Is everybody still in with the Cubs?
There’s one week to go until ChicagoCubs pitchers and catchers report to Sloan Park in Mesa, Ariz., and soon we’ll be hearing the familiar marketing mantra spreading the message of inclusion.
Everybody In.
It was a wildly successful campaign that began in 2018, suggesting the team and its fans were all in this thing together, from the Mai Tai
Guy to the players to the Rickettses. “Everybody In” conjured a warm, fuzzy image of ev- eryone pulling on the same rope toward a championship. It worked so well in 2018, the Cubs brought it back last year.
And despite the back-to-back collapses that defined the endings of the 2018 and 2019 seasons, everybody is presumably in for another wild ride in 2020.
Well, not everybody.
Not you, Joe Maddon. Your .581 winning percentage — second-best among Cubs managers with three or more seasons — and four playoff appearances with the team’s only championship in more than a century couldn’t save you from taking the fall. The Cubs waved goodbye to you in October by praising your skills, predicting a bidding war for your services and rationalizing it was just a good time for a change.
“Sometimes you’re left with a choice between status quo or change,” Cubs President Theo Epstein said upon Maddon’s removal. “This status quo was a great status quo, the status quo of a Hall of Fame manager. But sometimes change can still beckon, and that’s just where we are.”
So Maddon is gone, taking his talents to the Angels in Anaheim, Calif., where he can resuscitate another moribund franchise, just as he did with the Rays and Cubs.
Despite Maddon’s departure, Epstein’s threat of a roster reckoning has yet to happen, so everybody else apparently is in.
Well, except maybe for you, Kris Bryant.
Your 2016 MVP season is ancient history, and you and the Cubs haven’t come to an agreement on your long-term value. So you, too, have to go, as soon as the Cubs can find a deal that won’t haunt them forever. Because of circumstances beyond your control, your grievance hearing over alleged service time manipulation lasted so long, it delayed the Cubs’ chances of dealing you before spring training.
So unless that happens in the next week, Bryant will report to camp as a Cub without knowing whether he’ll remain a Cub on opening day. Good luck with that. Of course, until a deal is done, the Cubs expect Bryant to be “all-in.”
But aside from Maddon and maybe Bryant, it’s safe to assume everybody else is in for a 2020 season that could be one for the books.
Uh, well, not you, WGN. Your 71 years of broadcasting Cubs baseball was commendable, and you helped spread the gospel of day baseball through the superstation with broadcaster Harry Caray and producer Arne Harris. If not for you, the Cubs would’ve been just another losing franchise without a national following, a Midwest version of the Padres. But no more games this year.
Ditto for you, middle relievers Steve Cishek, Pedro Strop and Brandon Kintzler. While the Cubs relief staff finished fourth in the National League with a 3.98 ERA — in spite of closer Craig Kimbrel’s gaudy 6.53 ERA — you all were deemed overpriced and easily replaceable. Instead, the Cubs turned to a slew of younger, cheaper options for 2020 to pare payroll and avoid the luxury tax while bringing back the untradeable Kimbrel to close again.
But, hey, no problem. Life goes on, and even without Maddon, WGN, the veteran middle relievers and maybe Bryant, we can rest assured everybody else in Cubs Nation is in.