Official 2023 Chicago Cubs Season Thread Vol: (17-17)

:nthat:

Thanks CP!

His bat far outweighs his defensive inabilities behind the plate. I wouldn't be mad to see him in RF either, but would prefer for him to take his time in the minors to stay behind the plate.

Bryant and Jen-Ho were at the game yesterday and received their awards for Cubs Minor League player and pitcher of the year :nthat:
 
Couldn't watch another minute of that crappy Bucs vs Falcons game. Changed the channel to watch the Cubbies.

Wada looking good out there.
5IP
5K
1ER
 
ESPN Stats & Info ‏@ESPNStatsInfo 1m
Clayton Kershaw gave up 3 runs in the 1st inning. He allowed a total of 4 1st-inning runs in his 1st 25 starts this season.
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:pimp:
 
8 games left.

2 vs Dodgers
3 vs Cardinals
3 @ Brewers

Arrieta and Hendricks only have 1 start each left. I'd like to win those 2 games for them to close out great years.

The rest, lose. 2-6 would put us at 70 and 92, an improvement over 2013, but still kept us where we need to be, inside the bottom 10. :pimp:


As of right now, we would have the 8th pick in the draft. But, we're like a game away from 5th, so we can still move up a few notches, depending on how we close.


In hindsight, the 3 game sweep over the Reds may have felt great, but those 3 wins could end up hurting us. :lol:


Doubront and Turner each get 2 starts a piece still, so that's good, we need to see them a couple more times to see if there's anything there that could be useful.


Next week we'll start lookin at our draft slot, who we can pursue, how all our guys did, and who to recruit for next season, the point where we start trying again, before the big one, the unleashing, 2016. :pimp:
 
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How u gonna leave out our boy Wada :lol:
To be honest I wouldn't mind seeing them lose out the rest of the way to jump back into the top 5.

From the small sample size we've seen I gotta say Felix >> Jacob.
 
Wada is going to be 34, and I'm not sure he's in their long term plans.

I could be wrong on that, but I don't get the sense that he's someone Theo will put into "the core".
 
Welp.....

We were down 7-2 and everything was goin just fine, but Chris Coglan has decided to have himself a career day, 4-4 with a walk, 2 home runs, a double and a single, and we now lead 8-7. :\ :smh: :wow: :smokin

We need losses more than wins, but it's certainly nice to see the team still fighting anyways.
 
Outstanding news:

The Chicago Cubs have just six games left in the 2014 season, and they’ve won 69 times. That’s more than each of the first two years of the Epstein/Hoyer era, and just two wins shy of the 2011 total. For me, matching those 71 wins in 2011 would be particularly satisfying, knowing that the 2011 Cubs were crafted as an ill-conceived attempt to win, didn’t even sell off at midseason, and still finished abysmally. Unsurprisingly, then, it was the year Tom Ricketts realized that another direction was desperately needed.

Ah, but you wonder: if the Cubs win a couple more games – or maybe even four more, avoiding 90 losses – will they fall out of the bottom ten teams, thus losing a protected pick for 2015?

Well, fear not. You may now pretty much root for Cubs wins the rest of the way without any sense of cognitive dissonance tied to that pick. Why? With yesterday’s loss to the Dodgers, the Cubs are now virtually guaranteed a bottom ten record in 2014.* Let’s check the reverse standings:

Arizona Diamondbacks 62-94
Texas Rangers 62-93
Colorado Rockies 65-91
Minnesota Twins 66-89
Boston Red Sox 68-88
Houston Astros 69-87
Chicago Cubs 69-87
Philadelphia Phillies 71-85
Chicago White Sox 71-84
Cincinnati Reds 72-84
Miami Marlins 74-81
San Diego Padres 74-81

The only way the Cubs could “fall” out of the bottom ten is if (1) they win all six of their remaining games, (2) either the Padres lose all seven of their remaining games or the Marlins at least six of their remaining seven games, and (3) the Phillies, White Sox, and Reds lose at least three apiece. Given the schedules and the requirement of all of those things happening at once, it’s pretty much impossible.

