By Jon Greenberg, James Fegan, Patrick Mooney and Sahadev Sharma
If you’re feeling jaded about this year’s crosstown matchup, just look at it through the eyes of the White Sox’s 30-year-old rookie left-hander Tanner Banks.
He’s never been to Wrigley Field before.
“Only pictures,” he said.
When we talked Monday morning, I told him he’ll love it when he steps out of the visiting dugout Tuesday and takes in the view from field level. The ivy on the wall, the hand-operated scoreboard, Sahadev Sharma leaning against a fence. Everyone remembers their first time at Wrigley.
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Life is, according to a league source, a matter of perspective.
For instance, there is rain in the forecast Tuesday night, which could call for a little delay. A cold, rainy start to the city series? Count me out.
But then I was reminded that the visiting clubhouse at Wrigley Field was finally rehabbed in 2019, which gives not only the visitors more space, but the manager too. The old visiting manager’s office was about the size of a modern SUV. The new one is not only bigger but it even has windows.
“I was just talking about it, you know, the forecast tomorrow is rain early,” said White Sox manager Tony La Russa, who has sat through a rain delay or 50 during his years as the Cardinals skipper. “One of the most horrible places to have a rain delay was in old Wrigley and I think they enjoyed making you suffer. Evidently, new ownership is a little more fair because it’s a lot different now and nicer. You remember the office?”
I do. So it’s important to remind yourself it can always be worse.
With those happy thoughts in mind, the year’s version of Cubs-Sox is not what you’d call a date-circler. Each team is 9-13 and they’ve earned those identical records.
The Sox, beset by injuries, have been one of the most disappointing teams in baseball through the first few weeks of the season, losing eight in a row between April 17-26. While many big-league teams are struggling at the plate, the Sox have been hapless in the field.
Backed by Seiya Suzuki’s strong start, the Cubs looked competitive early on, but, uh, not lately. Since beating the Pirates 21-0, they’ve lost five of seven games, including back-to-back games in Milwaukee by a combined score of 20-2 last week. The center is not holding.
But we can still have fun, right?
It’s only a two-game series and the Cubs go to the South Side at the end of the month. Maybe things will be better then. We always hope for fireworks for this series — Lou Piniella going off about Steve Stone, A.J. Pierzynski homering at Wrigley, A.J. getting punched by Michael Barrett, Piniella ejecting his own players from the dugout in back-to-back seasons — but the possibility will be lessened by the absence of former Cubs prospect Eloy Jiménez. In 13 games against the team that gave him up in 2017, Jiménez has slashed .340/.426/.830 with six homers and 15 RBIs. Dylan Cease, acquired by the Sox in the same trade, also won’t pitch.
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I don’t foresee David Ross and La Russa going chin to chin to argue. Maybe Michael Kopech, who starts Tuesday, incites a melee with a high-and-tight fastball. We can only hope. (A melee with no injuries, to be clear.)
So before the series begins, I had some questions for our beat writers James Fegan, Patrick Mooney and Sahadev Sharma. Some pertinent, others not so much.
— Jon Greenberg
So going into Tuesday’s game, the White Sox are four games out of the lead in the AL Central and the Cubs are 5 1/2 games out of the lead in the NL Central. They’re both 9-13. For the three of you, describe the team you cover in three words or less.
Mooney: “It’s different here.”
LOL, just kidding. Since the Cubs don’t want to say this out loud: “It’s a rebuild.”
Sharma: “Send help fast.”
Patrick is right, this is a rebuild. We all knew that, Jed Hoyer’s semantics aside. But if it lasts much longer than this season, which is already probably too long for many, onlookers should justifiably be upset that a big-market team can’t put a winner on the field in a timely manner.
Fegan: “They’re not hitting.”
The defense has been surreally bad at times. Dallas Keuchel does not look improved from last year’s nightmarish second half. The bullpen looked stronger when we were thinking about Craig Kimbrel, Garrett Crochet and Joe Kelly being a part of it, as opposed to just Kelly, eventually. But a strong offense was supposed to paper over all of those issues at least until the Sox were facing fellow contenders in the playoffs. Instead, it’s been one of the worst units in baseball, with all of its small, seemingly aesthetic shortcomings turned up to 11. They can’t hit right-handers or take walks, so apparently, the still-rehabbing Yoán Moncada has been the MVP all along.
