific Division opponents, the Hawks by the Knights and the Coyotes by the Flames.
So obviously not that much has changed since these two went to a shootout on Sunday. The one major storyline for the Hawks is what they’ll do without Calvin de Haan now as he joins Duncan Keith in the medical tent. de Haan wasn’t put on LTIR today, just normal injury reserve, so maybe it’s not the catastrophe it looked on Tuesday. Either way, he’s out for the next few.
On the surface, we know that it means. Assuming Olli Maatta has recovered from the West Nile he contracted in New Jersey, he’ll come back in, pair with Seabrook, while Gustafsson is with Murphy and the two kids are together for like nine minutes. What it should mean is pairing Adam Boqvist with Connor Murphy and see what you have. Because what do the Hawks have to lose? They’re bottom of the division, they’re one of if not the worst defensive team in the league, so let’s have some fun. Give Boqvist the best free safety you have and let him run. Yes, he had a bad turnover on Tuesday that led to a goal. It’s going to happen. He also hit a post, created two other chances, and helped set up the goal you got. Let him make mistakes, live with it, see if he gets better. We know the Erik Gustafsson road. We know the Slater Koekkoek road. We know exactly where it ends.
Other than that, it’s hard to give you reasons to get excited to watch. The forwards should stay the same, unless Matthew Highmore comes in for someone, possibly Sikura though he hasn’t done anything wrong in two games, really. And once again the Hawks will hope that the Coyotes don’t have a plan for the night, or won’t stick to it, because that’s generally the only way the Hawks win.
Luckily for the Hawks, the Yotes defense might be as big of a mess as theirs. Jason Demers joined Niklas Hjalmarsson the shelf, and they were all over the place against Calgary on Tuesday. They gave up goals to Zac Rinaldo and Milan Lucic, which in a world that was logical would lead to automatic relegation instantly. They gave up 24 shots in the first two periods, though did rally furiously for a 17-5 edge in that category in the 3rd after the Flames had checked out.
The Yotes certainly have been piling up the shots lately, with 48 against Calgary and 47 against the Hawks on Sunday. If they had finishing talent, they might have been pouring in the goals. But they don’t, so they’ve gotten two of four points and needed a shootout for those.
Same plan as Sunday. The Yotes are pretty quick up front, and gave the Hawks fits when they were diligent about forechecking and harassing the Hawks D into turnovers. When the Hawks try and freelance out of this or don’t really care about helping out, you get what you got on Tuesday or the last half of Sunday. If the Hawks are dedicated to moving the puck quickly and directly, they can create chances against a beleaguered Coyotes blue line.
If the Hawks can’t get points here, they’re staring dead straight at the season being over by Christmas. The Avs are up twice next week, as is a trip to The Peg after a home date with the Wild, who just zoomed past them in the standings. It’s very easy for all of that to go balls-up. Have to get you can while you can when you can. And more quotes from random sources that might inspire.
The list is far too long, but it feels like Nick Schmaltz is the one first-rounder the Hawks chucked that no one kicks too much dust up about. His meaning is that he’s on the list, and how that list seems to be ever expanding.
Maybe it’s because Schmaltz’s big season as a Hawks was in a lost campaign. That was the year where Corey Crawford got hurt, the backups were simply awful, and the Hawks were severely up the track in the standings. So Schmaltz’s 50+ points were lost in the wash, and the most emotion anyone could kick up about it was, “Yeah, but who gives a shit?” Even having Patrick Kane take a shine to him wasn’t enough to save him.
If Schmaltz’s trade angered anyone, it was because of the billing the organization gave him before last season, which really wasn’t fair. Stan Bowman made no secret of wanting to keep cap space open for an extension, even though Schmaltz had only had one productive season for a team that went nowhere. Rumors of trades for Justin Faulk were supposedly turned down because Schmaltz was the asking price, but who knows for sure?