The Padres are about to start a three-game set against the Rockies, before playing four against the Giants, whom they just swept. The Marlins are about to play the Phillies for three games, before finishing with the Nationals (already clinched) for four. It seems highly unlikely that either or both teams lose every game the rest of the way.

So, absent a 1-in-a-million roll of the dice, the Cubs now have a protected pick for 2015.

The Cubs can still shift up or down in the draft for 2015, of course, but, for me, where the Cubs pick doesn’t feel quite as important as it did in years past. Instead, winning – via positive player development – and the attendant good vibes heading into the offseason struck me as the most important thing this month. Retaining the protected pick was the only caveat, and, with that now all but sewn up, there is no reason to “worry” about Cubs wins.

By way of reminder: having a protected pick in the 2015 draft will allow the Cubs to more confidently pursue some of the best free agents on the market this offseason because the cost for signing such a player will then be a mere second round pick. The pain associated with losing, say, the 45th pick (and its $1.25 million slot value) is far, far less than losing, say, the 12th pick (and its $2.8 million slot value).

If you’re not familiar with all of this qualifying offer/protected pick stuff, here’s the gist: if a team is about to lose a player to free agency, they can extend him a “qualifying offer” worth about $15 million for one year. That player may accept, or reject the offer. If he rejects it, he is then tied to draft pick compensation: namely, his former team gets a draft pick at the end of the first round when he signs with another team. And the team that signs him loses a draft pick – either their first round pick, or, if they had one of the bottom ten records in 2014, their second round pick. We call those first round picks that cannot be lost for signing a free agent “protected first round picks.” The Cubs (essentially) have one of those now. It’s designed to make it a little easier for the worst teams to improve themselves in free agency.

So, if the Cubs decide to pursue Russell Martin or Max Scherzer or James Shields, for examples, they don’t have to pay the huge contract price AND lose an extremely valuable first round pick. They just have to pay the huge contract price and lose a valuable, but much less valuable, second round pick. The price, then, to sign these guys is slightly lower than for the 20 teams without a protected pick.

Two random additional points about qualifying offers: (1) if a team signs more than one qualified free agent in an offseason, they lose their next eligible pick in the 2015 draft (so, for the Cubs, for example, they would lose their second round, then their third round, then their fourth, etc.); and (2) players traded midseason or signed late in the season are not eligible for a qualifying offer (so, for example, Jon Lester will not be a qualified free agent, despite his awesomeness).

*MLB has clarified, by the way, that the teams with the bottom ten records will receive a protected pick – not just the top 10 picks. The Astros received a compensatory pick (second overall) for failing to sign Brady Aiken, but that will not impact other teams with respect to protected pick status. In other words, the first 11 picks in 2015 will be protected.
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Improved the team over the past couple seasons, Improved Rizzo, Castro, developed Arrieta, Hendricks, Ramirez, Baez, Soler, Alcantara and still have Bryant, Russell, Almora, Schwarber to develop and bring up going forward, AND get yet another top 10 pick to insert into the system.

Theo :pimp:
 
Protected pick is now protected. No matter how many games the Cubs win the rest of the week, they will have a top 10 pick next June. :pimp:

Going to be somewhere in the 7-8 range. Once we find out exactly where, I will drop some Draft prospects in here to get an idea of who we could be lookin at.
 
CP1708 said:
Protected pick is now protected. No matter how many games the Cubs win the rest of the week, they will have a top 10 pick next June. :pimp:

Going to be somewhere in the 7-8 range. Once we find out exactly where, I will drop some Draft prospects in here to get an idea of who we could be lookin at.
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Looking forward to seeing the draft prospects.
 
CP1708 said:
Protected pick is now protected. No matter how many games the Cubs win the rest of the week, they will have a top 10 pick next June.
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Going to be somewhere in the 7-8 range. Once we find out exactly where, I will drop some Draft prospects in here to get an idea of who we could be lookin at.
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Very excited to see what Theo does next.
 
CHICAGO -- The home portion of the Chicago Cubs schedule ends Wednesday evening. Then, the real work begins.

