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*** Official 2025 Chicago Cubs Thread***

RivClone23 said:
I thought Brett was pretty spot on over at Bleacher Nation. See how the next couple days play out and then make a decision on Sunday between Wicks, Rea, and Taillon.
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I do read BN but hadn't seen that yet. I agree that makes sense.

He mentioned moving up Taillon, but they could additionally move up Imanaga as well, delaying that spot start until Tuesday. Then, due to four off-days between 4/17 and 4/28, they could go with only four starters until 5/3 if they really wanted to. That's long enough that they could send the Tuesday starter back down to Iowa and call up an extra reliever for a while.

(This works even if the spot starter starts Sunday or Monday instead of Tuesday)

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mred said:
Per Tommy Birch, Wicks was removed from the I-Cubs probable pitcher list for upcoming games. A plausible explanation is they are only bringing up Roberts to fill in as an extra reliever until the next time Steele's spot comes up, at which time Wicks will be called up.
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Hope I'm wrong but just don't see it with Wicks. Has a good change-up but other than that....
 
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mred said:
Per Tommy Birch, Wicks was removed from the I-Cubs probable pitcher list for upcoming games. A plausible explanation is they are only bringing up Roberts to fill in as an extra reliever until the next time Steele's spot comes up, at which time Wicks will be called up.
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Wicks has not been off to a great start at Iowa either and has had injury issues of his own. I'd rather put Rea in the rotation for now until Assad is back or someone at Iowa pitches well enough to deserve a chance eventually if Rea can't hold the spot down. Wicks has been hit pretty hard in Chicago too, last year in 10 starts had a 5.48 ERA 1.63 WHIP. Was hoping they'd keep him in Iowa a bit to work on some things. Just looked at his 4 starts in September last year, woof! 7.50 ERA over 4 starts and 18 innings to go along with 10 walks. He's already walked 6 in 9.2 innings in Iowa to start the season and batters averaging .297 off him too so I'm not too confident he can be a consistent starter in the rotation if Steele is out for an extended period of time.
 
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At the time Canario and Kilian were 2 of the better prospects in the SF org. Sad that at least 1 did not pan out for us although they way we have not had much for impact players we brought up from the minors in recent years I start to wonder if either we are bad at scouting talent or bad at developing it. We do have PCA to show for the Baez trade although we probably would not have got him in a trade if he wasn't hurt at the time. The jury is still out on who won the Rizzo trade we still have Alcantara in the system. It is amazing though how far those 3 guys have fallen since 2016. The Cubs probably should of traded them all a year sooner and may have gotten better returns on them if they had. Just glad we got the WS that we did and didn't cave to their extension demands else we'd be in a world of financial mess with bad contracts right now.
 
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CYdTracked said:
At the time Canario and Kilian were 2 of the better prospects in the SF org. Sad that at least 1 did not pan out for us although they way we have not had much for impact players we brought up from the minors in recent years I start to wonder if either we are bad at scouting talent or bad at developing it. We do have PCA to show for the Baez trade although we probably would not have got him in a trade if he wasn't hurt at the time. The jury is still out on who won the Rizzo trade we still have Alcantara in the system. It is amazing though how far those 3 guys have fallen since 2016. The Cubs probably should of traded them all a year sooner and may have gotten better returns on them if they had. Just glad we got the WS that we did and didn't cave to their extension demands else we'd be in a world of financial mess with bad contracts right now.
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Obviously hindsight is 20/20.

Going into 2021, you're coming off a playoff season, albeit the Covid year. I may be misremembering but I don't think I would have been comfortable trading them before the season. There was still some hope. Obviously the returns have left a lot to be desired, but hard to get much for rentals anymore. If we get one star (PCA) and one MLB regular (Alcantara) out of it I'll be happy overall.
 
mred said:
I do read BN but hadn't seen that yet. I agree that makes sense.

He mentioned moving up Taillon, but they could additionally move up Imanaga as well, delaying that spot start until Tuesday. Then, due to four off-days between 4/17 and 4/28, they could go with only four starters until 5/3 if they really wanted to. That's long enough that they could send the Tuesday starter back down to Iowa and call up an extra reliever for a while.

(This works even if the spot starter starts Sunday or Monday instead of Tuesday)

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It's early in the season, so starting pitchers don't have their mid-season arms yet. I'd be surprised if the Cubs don't throw Rea as 5th starter to keep pitcher on 5 days rest.

Especially with starters like Boyd and Brown coming off injury seasons. And Cubs general concern of Imanaga's workload. Add to that Steele's injury and I would hope front office is cautious.
 