It was clearly the kind of pressure that Schmaltz couldn’t live under, which wasn’t a terribly good sign either. He quickly played himself out of the center and to a wing under Joel Quenneville, and he wasn’t much of a wing. Eddie Olczyk even was quick to point out battles or hits that Schmaltz bailed out of, which was the rare off-message moment for him. With Q’s job on the line, with a hope of a return to the playoffs, and his own contract to play for, Schmaltz simply shrank from the challenge.
Schmaltz’s season ended prematurely with a knee injury, but Arizona saw enough to put his mind at ease after 17 games with a seven-year extension. They seem to be getting a bang for their $5.9M bucks with 22 points in 33 games so far. We’ll see if any of them matter come springtime.
For the Hawks, Schmaltz just represents their utter failure in the draft since Stan Bowman took over. That’s putting it harshly, has he has taken a number of good players. It’s just that none of them have been able to make an impact for the Hawks themselves, except for Teuvo and perhaps Boqvist and Dach now. It’s truly horrifying to see that David Pastrnak was taken after Schmaltz.
You probably know the list now, but Stan’s first-rounders and what they’ve done for the Hawks:
Kevin Hayes never signed.
Mark McNeil never played in the NHL.
Teuvo was an important cog in the last Cup winner, and then had to be a make-weight to get rid of Bryan Bickell.
Phillip Danault looked really useful for half a season, and then was swapped for Quenneville’s fetish for Dale Weise and Tomas Fleischmann, both of whom he hated after five minutes.
Ryan Hartman never became Andrew Shaw.
Schmaltz became Dylan Strome.
So even in all the trades, really all the Hawks got out of their best picks was a season and a half of Teuvo and Dylan Strome. You want to know why they are where they are, and there you go. If you expand it to all of Stan’s picks who have made a serious impact, it’s just Saad and Shaw. It’s not enough.
None of that is Schmaltz’s fault. Both the Coyotes and Hawks are happy with the Schmaltz-Strome swap. Everything that you draw for Schmaltz and his time and ending with the Hawks doesn’t really have much to do with the player himself.
The Glendale Grift – It’s hard to know what history will record as the biggest stadium swindle. You’d have to think the Marlins are the clubhouse leader, but the fact that there are so many contenders is sobering to the nth degree. Glendale might have the market on dumbest.
It’s hard to believe, after all the drama, that Gila River Arena (it’s seriously called that) is only 15 years old. Which makes the Coyotes bellyaching for a new one almost unconscionable. Or it would if we hadn’t become numb to this kind of thing. The idea that it would ever work should have been a bigger outrage, except it took place in Arizona where no one cared.
The Coyotes moved to Glendale, some 20 miles from downtown Phoenix and even farther from Scottsdale, because they get a shady deal on it. Glendale was happy to pay for it, or most of it, and no one seemed to notice that people aren’t going to travel that far to watch a team that had only been in town seven seasons and didn’t have much of a grounded fanbase. And it’s been ever thus.
Every new owner of the Coyotes, and we’ve lost count at this point, has barked about getting a new building in Phoenix or Scotttsdale, to be where people live and such. But what will happen to this white elephant when that happens? It’s fine to have a football stadium in the middle of nowhere, as Glendale was and still kind of is, because that’s only 8-10 trips a year and each one is an event. But your run of the mill hockey game on a Tuesday?
The NHL sure didn’t help, as they canceled two or three All-Star games that were supposed to be there that might have helped drum up interest or forced the team to stay at all, depending on your view. It’s all been a mess, and there’s no good answer to solve it.
Perhaps it’ll be burned down in the revolution. Or just randomly, because weird shit happens in Arizona.