The Cubs will begin their long-awaited, $375 million reconstruction of Wrigley Field this weekend, Cubs vice president of communications Julian Green said Tuesday.

First up is the bleacher expansion and the preparation for the expanded home clubhouse. On deck is everything else as the process is expected to take at least four offseasons.

The streets behind the outfield walls have been partially obstructed for weeks as the power and gas lines have been moved to ready for the bleacher expansion. Because of the construction, Waveland and Sheffield Avenues will be closed from the start of construction until Opening Day, Green said.

The left-field and right-field bleachers will be completely rebuilt, with a new party deck in left. The center-field section will remain untouched, Green said.

The Cubs will start digging their first non-metaphorical hole at Wrigley in many years when they tear up the parking lots that border Clark Street and Waveland Avenue. That construction will continue through next season, along with other fortifications of the 100-year-old stadium to ready it for future enhancements.

What will be different for fans in 2015, aside from the chance at seeing a moderately competitive team?

A giant 4,000-square foot videoboard, for one.

The Cubs still haven't decided on which company will manufacture the board. Request for proposals are still out, Green said, but a decision should be made shortly. He reiterated that it will be up in left-center field for their home opener, April 6, against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cubs are counting on ad revenue from the videoboard to help bolster their baseball budget.

Another smaller videoboard, similar to the one in right field directly above the ivy, will be in left field next season as part of the party deck

Also on tap is the large script Budweiser sign in right field that the Cubs claimed would be up for Opening Day of this season.

The bullpens won't be moved under the bleachers until the 2016 season, when the expanded home clubhouse is also expected to be ready.

The Cubs are still trying to find a new TV home for about 70 games next season. The team's contract with WGN, which has telecast games since 1948, is expiring after the season, and the team is still trying to figure out where those games will go. Green had no information but said the Chicago Tribune's characterization that the search is in "extra innings" was accurate.
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Theo man, dude is a genius.

New TV contract comes up in 2019, so for the next 4 years, they will add on to Wrigley, modernize it, and get it set for when the team starts playing well, creating more money, and using that to put into the team, onto of a hugely rebuilt farm system which we've never had.

He's rebuilt the foundation literally, and figuratively. ****, he's even moved around some of the minor league teams to avoid rainy weather, closer to Chicago (helps with call ups travel and such), I mean, he has completely revamped everything about the brand of the Chicago Cubs. :smokin

His last piece of the puzzle will be the one thing that's taken over 100 years. If he does that, we buildin a statue of that ************ and postin that ***** behind home plate. :lol: :pimp:
 
Jake Arrieta's season.

10-5
25 Starts
156.2 Inn
114 Hits
44 ER
5 HR :wow:
41 BB (2 IBB)
167 K's
0.99 WHIP
2.53 ERA
4.9 WAR

Absolutely dominant. :pimp:

Outside of Kershaw, he was the best pitcher in the NL, if he had a couple more starts in April, he could have approached 200 innings, 200 K's and a 6-7 WAR which is a Cy Young type season. Without those starts, he's probably looking at finishing 4th or 5th.

Last night's win also gave the Cubs a winning home record on the year, 41-40. Again, a small stepping stone for the young Cubs. Next year, work on the road record and things will grow even further.

Also, next year Wrigley will have a facelift, part one of a four year upgrading. This is what the field will look like for 2015 (in 2016 the Bullpens will be removed and be hidden within the stadium.)

View media item 1194235
Soooooooon. :pimp:
 
^
Right on fam :nthat:

Helluva game for Jake yesterday and a perfect way to end his season.
Who would've thought he was going to be this good!?!?!
As long as we add 1 or 2 big arms this off season our rotation can be as good as anyone's with Jake, Kyle, Wada, Neil and the young guys coming up CJ, Jen-Ho, + top 10 pick :nthat:

Honorable mention to Hector Rondon as well for his services.
I'm just hoping that with the renovation prices don't go up too high :smh:
 
Increasing your total ticket sales by 0.36% in a given year is probably not something that you would typically celebrate.

But when that increase comes in the face of a fifth straight losing season, and at the tail end of five straight seasons of ticket sales declines? Well, then, it’s a little more notable.

