Cubs and Bears making moves

The Cubs are wrapping up the pre-Japan portion of spring training and the Bears were busy throwing money around on the first* day of NFL free agency. In this free edition of the newsletter you'll get to read about both. Lucky you.

And if you don't subscribe to the newsletter, you could fix that, you know.

The Cubs apparently have decided they don't have enough starting pitching depth, which is true given that Javier Assad will start the season on the injured list, Colin Rea is still bad and Jordan Wicks is still Jordan Wicks. But the two pitchers the Cubs were connected to would do nothing to help.

According to our old pal Patrick Mooney and my old The Athletic lunchroom buddy Ken Rosenthal, the Cubs have two ex-Cardinals on their emergency pitcher list.

Oh, for fuck's sake. How is that supposed to help? Lynn managed just four starts after the All-Star Break last year, and he was 1-4 in ten starts with a 4.81 ERA outside of whatever the Cardinals call this version of Busch Stadium (Big Urinal Cake II?)

Gibson made 15 starts in each half for the Cardinals, and went 1-5 with a 4.37 ERA in the second half. I was actually hoping those numbers would be even worse. Let's just figure that his ERA would have been eight if not for some generous home official scorer rulings.

Both of those clowns are 37. And Lynn has made a newfound commitment to fitness. He claims to have lost 20 pounds and is down to a svelte 260. Just 20 more and he might be able to bend over and pick up a bunt.

I'm not sure what the answer would be if the Cubs lose another starter or two early in the season, but I'm pretty sure picking up either old, bad ex-Cardinal isn't it.

Last week we ran with a rumor that Boog Sciambi wouldn't be making the trip to Japan to call games for Marquee because originally Marquee balked at making the trip and Boog got pissed and accepted an ESPN Radio assignment for the NCAA Tournament, so the AAA deejay who serves as his TV backup now would be going instead.

Well...it looks like we were right.

So it's actually even lamer than we'd originally heard. It's not even a real tournament game, it's the Big 12 tournament. There's no way Boog's contract with ESPN would have prohibited him from calling in-season Cubs games for that assignment, so it's clear that it was true that Marquee was originally going to call the games from their studio in Chicago, and Booger said "fuck that" and told ESPN he'd be thrilled to call a scintillating matchup between 13 and 12 seeds Cincinnati and Oklahoma State instead.

And even if it were the case, why couldn't Boog fly to Tokyo after the Big 12 tournament wraps up on Saturday? The Cubs and Dodgers play on Tuesday and Wednesday. I don't think you have to fly over the International Date Line three times to get to Japan, do you?

The only answer I can think of is that the Cubs were worried that without time to properly get over his jet lag, that Boog would be too tired to tell three inning stories about his shoes during the first two games of the season.

The Dodgers have given Dave Roberts a four-year, $32.4 million extension which makes him the highest paid manager in the game by $100,000 a year over Craig Counsell. Joke's on Dave, though. Craig got five years, not four, and he doesn't have to work in October.

"Arguably" is doing a lot of work there. Does anybody really think Roberts is the best manager in the game?

I guess the argument is that because of chronic Dodger pitching injuries he's had to be a bullpen game whiz in some really big playoff games. But until last year, they weren't working and I'm pretty sure that if you gave Ned Yost a first three batters every game of Shohei, Mookie, and Freddie that even he could nap his way to a World Series title.

But Roberts wasn't the only managerial news yesterday. In a WOO interview WOO with Katie Woo! of The Athletic, Yadi talked about how much he'd like to manage in the big leagues some day. The one thing holding him back is that he lives in Puerto Rico and doesn't want to spend that much time away from the basketball team he owns.

Wait, what? That's not it? Apparently, Yadi and his family have left the island and moved to Austin, Texas. He wants to spend more time with his family for now, but he'd love eventually to manage the Cardinals.

So why do we care about any of this? We didn't, until he said he wants to manage so badly that...

Oh, fuck off.

And, in a long awaited update to my favorite PED story of all-time, Mo Vaughn has finally admitted he used HGH during his time with the Mets.

We knew this, because by far the funniest part of the Mitchell Report was Mets' clubhouse guy Kurt Radomski ratting Mo out and complaining that he went to the trouble of getting the HGH for Mo in 2001, and that Mo would take it and then not work out.

"Where's Mo?"
"He's in the hot tub trying to let his human hormones grow."

For those of us who watched the Bears last year and were amused and sickened by the sight of underweight center Coleman Shelton being picked up by angry defensive tackles and thrown in the general direction of Caleb Williams, or of Teven Jenkins clearly blocking the wrong guy and then falling over and lying face down in the grass five times every game, or of Nate Davis waiting for a bus back to Nashville, the Bears approach to free agency this year has been an overdue and welcome relief.