Hawks
Notes: We don’t know how the Hawks will line up their defense without de Haan and Keith. In reality, with nothing to lose this season and at bottom anyway, they should pair Boqvist and Murphy and see what they can do. But they won’t. Maatta should be back from the Ebola he caught or whatever it was, but we’ll see at gametime…Kubalik hasn’t been bad on the top line, and scored the meaningless goal on Tuesday, but they really need to give Dach a look there just to give it any flair…
Coyotes
Notes: Demers got hurt on Sunday when these two met last time and went on IR this morning, so he’s out for a bit. Still. Lybushkin has taken on the promotion well but as a whole they looked pretty ragged against the Flames without both Demers and Hjalmarsson…Raanta got lit up by the Flames so the Hawks will get the #1 again in Kuemper…
Well friends, it’s been more than three months since Aaron Rodgers last faced the Bears. Remember that kick in the dick? Me too. So, you ask, what kind of season has the future Hall of Famer and greatest Quarterback of this generation having? Let’s take a long look at how A-Rod’s numbers this season compare to his career numbers:
2019 Completion % = 64.4%
Career Completion % = 64.8%
For all the talk we’ve heard about #12 not meshing with his new coach or not having any sort of receivers beyond Davante Adams, his completion % speaks volumes on how he has adjusted to both. In fact, at 64%, Rodgers is more accurate than he was last season.
2019 Passing Yards / Game = 250.8
Career Passing Yards / Game = 259.6
Granted, 250 passing yards per game will be the 3rd lowest of his career, and 27 less yards per game than a season ago, but Rodgers is also throwing the ball a lot less this season; 441 times this year as opposed to 597 last year.
2019 Touchdowns / Game = 1.77
Career Touchdowns / Game = 2.03
Rodgers career TD’s per game is probably a little overinflated due to the preposterous seasons when he threw for 40, 38, 39, and 45. This season, he will throw for more TD’s than he has since 2016.
2019 INTs / Game = 0.15
Career INTs / Game = 0.46
Over the last 29 games, Rodgers has thrown four interceptions. Again, FOUR INTERCEPTIONS! This season, Rodgers will most likely throw the least number of INTs in a single season in his career.
2019 Quarterback Rating = 102
Career Quarterback Rating = 103
What really caught my eye when researching this is Rodgers’ 2011 season when he had a rating of 122.5 – that’s some playstation shit right there. Although his 2019 QB Rating of 102 isn’t close to 122.5, it will be his highest since rating 2016.
As you can see, Aaron Rodgers is having what can be considered an average season…for Aaron Rodgers. His greatest attribute continues to be ball security; which is the foremost reason teams win or lose games. Every coach I’ve ever played for stressed the importance of two things:
- Win the turnover battle
- Win time of possession
When your QB throws 0.15 INTs per game, you are going to the turnover battle 99% of the time you take the field – this is part of the reason why the Green Bay Packers field a competitive team every year. They drafted a generational talent at 1uarterback and had enough foresight to nurture him into a star without pressing the process. The way this organization handled their QB situation should be the template in which every other NFL operates.
OK, enough of the Aaronica Patrick-Munn suckoff session; what can we expect this week against your Chicago Bears?
The most positive thing I can take from this week’s matchup is how well the Bears defense played against Rodgers three months ago. Granted, Rodgers & the Packers were adjusting to completely new scheme, but the Bears knew what throws Rodgers liked and didn’t like and did everything to take away his comfort zones – and they succeeded last time out. As you can see below, #12 loves to attack the middle of the field, and he really doesn’t care at what yardage he is doing it at. The Bears must protect this area, which is usually the spot on the field where small plays become chunks of big yardage.
Two weeks ago, Rodgers showed you exactly what happens when you let him attack his comfort zone:
How does three TDs to the middle of the field and five completions of over 15 yards down the middle seams look? Pretty scary for a Bears team that has given up some relatively big days this season to some pretty looking JV QBs.
What Does All This Mean?
It means that Aaron Rodgers will ultimately be the one player who determines the winner of this game. He will determine if the Bears season is over, or if that sliver of playoff hope remains. I expect Rodgers to be very good, far better than the last time he faced the Bears, who were far more healthy on the defensive side of the ball three months ago than they are today.