Still, how do I get from “notable” to the “pretty big deal” referenced in the headline?

Well, consider that the Cubs sold 2,652,113 tickets this year after selling 2,642,682 last year. The year before that? The Cubs were 240,000 higher. The year before that? Another 140,000 higher. And so on. It should be no surprise, then, that both external punditry and internal projections had the Cubs continuing that decline this year.

The pre-season estimates depended on your source – some said 2.3 million, others said 2.36 million, and I had heard 2.4 million – but, any way you slice it, another considerable drop was expected.

Given the Cubs’ disproportionate reliance on ticket revenue, then, you can expect that the projected budget for baseball operations heading into 2015 was probably looking like it could take a modest hit back in January. How much of a hit? The Cubs’ average ticket price is about $44 and the estimate I’ve heard for average concessions is about $17, which makes the lost revenue about $61 per ticket.* Let’s peg the projected drop at the middle of those three figures above, and say the Cubs outsold their initial projections by 300,000 tickets. A little math, and you come up with $18,300,000.

That’s $18,300,000 in additional revenue the Cubs picked up on ticket sales this year, which was presumably not projected to be available to the organization before the season started. And that’s how I land on “pretty big deal.”

Sure, that revenue comes with some modest additional expenses (sales? staffing at events?), but, for the most part, it’s probably close to an addition net of revenue. And, given that the Cubs’ stated protocol is to make all revenue – after organizational expenses – available to baseball operations, that’s a significant extra chunk of money that is now available to baseball operations for 2015.

Couple that with the significant money coming off of the books after the season, the money the Cubs saved at the Trade Deadline, the money rolled over from the failed Masahiro Tanaka pursuit, the additional revenue from Spring Training, and the additional revenue from corporate partners, and there should be a relative geyser of financial wherewithal to do what the front office wants to do this offseason.

No, that doesn’t mean the front office will – or even necessarily should – go out and spend $60 to $70 million this offseason, increasing payroll into the $130 million range. But, even when forgetting about the anticipated revenue from the renovations and additional signage at Wrigley, the coming increase in ticket sales (yeah, it’s coming), and the mega bump down the road from the TV deal, the Cubs should be able to do whatever they want in the near-term future, in terms of spending. Contracts for players always still have to make sense, but there should be no player the Cubs want that they simply cannot afford.

As for the ticket bump, itself, I say kudos (1) to the Cubs’ sales staff, who undoubtedly worked hard to make this happen over the last 12 months; (2) to the fans who came out to see a more interesting team than in recent years; and (3) a schedule that was conducive to floating ticket sales a bit, complete with a good slate of visitors, a party for Wrigley Field, and contenders down the stretch.

Next year, let’s hope the buoy to ticket sales comes primarily because fans are eagerly watching actual winning baseball.

*(To which you say, “But Brett, you can’t count concessions on every single ticket, since there are no-shows.” And I respond, “Yes, but we’re talking about additional incremental tickets sold throughout the season – the majority of which, you would presume, involve people who actually go to the game. And, hey, even if you clip off 50% of the concessions revenue, you’re still left with more than $15 million in extra revenue.” And then I ask why you’re talking to me in a parenthetical. Get out of here.)
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:pimp:
 
LAS VEGAS — Kris Bryant picks up one end of the big flat-screen, high-definition TV and lifts it high as he carefully starts climbing the stepladder. His dad, Mike, picks up the other end and climbs the other ladder.

‘‘You see it?’’ Mike says, looking behind the TV, lining up the wall bracket.

‘‘Yeah,’’ Kris says. ‘‘Got it.’’

A few seconds later, the TV sits securely in place on the wall above the Bryants’ indoor batting cage.

What’s the best minor-league prospect in baseball doing while he’s not playing for the Cubs this September? When he’s not hanging TVs on walls, he’s hitting golf balls instead of fastballs, taking his mom out to dinner on her birthday instead of taking his best shot at the St. Louis Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright and sleeping late instead of hitting early.

‘‘I’m trying to relax a little bit and not really think too much about baseball at this moment,’’ Bryant, 22, says. ‘‘But having fun — I don’t really know what to do with my time. I don’t really have a routine right now.’’