Last year the Bears got some shiny toys and we all looked forward to Caleb Williams lighting it up with fellow rookie Rome Odunze and veteran wide outs DJ Moore and Keenan Allen. But thanks to a clueless coaching staff and the complete and utter inability to protect the passer or block in the run game. Caleb spent the season running for his life. DJ spent it bitching on the radio. Rome played about half as many snaps as he should have and Keenan looked like he was on early retirement.

The mess got The Flus and his beloved HITS system ("Hey I'm a Shitty Tactician") fired in-season.

2024 was an abject disaster, but 2025 started with a rare win over the Packers and the roll has gone on unabated. The Bears did not fuck up their coaching search and locked down the guy we all wanted, Ben Johnson, and it's so nice to have a coach that can actually string two sentences together.

And impressive things have kept on happening. The Bears at a minimum needed to use free agency and the draft to find two new starting guards, a new starting center, a defensive end to line up opposite Montez Sweat and a real, live three technique defensive tackle.

And what do you know? In the span of two days the week before free agency the Bears decided the free agent guards blew so they traded for Jonah Jackson from the Rams and Joe Thuney from the Chiefs. Jackson played for Johnson in Detroit and signed last year with the Rams to move to center because the Rams wanted a bigger center than the guy they'd had there the two seasons prior...none other than Coleman Shelton. Jackson got hurt, the Rams moved Beaux Limmer to center and felt good enough about their guards and bad enough about their salary cap situation to trade Jackson to the Bears. And who did they sign to back up Limmer, yesterday? Coleman Shelton. Hakuna Matata. The circle of suck.

As for Thuney, he's not just a four-time Super Bowl champion and three time All-Pro, he's a reigning All-Pro. He's 32 and was the Chiefs best offensive lineman his entire time there. Last year he moved to left tackle on the fly and was good there. The Bears had his teammate Trey Smith on their radar as the best free agent lineman, but the Chiefs put the franchise tag on Smith, which meant they had to cut salary somewhere else, and voila, the Bears ended up with Thuney. Given that it was no safe bet they could have signed Smith, what looked like a bad break for them when the Chiefs whipped out the franchise tag turned out to be very fortuitous for the beloved Bears.

Yesterday, the Bears came to terms with their new center, Drew Dalman from the Falcons. Dalman is now the second highest paid center in the league. That doesn't make hm the second best, but he's a massive upgrade for the Bears, and having a very good guard line up next to him on both sides should make him all the better.

The Dalman signing happened about 20 minutes after free agency started and for a big chunk of the day it looked like the Bears might be done in the first wave. And they'd done good business. Getting new guards and a center crossed three big things off of their offseason shopping list. It also freed them up to focus on defensive end, defensive tackle or just best available with their first round pick (10th overall) in next month's draft.

But then, they signed Colts DE Dayo Odyeingbo. He has the length (6'6) that new Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen likes in his pass rushers (Montez Sweat is like 7'4 or something, I'm not sure, I haven't measured him in a while, but he's a giant) and Dayo looks like a guy who is just starting to figure it out. Or, he could be the next Al-Quadin Muhammad, such is the risk of free agency.

OK, great. Nice job, Ryan Poles. You filled four of your five biggest needs in a week. Go have some ice cream or something.

But he wasn't done. Early in the day on Monday, the Falcons, whose salary cap is severely fucked up, waived 10-year veteran and 10-year stud Grady Jarrett to try to get far enough under the cap to actually do something in free agency.

I saw that news and thought, "Oh, it's too bad the Bears won't go after Grady."

They went after him alright. And they signed him. Grady gives the Bears the tough as shit defensive tackle they've lacked since Akiem Hicks left. Jarrett plays with a non-stop motor, something that Allen knows from his days coaching the Saints and trying to figure out how (and failing) to block Grady twice a year. At 32 he will benefit from playing in a rotation and he'll split time with Gervon Dexter and The Juggernaut (my favorite of The Flus' incessant nicknames for players) Andrew Billings. And Gervon is going to benefit from playing with Grady.

Plus, every football team should have at least one player named Grady.

So what do you know? The Bears have a pair of talented veteran guards, a real center (and Dalman is only 26), a second defensive end and a bad ass three technique.

Suddenly, the handcuffs are off how they use their three picks in the first 41 selections in the draft. They don't need to take someone at any of those positions to fill a gaping hole. That doesn't mean they should pass on LSU tackle Will Campbell if he falls to ten, or if Michigan d-tackle Mason Graham is there, but if a high value player tumbles down to them at a position other than o-line or d-line they put themselves in a position to take them. They also can trade back now, knowing that their biggest holes are filled and they can use the draft to stockpile talent. You know the way real teams with good rosters (like the Eagles) can do it.

Who knows how these guys will work out? Nothing's guaranteed. But if you're not impressed by the way the Bears approached the last week or so, you're just looking for things to bitch about.