Bears 13 – Packers 27
Welcome back to THE VAULT, where it’s always Week 14 somewhere. While the 2019 Bears have their playoff aspirations dangling by the thinnest of margins, we’re in here living in the past.
For those of my dear readers who may not know, I am a high school History/English teacher and I was thinking about having my kids read “The Time Machine” by H.G Wells. I probably won’t, because books written in 1895 that read like they were written in 1895 are a tough sell for anyone, especially alternative to expulsion students that are forced to prepare for a stupid standardized test in April.
“The Time Machine” will be an irrelevant exercise for teenagers, but what about Bears fans? What will THE VAULT look like in 50 years? 100 years? Will football even exist? Will the planet even exist? I know I can’t get too deep into the radical leftist position that “climate change and humans are harming the Earth” so I won’t, but it is and we are.
So, without any further ado, let’s look at THE VAULT 2083, writing about the Peoria Bears versus the Wisconsin Rapids Packers from Smarch 18th, 2077:
Welcome back to THE VAULT, our weekly subsidized, government-funded nostalgia trip through time. I appreciate you sharing your entertainment credits with me as always, because I know that you only have 15 minutes a week that your bosses allow you to be away from your desk. Thanks for spending it with me, and I promise that I will use my accumulated credits responsibly.
Today we’re gonna look back at the Bears vs the Packers from 2077, a game handily won by our beloved Peoria Bears 77-3, the biggest margin of victory since the Bears moved from Chicago to Peoria after the great Lake Michigan tsunami of 2058 (sponsored by BUD LIGHT- dilly dilly!) that caused Soldier Field to float all the way down to the central part of the state, and with all the remaining McCaskeys (just Virginia at the time) fleeing the country in the middle of the night, Peoria felt like the best option (a sentence never said before or after this article). As you know, the Packers were still reeling from the loss of Aaron Rodgers, who at the young age of 79 was sent to Mars to go hit on and alienate all the famous single women in an attempt to convince them to come back to Earth.
As you may recall, this is the game that got the Packers kicked out of Green Bay, since they made a bet with new Bears General Manager Sam “brought to you by LOWE’S” Fels-McCaskey Jr over ownership of America’s second biggest small town. As you reading this may know, he had since converted the entire city to the world’s biggest Mars Cheese Castle before the military junta led by the Sons of Josh Bellamy dethroned him a bloody, cheesy uprising. Any urban explorers now know it’s haunted by the ghosts of those dead soldiers, and the only way to get past them is to throw a football directly at their chests so when they drop it you can move right past them. They can shoot a gun, but when it comes to catching passes they are no gouda.
Those of you that remember the FEDEX Cheese Bowl of 2077 may remember that the day was paced by Khalil Mack III and his 4 touchdown passes, 3 of which went to Perg Flumpus, weeks before he was banned for life from the league for testing positive for Mango Juul pods. The Packers lone score was a dropkick through the AMAZON PRIME 3 point field goal target, just barely missing the 10 point uprights in the first year of “NFL Rock N’ Jock” rules. Chester “The Clump” Clumps grinded out 84 yards on 13 carries with one touchdown against a defense running the iconic “Cover 11” that as you know was invented by Rich “The Hedgehog” Ryan, son of Rex “The Wolfman” Ryan, who was the son of some dumbass radio DJ or something.
The Peoria Bears would ride the momentum of the Cheese Bowl victory to finish the season 21-1, and then win the first four MICROSOFT SURFACE Playoff games before losing in the WAL-MART NFC Championship to the New Orleans Football Pelicans, a game decided by the infamous broken back sack where Mack’s back cracked on impact and the loose ball was returned for the game winning touchdown. Thank god we all have free health insurance and readily available robot bones so Mack was back in black with a knack of beating the Pack. The Packers haven’t won since and I hear if they go winless again in 2083 they’re gonna be relegated to the 3rd division, the last stop before NFL teams get the death penalty. I think it’s about time they were replaced with the Arlington Heights River Rangers, personally.