James, sell me on why the Sox will rebound from a horrific April and realize Sox fans’ hopes and dreams in the next two months.
Fegan: The next two months?!? You’ve got to give me longer than that. A more achievable goal might be to be safely back over .500 by the end of June, at which point they should have Moncada, Kelly, Lance Lynn and even Jiménez back in the fold. I remember — wisely, as always — referring to the expanded playoffs as insurance against the Sox wildly underperforming their expectations, and they certainly look primed to file a claim to that policy so far.
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Every concern about this team coming out of the ALDS defeat — lack of plate discipline, defense, back end of their rotation — has been validated and amplified by their disappointing start, and will rear its head again if and when they dig out of this hole. But for them to stay at the bottom of the standings all season requires us to buy into the assertion that José Abreu, Yasmani Grandal, AJ Pollock, Luis Robert and Jiménez all can’t really hit anymore, along with several others who should be better. Call me a homer, but I’m not really there yet.
Sahadev, I won’t ask you to sell me on anything because it would be disingenuous, so what statistical trends are surprising you right now for the Cubs?
Sharma: White Sox fans who aren’t paying attention to what’s happening on the North Side may be pining for Nick Madrigal after Josh Harrison’s rough start. But it’s not going much better over at Wrigley at the keystone. Madrigal is touted for his ability to make contact and he’s still doing that — though he’s slightly down from career norms — but it’s the quality of contact that’s a problem. The Cubs have worked with him on being more selective at the plate and finding the barrel more often. So far, it hasn’t taken. He’s got a 0 percent barrel rate and while he’s been a bit more picky, his swing decisions have been off. He’s among the league leaders in percentage of looking strikes, which can be fine for those who take their walks, but Madrigal is at a pedestrian 6 percent walk rate and now he’s striking out (16.4 percent) more than ever. Plus he’s just pounding the ball on the ground with regularity. Add it all up and it’s been a disastrous first month for Madrigal.
Beyond that, there was an expectation that this starting staff would be better than last season, with the additions of Marcus Stroman and Wade Miley and the potential emergence of at least one of Adbert Alzolay, Justin Steele or Keegan Thompson. Well, Miley and Alzolay have started the season on the injured list, Stroman had struggled until Sunday, Steele has been erratic and Kyle Hendricks has been inconsistent (an alarming trend that began last season). Overall, it’s led to a rotation with the fourth-worst ERA (5.16) in the game and the seventh-fewest innings (97 2/3). That’s exactly what led to the Cubs’ downfall last June and Hoyer’s eventual sell-off.
The good trends mostly come in the bullpen, where the Cubs thrived early last season as well. David Robertson looks like a lock-down closer, Mychal Givens and Chris Martin are strong veteran setup guys, and Rowan Wick looks like a long-term fit there, too. Two big pieces who have emerged for the future appear to be Thompson — whose best role is still up in the air, though he’s thrived as a multi-inning reliever — and Scott Effross. Effross strikes guys out, doesn’t walk anyone and gets a ton of ground balls all from a funky angle. Ross seems to love him and can use him in almost any situation. There are pieces of a really strong relief core here, so at least the Cubs have that going for them.
Patrick, what’s the mood like in the Cubs clubhouse? I know it’s a lazy question often proffered by sports-radio hosts, but it’s one you can actually answer again because we’re back in the clubhouse.
Mooney: At first, it was weird not seeing Anthony Rizzo or Kris Bryant strolling through the clubhouse. Even going back to Jon Lester and Kyle Schwarber’s final season with the Cubs, that was a 2020 Zoom production without interviews at their lockers. (Javier Báez was typically hard to find during the times when the clubhouse was open to the media.) Ross appears to filter through the locker room more than Joe Maddon, which is simply an observation and not a statement on the effectiveness of their managerial styles. Overall, the vibe is kind of like happy to be here. For now at least, it feels like an environment with a lot less drama and pressure than the saga of the post-2016 Cubs. That’s the challenge of covering a team with low expectations, a middle-of-the-pack payroll and so many unproven players.
