Cub Tracks’ it’s full of stars

Feb 7, 2023 - 1:00 PM

Welcome to today’s edition of Cub Tracks news and notes™, a greatest-hits collection of Chicago-style beat writers and bloggers, ground from #Cubs, #MiLB, and #MLB baseball, overheated, steeped in writers’ tears, and then cold-brewed overnight for maximum flavor.

Cub Tracks tries hard not to repeat anything from the front page, with some leeway for slow days. It’s our job, after all, to provide material from other sources, which leans perspective as to the excellence of BCB’s coverage.

This is why we don’t have 167 Pete Crow-Armstrong is invited to Spring Training articles. Nobody has anything different to say and it just gives clicks to other sites.

We also try to consider the source(s). If a lot of you object to something/somebody, it isn’t as likely that they’ll be included. One person complaining doesn’t elicit the same reaction.

Just so you know.

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• Brett Taylor (Bleacher Nation*): Steve Cohen to the other MLB owners: Hey, it’s not my fault you don’t spend. Interprets Jeff Passan ESPN+ piece.
• David Laurila (Fangraphs*): Sunday Notes: Carter Hawkins compares the Cubs and Cleveland. “I would say the best thing in terms of similarities is that there are a lot of team-first people in both places, as opposed to me-first people...”
• Mike Gavin (NBC Sports Chicago*): When Cubs pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training. “They’ll soon be the first to report to their team’s spring training facilities in Arizona.”
• Jordan Bastian (MLB.com*): What to know about Cubs Spring Training. “This is it. This is the exciting time,” David Ross said. “It gets the blood pumping, for sure.”
• Evan Altman (Cubs Insider*): 11 questions I want to see answered during Spring Training. “I think it’s worthwhile to head into spring with a checklist of sorts...”
• James Neveau (NBC Sports Chicago*): Four questions facing the Cubs as spring training nears. “... there are still four roster questions that will need to be answered...”
• Stephen J. Nesbit (The Athletic {$}): 2023 MLB ‘Wild-Card Era’ Franchise Rankings: Where does your team belong? Cubs are ‘middleweights’.
• Brett Taylor (Bleacher Nation*): New farm-system rankings has the Chicago Cubs juuuuuust outside the Top Ten. Depth, not star quality, defines the system.
• Kaitlin Sharkey, Larry Hawley (WGN9): WGN at 75: Joe Maddon on the Cubs’ 2016 World Series championship. “... we took a look back at that memorable season with Maddon on GN Sports early in 2023.”

Food for Thought:

Please be reminded that Cub Tracks and Bleed Cubbie Blue do not necessarily endorse the opinions of writers whose work is linked to in this series of articles. Thanks for reading!