RivClone23 said:
Obviously hindsight is 20/20.

Going into 2021, you're coming off a playoff season, albeit the Covid year. I may be misremembering but I don't think I would have been comfortable trading them before the season. There was still some hope. Obviously the returns have left a lot to be desired, but hard to get much for rentals anymore. If we get one star (PCA) and one MLB regular (Alcantara) out of it I'll be happy overall.
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The biggest problem after 2016 was they didn't do enough to build on the cheap core they had at the time with that group. Traded their best prospect at the time for Jose Quintana who they thought could be a top 3 arm in the rotation when he was really just a bottom half of the rotation pitcher. Never replaced Fowler with a good leadoff option, basically went cheap just like they have been doing for years while the core players gradually stalled out. 2020 was nothing but a mirage during a strange season on the problems that was going on with the roster. The schedule was pretty weak as they played mostly regional games and most of those teams were mediocre to bad that year. They lost in the wild card in 2018 and went 84-78 missing the playoffs in 2019 which was the sign that things were headed in the wrong direction.

The Cubs have not won a playoff game since 2017 and for being in a big market like Chicago that is sad when the other team in town whose owner is one of the worse in baseball even has more playoff wins to show than the Cubs in that same time span. I keep saying it but what is the vision and direction with this team right now? What is the plan when your best player in Tucker walks for nothing after the season? Are they going to keep going cheap with reclamation projects every year with the bullpen or finally add a guy or 2 to fix that problem? What is the plan with some of the top prospects in the system that are blocked in Chicago still? If 2021 was a reset/rebuild and this is where we are at now the ceiling seems to be hope to win the weak NL Central or wild card or fall just short of that with 80ish win seasons.
 
CYdTracked said:
The biggest problem after 2016 was they didn't do enough to build on the cheap core they had at the time with that group. Traded their best prospect at the time for Jose Quintana who they thought could be a top 3 arm in the rotation when he was really just a bottom half of the rotation pitcher. Never replaced Fowler with a good leadoff option, basically went cheap just like they have been doing for years while the core players gradually stalled out. 2020 was nothing but a mirage during a strange season on the problems that was going on with the roster. The schedule was pretty weak as they played mostly regional games and most of those teams were mediocre to bad that year. They lost in the wild card in 2018 and went 84-78 missing the playoffs in 2019 which was the sign that things were headed in the wrong direction.

The Cubs have not won a playoff game since 2017 and for being in a big market like Chicago that is sad when the other team in town whose owner is one of the worse in baseball even has more playoff wins to show than the Cubs in that same time span. I keep saying it but what is the vision and direction with this team right now? What is the plan when your best player in Tucker walks for nothing after the season? Are they going to keep going cheap with reclamation projects every year with the bullpen or finally add a guy or 2 to fix that problem? What is the plan with some of the top prospects in the system that are blocked in Chicago still? If 2021 was a reset/rebuild and this is where we are at now the ceiling seems to be hope to win the weak NL Central or wild card or fall just short of that with 80ish win seasons.
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I'll be disappointed if they don't make a huge, long-term offer to Tucker. It's not a winning approach to play musical chairs with your line-ups top bat.

Same goes with the closer spot.

Otherwise as you point out, it's pretty much a rudderless ship.
 
Hope I turn out to be wrong but don't have a good feeling about this road trip.
 
The trades back in 2021 were terrible. I guess the market for rentals had dried up at that point. It definitely wasn't the same as 5 years earlier when we had to give up our best prospect for Chapman.
 
BigJCy said:
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I'm fine with this. He's a better option than Wicks right now. Assad will start his rehab in Iowa Tuesday and he'll need multiple starts before the Cubs know if he's ready to join the big league team or needs more work in Iowa first. I could see a scenario where they piggy back Rea and Assad too on the same day. I would guess Keller won't pitch tonight and he will be the 1st guy they go to tomorrow out of the pen as he can go multiple innings

If the worst case scenario happens with Steele they have to go out and get another starter for the rotation. They don't have enough depth in the system right now to manage a loss like that internally. There is already enough questions with this staff as it is, Boyd hasn't pitched over 100 innings since 2019 and this is Brown's first full season in the rotation if he can stay healthy. Horton could be called up at some point but he's had health issues too so he won't be over-used when he does come up. Shota and Taillon can eat some innings but there are a lot of question marks with the rest of the rotation right now that they really can use a proven guy to eat up some more innings and we knew this coming into the season too.
 
BigJCy said:
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I wish I liked the guy better, but I just can't get there. Has the potential to be a great player if he can even get to middle of the pack offense, but seems to have a little loose cannon in him.
 
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