What was the best clubhouse interview you’ve done this season? Don’t be afraid to brag.
Fegan: For a goofball like me, getting to talk to Ethan Katz about pretty much the entire pitching staff for 20 minutes in an empty office while he shows video of Johnny Cueto’s old bullpens off his phone is my twisted version of nirvana. It was fun to have the sort of interaction the other day of interviewing Vince Velasquez for 10 minutes, turning off the recorder and having Vince, who has barely been on the team for a month, flip things around on me and start asking about the team, what former players were like. The best might have been the first one. When we were let back in the clubhouse, it was uncertain how it would work, what the vibe would be like, and even some instruction from the team that we should ask players to leave the clubhouse for any interviews to conserve social distancing. Then I walked up to Andrew Vaughn at his locker and he gave me five minutes on his offseason like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Sharma: Like James, I love talking to coaches about the details of pitching and hitting. Tommy Hottovy is better than most when it comes to appeasing the nerd in me as he willingly goes into detail about any pitcher I have questions about. I’m just getting to know hitting coach Greg Brown, but he’ll likely be similarly helpful down the line. But ultimately, my favorite clubhouse interview this year was with Kris Bryant in Colorado. Why? It showed the value of being there, not just on that day, but for the years prior. Bryant knows me, he knows my work and that’s because I’d been there talking to him since Day 1 when he arrived at Wrigley. When the group interview didn’t appeal to me and another reporter took up his solo time on my first night in Denver, Bryant looked my way and said he’d get me for as long as I needed at some point that weekend. The next day, I walked into the Rockies clubhouse, he saw me and he was true to his word as we chatted for nearly half an hour. That’s the benefit of having the clubhouse back open, and it’s the benefit of building those relationships slowly but surely over years and years of being there through it all.
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Mooney: Play the hits, as The Athletic’s Andy McCullough might say. It was nice to catch up with Bryant during spring training and hear why he signed with the Rockies — beyond the seven-year, $182 million contract — and how he looked back on his time in Chicago.
What’s the best story you’ve written this season?
Mooney: Writing with Sahadev about the Cubs adding real talent and signing a big free agent — rather than subtracting from the major-league roster and cutting costs — proved to be a refreshing experience with this behind-the-scenes story of the recruitment of Seiya Suzuki. So far, Suzuki has lived up to the hype, or at least he hasn’t done the kind of face-plant that makes that story look ridiculous.
Sharma: So I don’t just parrot Mooney — and the Suzuki piece was a blast to gather information for and came out better than I could have imagined — I’ll go with my Thompson piece. Thompson doesn’t love delving into the details, but he’s clearly turned a corner in a lot of ways. Luckily, Hottovy is as helpful as it gets and shared exactly why the Cubs believed Thompson, who is now doing a better job of “engaging the glute,” has emerged as one of the better multi-inning relievers in the game.
Fegan: It’s a tough choice between the feature about how great Robert is before he OPS’d around .600 for a month, a feature on Sam Hairston that I filed around six months too late, and the charming story of a Cuban prospect who learned to cook for his countrymen, which was published on the day he was released after showing up to spring training out of shape.
Let’s take a break from the inquisition and fill out our All-City team, which used to be a big deal for this series, but now seems like an exercise in thumb-twiddling.
Sharma: Let’s do this with the quick caveat that I’m taking some past success into account, but heavily going off three weeks of baseball, not what I expect to be the best group going forward.
SP: Lucas Giolito
SP: Dylan Cease
SP: Marcus Stroman
RP: Keegan Thompson
RP: David Robertson
1B: José Abreu
2B: Nico Hoerner
SS: Tim Anderson
3B: Patrick Wisdom
C: Willson Contreras
OF: Ian Happ
OF: Luis Robert
OF: Seiya Suzuki
DH: Andrew Vaughn
Manager: David Ross
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Fegan: This is weird. I’m both doing a long-term view (which is why Liam Hendriks is in there) because I completely misread how Sharma said he was doing it, and inserting Stroman into the rotation while Lynn is on the IL and Kopech is still developing, mostly because I feel bad about not enough Cubs pitchers. I’ve written too many glowing prospect profiles of Madrigal and Jiménez to give up on them now, though I can’t believe I’ve somehow backed myself into a Jiménez-Vaughn defensive rotation in left field.