Please help me they’re keeping me here against my will and they’re forcing me to watch All-22 footage of the Second American Civil War and after this they’re gonna (REDACTED)
You probably already have figured this out by now, but every time I write about the Cubs from here until spring training, if I can even bring myself to do it depending on what happens, might send me into a rage that causes me to spontaneously combust and the article will remain partially finished. I will leave specific instructions to the minions to print it as is so you’ll know when and where exactly it happened, because I don’t want you to be uninformed.
Anyway, Joe Sheehan usually puts it better than I do:
If you’re a sports team owner that ever uses the word “afford”:
1) Open your books or
2) Shut up— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) December 5, 2019
That was in response to the Lerners saying they can’t afford both Strasburg and Rendon, which they definitely can, but it applies anywhere. And so it is with the Cubs and the Ricketts family. And one thing they’ve seemingly kept under wraps, as Sheehan pointed out in his newsletter today, is that we will be operating with a completely new CBA in just two years.
So the idea that the Cubs will not be able to afford everyone when they’re a free agent…you simply can’t know that because we don’t know what the CBA will look like. Perhaps the owners and union have some inkling on where things are going based on preliminary discussions. Or perhaps the players will get their head out of their ass and hire an actual lawyer to head their union instead of a middling, power-hitting first baseman whose basic negotiating tactic has been to present his belly to be tickled.
Again, as Sheehan pointed out, the MLBPA failed to peg the luxury tax to revenue for the whole league. The tax threshold jumped 16% between ’10 and ’17, while revenues went up 70%. But you can’t renegotiate that now, only in the future for what’s to come.
Still, the fear for the Cubs has always been going too far above that threshold for a second straight season, which is at $208M for this season. After arbitration and such the Cubs are projected to come in above that again or right at it, which is what apparently has Tom Ricketts shitting himself in public so you can understand his suffering. They want to get in under that mark.
But how far above this are we really talking? Some have the Cubs coming in at $182M before any free agent additions, while some others have them around $210M. It seems unlikely the Cubs are in for much more than a $3M-$4m payment this year at the 30% rate, if they even get above the threshold. Obviously their arbitration numbers will grow next year from where they are now, but also Lester’s money comes off the books as does Chatwood’s, as does Jose Quintana’s. That’s $43M right there.
And then the year after there’s a new CBA, which could peg the luxury tax at $250M for all we know. Or possibly not even have one, depending on how hard the players want to go at this (and it should be exceedingly hard). Let’s be nice and dream, and say that the Cubs come to their senses and decide they’re going to keep everyone because y’know, they’re good at baseball and that’s sort of the idea here. And I’m going to say it costs $125M total to keep Schwarber, Rizzo, Bryant, Contreras, and Baez. Fuck, let’s call it $135M, because Bryant likely should end up with $10M more than any one else at least per year. And it’s another $30M for Kimbrel and Hendricks after that, but Kimbrel will only have one more season left. Darvish gets $19M. Heyward is in at $24M. That’s $208M for a reliever, 2/5ths of a rotation, corner outfield spots, and three-fourths of your infield as well as a catcher.
Sounds like a lot, but you also have Hoerner around who will make nothing, perhaps a fully developed Happ, and also two years to fill in those blanks with your system, which should be enough time to come up with something. Basically, if the luxury tax bumps to where it should in 2022, you’d have to work to get there.
Let’s call it all told $245M in 2022. That’s after your own network for two seasons and assuming no new hotels or luxury suites, though you never can tell. It’s higher than say a $220M bill with salaries and luxury tax penalties tacked on that you might get this year or next, but is it astronomical? Is it fuck.
If you want to convince me that, at most $15M over two seasons is enough to break the Cubs financially, I want to see some fucking books opened. Again, this isn’t about “can’t” afford. It’s about “don’t want to.” And it’s all a lie.