The consensus minor-league player of the year and the top prospect in baseball, according to some of the latest rankings, Bryant might be the most important prospect to the Cubs’ rebuilding plans — and certainly the most conspicuous absence among the touted rookies getting valuable at-bats this September with an eye toward an important 2015 for ‘‘The Process.’’

It has been a tough lesson in baseball business for Bryant, a former finance major at the University of San Diego, whose monster season at Class AA and Class AAA wasn’t enough to trump roster and service-time issues and deliver a big-league debut.

‘‘I definitely learned some things this year in terms of stuff that happens off the field,’’ he says, ‘‘but I’m ready for whatever comes [next].’’
He and his dad have an offseason plan for getting the most out of whatever that might be, wherever that might be.

As for the September that Bryant isn’t spending at Wrigley Field, the premature end to the most prolific power season for a minor-leaguer in nine years has brought him back to where it all began.
A hitter is born
The legend of Kris Bryant started at the Little League fields of Rainbow Park, a quiet, suburban oasis about eight miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.
‘‘That’s where he hit his first dinger,’’ Mike Bryant says, pointing in the distance to a small brown bridge beyond the center-field fence, just to the right of the small scoreboard.

Kris was a 60-pound 8-year-old, playing with older kids.
‘‘A week later, he hit one off the scoreboard,’’ Mike says.

By the time Kris got to Bonanza High School, where the west wind is known to buffet a hitter as fiercely as the lake wind on a pitcher’s day at Wrigley Field, the legend grew quickly.
As the wind howled before a game against Western High in Kris’ sophomore year, then-coach Derek Stafford warned his hitters: ‘‘Nobody hit it in the air. Nothing’s going out.’’
Kris hit a ball over the telephone wires beyond the left-field fence that landed on the other side of the street.

During a scrimmage 18 months later, he hit one over the 408-foot sign in center that headed into the park across the street.
‘‘It still hasn’t landed,’’ says Bonanza coach Mike O’Rourke, who was an assistant when Kris played there.

A few months later, Kris broke an aluminum bat hitting a ball that still got to the fence for a double.
‘‘It sounded like a shotgun went off,’’ says Mike, who keeps that bat — with its long, lightning-shaped split through the metal — at the family batting cage, where Kris takes BP and Mike gives lessons.

Kris snapped another bat off at the handle during the Area Code Games the summer before his senior year.

But the one people talk about with Babe Ruth-like reverence is the one he hit in college on a cold, drizzly night in San Diego against Saint Louis. He drove a first-pitch fastball over the left-center-field wall at a height exceeding the 80-foot light tower and out of the Toreros’ ballpark.

‘‘And it disappeared, climbing into the night sky through the fog,’’ says Jack Murray, San Diego’s play-by-play man. ‘‘The only thing I could think of was ‘The Natural,’ when he broke the light tower.’’

Kris almost didn’t play in that game. He felt sick. But instead of pulling himself from the game, ‘‘I was like, ‘I’ll just swing at the first pitch,’?’’ he says. ‘‘He happened to throw a fastball up and in, and I just caught it flush. .?.?. That was definitely one I’ll remember for a while.’’

‘‘I’m jealous of Chicago,’’ Murray says.


No Strip, no distractions
If Kris Bryant sounds too good to be true, baseball is only a small part of it.
He and older brother Nick graduated high school with 4.78 GPAs. Neither drinks, Mike says, and they stayed out of trouble growing up, even as the bright lights of the Strip beckoned less than 10 miles away.

Every coach, scout, teammate and executive who has evaluated or worked with Kris raves about his focus, makeup and approach.

‘‘He’s kind of different as far as his expectations of himself,’’ teammate Logan Watkins says. ‘‘He wants to get a hit every time he’s up at the plate. He wants to just be perfect. I get on him about that a little bit: ‘Hey, man, just have fun.’?’’
Mike says that focus comes from his wife, Susie.

‘‘If there’s a driving force for success behind Kris and all the important things he represents, it was Susie,’’ he says. ‘‘She was the driving force behind the makeup everybody always talks about when they talk about Kris.’’