SP: Lucas Giolito
SP: Dylan Cease
SP: Marcus Stroman
RP: Liam Hendriks
RP: Kendall Graveman
1B: José Abreu
2B: Nick Madrigal
SS: Tim Anderson
3B: Yoán Moncada
C: Yasmani Grandal
OF: Seiya Suzuki
OF: Luis Robert
OF: Eloy Jiménez
DH: Andrew Vaughn
Manager: David Ross
Mooney: How are the White Sox this bad when they should have enough good starting pitchers, position players and late-inning relievers to compensate for Lynn’s absence and other injuries in the bullpen?
SP: Lucas Giolito
SP: Dylan Cease
SP: Michael Kopech
RP: Liam Hendriks
RP: David Robertson
1B: José Abreu
2B: Nico Hoerner
SS: Tim Anderson
3B: Yoán Moncada (once he’s activated from the injured list)
C: Willson Contreras
OF: AJ Pollock
OF: Luis Robert
OF: Seiya Suzuki
DH: Ian Happ (since Eloy Jiménez is sidelined)
Manager: Ozzie Guillen
Who is the best baseball player in Chicago right now?
Sharma: It’s probably Anderson, but by the end of the season, I think there are two clear candidates to take over that mantle. Both Robert and Suzuki have star potential and have flashed it in the recent past. I’d expect at least one, perhaps both, to emerge as two of the better players not just in Chicago, but in all of baseball, by the time this season wraps.
Mooney: Loved this line when Greenberg reported to spring training, approached Anderson and told him his first stop was to talk to the straw that stirs the drink: “You looking at him, baby.” Robert might become Chicago’s most valuable baseball player for the foreseeable future. Maybe the Cubs have a teenage prospect within their farm system who will someday graduate toward that unofficial title. But Anderson gets hits, plays a premium position, represents the White Sox well and shows off his personality in a way that resonates in Chicago.
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Fegan: I’m going to go against the grain, because I hate Mooney and Sharma, even though Anderson had a bad opening month by his standards and is still batting .330. As is often the case with pitchers, especially stuff-monsters with just enough command to make it all pop (hey, remember Jake Arrieta?), this will be true for a rather short amount of time. But I don’t know who has better stuff than Dylan Cease right now given the consistency he’s found in locating his secondaries. With as bad as the Sox offense has been, he’s been winning some games by himself.
Who is the most disappointing?
Sharma: To be fair, I have extraordinary expectations for him, but Jiménez has to be my pick. It’s not due to performance but the frustration that he just can’t stay on the field with any regularity.
Mooney: Mostly disappointed in the “lazy analysis” — according to White Sox GM Rick Hahn — regarding Jiménez being “injury prone” when Jiménez has spent time on the injured list with a sprained right ankle, a right ulnar nerve contusion, a torn left pectoral tendon and now a strained right hamstring. Jiménez also missed the first six weeks of the 2017 minor-league season while dealing with an injured right shoulder. Jiménez is a great talent with a great personality, but the durability that the Cubs factored into their trade with the White Sox remains a concern.
Fegan: I will not participate in this pile-on against my muse or that great Hahn quote that my question elicited! What on Earth did the Cubs do to Madrigal that he’s striking out 14 percent of the time while trying to pull the ball more than ever? Did someone not read their Nick Madrigal Operating Manual? Hendriks has also been shaky, and I’ve had an Adam Engel feature ready to write for almost nine months now, waiting for him to put together a good, healthy week of play.
For better or worse, which hitter is surprising you right now?
