Wicks Season Over, More Big Picture, Complements, Defense, Taillon, Suzuki, Tauchman, and Other Cubs Bullets

Brett Taylor Brett Taylor
Sep 21, 2024
Sep 21, 2024

It’s basically been birthday week for The Littlest Girl, because her birthday was at the start of the week, and her party is today. She deserves it all. And I deserve the cake.

  • The Cubs won’t get another start from Jordan Wicks this season. He’s headed back to the Injured List with an oblique strain – the same injury that cost him the middle of the season – and his season is over. It’s a disappointing end to a disappointing season, and confirms that the Cubs cannot *count* on Wicks *definitely* being in the starting five all season next year. What was supposed to be a season that cemented him as a big league starter turned into multiple injuries intermingled with up-and-down performances. I think the talent is very clearly there to be a mid-rotation starter. There’s a lot I really like about Wicks. But there are steps still needed, obviously.

  • Hopefully, at a minimum, Wicks learned some valuable things about his body, his training, his mechanics, and anything else that is all wrapped up together in balancing the demands of pitching with the importance of staying on the field. This will be a very important offseason for him to not only get healthy – obliques are just about the most easily-recurrent soft-tissue injury in the sport – but to try to figure out ways to stave off future injuries.

  • Trey Wingenter returned to the roster in a corresponding move for the Wicks injury.

  • Craig Counsell continued his big picture discussion about where the Cubs are and where they need to be, following up on earlier comments:

  • On that last one, I think about it two ways. First, Counsell probably doesn’t want to dump on his players, so that’s why you have him saying it’s not just about the “personnel.” Second, this was what I said about Counsell’s initial comments: that the changes the Cubs would be making are going to be as much or more about organizational work, rather than just plunking down cash to sign nine-figure free agents. Ultimately, the Cubs need to do ALL of the things if they want to improve, and I really hope that the work at an org level (coaching staff, front office, development, etc.) is married with impactful trades AND impactful work in free agency. It would be completely asinine to leave anything on the table, especially with as much cash as the Cubs have coming off the books.

  • Early comment on the free agent class and the construction of the Cubs’ roster: assuming they aren’t going to be serious about Juan Soto, there aren’t a lot of super obvious nine-figure-type paths for them. But for as much as people focus on the Soto/Burnes/whatever level of guys, the Cubs need to do a much, much, much better job at finding really good complementary players. Those are the moves that, while they don’t matter as much as a huge signing, have been REALLY underwhelming the last few years (Trey Mancini, Tucker Barnhart, Hector Neris, Franmil Reyes, Andrelton Simmons, Jonathan Villar, Brad Boxberger, Eric Hosmer, etc.). By definition, you’re less likely to find “hits” in that tier, but you still have to be able to find USEFUL players who don’t AFFIRMATIVELY HURT your chances of winning. Too many of those guys have been WORSE than zero value.

  • Probably a quiet part of the blown games in May and June – perhaps some of the late losses could’ve been bigger leads to begin with if the defense hadn’t been kinda rough:

  • Really the only thing missing here was Michael Busch jumping up onto the tarp to make this catch, but he’ll learn as he becomes more familiar with the park:

  • I like hearing from Jameson Taillon:

  • His great start yesterday, by the way, dropped his season ERA to 3.41, which is his lowest since 2018, and is about 16% better than league average. He has been exactly what the Cubs are paying him to be, and you just hope he can do it again next season.

  • Seiya Suzuki became the Cubs’ pretty-much-regular DH on August 16. Since then, he’s hit .315/.420/.496/159 wRC+.

  • Mike Tauchman, relegated to a pure bench role, has just 31 plate appearances in the last month and a half. It is extremely difficult to be successful in that kind of role, but he’s put up a 112 wRC+ in that time, mostly pinch-hitting. Very impressive and deserves credit.

  • Jacob deGrom is finally back, and still good:

    • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at and on Link🎀edIn . Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage 🐭of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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