Mike? He was the baseball force, a constantly moving, talking, coaching, outgoing counterweight to Susie’s more reserved, conservative, media-shy nature.
From the time Kris was 5, Mike, a former Boston Red Sox farmhand, has been his hitting coach. Wiffle Ball in the cul-de-sac turned into hitting in the batting cage behind the garage with Mike, which turned into the stuff of local legend.

Kris says he’s hungrier than ever to get to the big leagues — not to show anybody he should be there, but to see it for himself.
‘‘I can’t predict the future or how good of a career I’ll have,’’ he says. ‘‘I don’t even know if I’ll make it. But it’s definitely something I’ve been dreaming about ever since I’ve been taking cuts out there in my batting cage.’’

“It was probably the best decision I ever made”
Maybe if Kris had skipped college and signed out of high school, he already would be in the majors. Bryce Harper, one of Kris’ former teammates growing up in Las Vegas, skipped a year of high school, came out in the 2010 draft and is in his third season with the Washington Nationals.

Kris, projected by some that year to be a first-rounder, fell to the 18th round because of signability questions, and the Toronto Blue Jays wouldn’t pay the $2.5 million for him to give up school. Kris, who was invited to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship, was sold on the combination of education, quality of life in San Diego and baseball development at that level.

‘‘It was probably the best decision I ever made,’’ he says. ‘‘Those were the best three years of my life. And I think the development path is very different for me coming out of college.’’

Maybe that’s a big part of how Kris got to this point so quickly after being drafted. He had a 1.098 OPS this season, and his 43 homers still lead pro baseball more than three weeks after his last game.

Maybe it’s also how he wraps his mind around the possibility he’ll open next season in the minors again, no matter how he does in spring training.

‘‘I won’t set my expectations too high just because I hear a lot about what people are saying,’’ Kris says. ‘‘But I’ll definitely go out there and show them what I’ve got and not hold anything back.

‘‘If I start the year in the minors, that’s OK. If I start in the bigs, that’s great. I don’t get to control that. I can only control how I practice, play and have a good attitude about it. I think if I’m doing that, then everything takes care of itself.’’

But can you hit Wainwright’s curve?
If the Cubs won’t provide Kris with the September training program Jorge Soler and Javy Baez are getting, he and his dad plan to do everything they can this winter to compensate. He ordered the kind of pitching machine big-league clubs use, with settings for curveballs and 90 mph sliders.

‘‘With this machine, you can definitely simulate an Adam Wainwright curveball if you figure out how it breaks, so I think there’s definitely ways to practice it,’’ Kris says.

He admits that’s not the same as Baez and Soler (four combined strikeouts) actually facing Wainwright on Monday.
Mike also is adding a Ted Williams technique of creating a strike zone seven baseballs across and 11 down, then identifying where among those 77 spots are the holes in Kris’ swing.
‘‘Then we’re going to plug them up one after another,’’ Mike says.

During an awards event in February in San Diego, Murray finally handed Bryant the ball he had been waiting much of the last three years to ask him to sign.
Thing is, it already had a signature on it: Barry Bonds’.

‘‘He did a double take,’’ Murray said. ‘‘He said, ‘Are you sure?’ I said: ‘I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Whether you ever break [the home-run record] or not, at least you’ll do it right.’

‘‘Later, I said to Mike: ‘You know what the amazing thing is? I think Kris is going to be the valuable signature on that ball, not Bonds.’ I’m convinced of it.’’

MORE ABOUT KRIS BRYANT
Home Run King
Unless Nelson Cruz hits four home runs in the Baltimore Orioles’ final four games or Chris Carter hits seven in the Houston Astros’ final three, Kris Bryant will finish with more home runs this season than anyone in North American professional baseball, despite not having played a game since Sept. 1.

“That would definitely be pretty cool. That’s definitely not a goal that I set out to accomplish. But it just happens based on going about it the right way and having a routine and sticking to what you know.”

Bryant’s 43 home runs is the most for a minor leaguer since Angles’ prospect Brandon Wood hit 43 in 2005.