Sharma: Happ, but let’s see some consistency before we go overboard. There’s some BABIP luck going on here, but his ground-ball rate will get better, which should help even things out a bit. Add in that he’s swinging-and-missing and just generally striking out less than ever while showing his typical keen eye and it’s been an impressive start for him. Maybe the average dips as the BABIP does, but if it comes with a power increase, which makes sense for his profile, and the strikeouts and walks don’t go in the wrong direction, suddenly he becomes a really huge piece of their future lineup.
Mooney: No matter what else was happening in Chicago baseball in recent years, you could still pretty much count on Abreu to produce at an All-Star level and occasionally win an MVP or Silver Slugger award. Is this just a slow start for Abreu — an April that will quickly be forgotten — or a deeper sign about a 35-year-old slugger on a team with World Series-or-bust expectations?
Fegan: For me it’s Grandal. All the concerns Mooney raised on Abreu are valid, but at least he’s had slow Aprils before and openly hates the cold weather that has been relentless so far. When Grandal’s sore knee was keeping him from driving the ball last year, he became even pickier in his pitch selection and got on base a ton. A lack of at-bats in spring training can explain his slow start, but it comes while the Sox insist his surgically repaired knees aren’t affecting his reduced time behind the plate, so it’s hard to pin down exactly why he’s off.
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For better or worse, which pitcher is surprising you?
Sharma: Thompson looks like the perfect type of reliever for today’s game and I didn’t expect him to come out of the gates doing this well. Who knows what type of pitcher he’d be as a starter and the Cubs may be forced to find out due to Steele’s struggles, but the role he’s thriving in now is one that works well and could add up to 100 or so really valuable innings over the course of a full season.
Mooney: All of these superlatives — good/bad surprises and biggest disappointment — should go to the White Sox because their major-league season matters more than the open auditions the Cubs are holding at Wrigley Field. Credit Kopech for going through adversity and showing why the Red Sox once made him a first-round pick and the White Sox wanted him in the Chris Sale trade.
Fegan: Kopech has been impressive but I literally couldn’t figure out who Tanner Banks was when he was walking through the clubhouse on the last day of spring training, despite watching him make around 15 starts at different affiliates through the Sox rebuild. He’s been more of an enjoyably effective long reliever than someone who has figured into crucial innings yet, but I challenge anyone to talk to him or read about him and not enjoy the fact that he’s finally drawing major league checks.
If you had to bet your life on a Chicago baseball player getting a hit right now, who would it be?
Sharma: Feels like an easy answer: Anderson
Mooney: Is Frank Thomas available after doing the White Sox pre- and postgame show that day?
Fegan: Going to go with Anderson who has both been excellent for a while now and would probably enjoy getting to hold it over me that he saved my life with Stick Talk.
What’s more depressing, the price of beer at the ballparks or that I’m older than both Chicago pitching coaches?
Sharma: I don’t even want to know the price of beer at Wrigley or on the South Side; I’m glad I don’t have to worry about that anymore. I guess I wish Jon hadn’t mentioned this because I just looked up Hottovy’s age and I’m older than him too! Oh well, at least these young coaches know how to talk to the media and give more information than gruff, condescending answers and useless generalities and cliches.
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Mooney: Jon, aren’t you older than the Cubs GM, both Cubs hitting coaches, the Cubs bullpen coach and their assistant pitching coach? That’s not depressing per se — and things were far from perfect back in the day — but it does feel like baseball in general is losing something by phasing out older, experienced coaches and relying so much on data and technology.
Fegan: I’m younger than both Ethan Katz and Johnny Cueto, but my mother once texted me that Abreu “moves pretty well for an old man” and I had to inform her that he’s only four months older than me.
Give me one prediction for this week’s series, on or off the field.
Mooney: Assuming the Cubs didn’t program this into the virtual-reality portion of their presentation, Suzuki will get to see his first fight between Cubs and White Sox fans in the Wrigley Field bleachers, and that will be the moment that goes viral from one of the most forgettable crosstown series ever.
Sharma: It’ll be looked at as the series in which Abreu turned around his slow start and helped get the White Sox offense back on track.
Fegan: Kopech and Giolito have been great, so the Sox could sweep this and we could talk about everything is great and they’re back on track while they score like, seven runs for the series.
(Photo of José Abreu: Kamil Krzaczynski / USA Today)