On College
Even though he might be in the big leagues by now if he had signed with Toronto after being drafted out of high school in 2010 (18th round), Bryant believes he made the right decision to spent three years at the University of San Diego – for baseball development as much as education.

“That was the biggest thing when USD was recruiting me, that they were saying to use college as your minor leagues. And it definitely is the truth,” he said. “Because I played there, and then last year I played three levels and then got to AAA my first full year.

“And you see it now. High schoolers can take three years to just get to AA. I think the development path is very different for me coming out of college. When you go to college you don’t have to go on 14-hour bus rides either. It’s a whole lot more fun.

“Maybe in the Midwest League, you’re 18 years old and you don’t really know how to handle 14-hour bus rides. It’s definitely tough. There’s definitely a few guys out there that can do it. Albert Almora is probably a good example, just because he’s a very mature kid beyond his years. But a lot of high school guys out there might struggle with it.

“That’s why I’m a big believer in going to college.”

Wiffle Ball and mental approach
Cal it the Zen of Wiffle.

All these years later on some of the most competitive ball fields in the world, Bryant says he still draws on those days as a small kid playing Wiffle ball with his brother and neighbors in the cul-de-sac where he still lives in the off-season with his parents.

“We’d get together on the street and play Wiffle ball every single day,” he said. “If we hit it on this roof over here it’s a homer, above that tree there it’s a homer.
“When I’m out there now and I might be struggling, I think about times where I’m playing Wiffle ball in the street with my neighbors and how fun that was. When you think of times like that it puts the whole game into perspective.”

On avoiding the tempations of the Vegas Strip
If what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, Bryant wouldn’t seem to know much about that. Las Vegas is home, and the Vegas strip is just one small part of the city – a part he has tended to avoid.

Should make the Wrigley Field spectacle/fishbowl easy.
“We would only go down there for like high school dances or special occasions,” he said. “We really stayed away from it just because it’s not really a good area to be at. It’s kind of dangerous.

“When you grow up here, you don’t really want to go down there. It’s just not the place to be. I think what people don’t realize is that there’s actually people who live here outside of the Strip.”

Not that he could avoid it as a teen. His high school is just a few blocks off Sahara Drive, and the Strip is visible from that corner, only five miles away.
“When you’re growing up and you’re used to that, it’s not as attractive to maybe a tourist who hasn’t really seen it,” he said.

No temptation even to satisfy the curiosity – even to just wander the floors and experience the lights and constant, hypnotic ding-ding-dinging of the slot machines?
“We got that when I got my drivers license,” he said. “There’s a casino [near the house] a movie theater, so we’d go there all the time, and we’d hear the ding-dings and all that.”

On finishing season in the minors, while others were called up
He said he started tasting how close he was getting to his dream even last year in A ball.
“But since I’m pretty close to Chicago now, I definitely feel it even more,” he said, “and getting to watch Javy [Baez] and Jorge [Soler] and getting to see them make their debuts.

“I definitely taste it a little more than I did last year, that’s for sure.”

On expectations
If anything, the longer the wait for Bryant, the louder the hype might get by the time he actually does debut next season. Is he ready for that? How does anyone live up to those kinds of expectations?

“My expectations are higher than anybody else’s out there,” he said. ”When people expect a lot of things out of me, I can assure you that I expect a whole lot more out of myself.”

Does he realize even Derrek Lee got booed at Wrigley over a slow start?

“That’s all part of the game, though,” he said. “Cubs fans are the best in baseball. I sure hope to be up there doing great things for them. But there will be times where I struggle. But it’s all part of the game. It’s all for fun. I don’t take it for any more than what it is.”
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Kid has had batting cages in his home since he was a kid. :wow: :pimp:

This kid is going to be a STUD. :pimp:
 
Season ended today with a win over the Brewers.
Rizzo smacked his 32nd :nthat:


Helluva year!
I'm already in full football mode, but these Bears are taking years off my life :smh:
Catch y'all in the spring!
#InTheowetrust
 
I will post and update stats, record, pics, future etc this week and change title to Off-season thread tomorrow.
 
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