The shoutiest of all MLB Network hosts, Christopher “Maddog” Russo had Cubs TV play-by-play announcer Len Kasper on High Heat yesterday to talk about the upcoming Cubs season.

I’ll admit that I generally like Russo, especially when he gets all wound up1, but apparently only on his radio show.  I loathe High Heat and its rapid fire nonsense, and wish SiriusXM which simulcasts the TV show from noon to one Central time, would just give our good friend Mike Ferrin and Jim Duquette their hour back.

I was really hoping that they’d do a breakdown of all the other teams in the Central, if only so we could hear Russo try to say Brewers.  It always comes out Bwoowers, and it’s never not funny.

They talked Wrigley Renovation and I think Russo now believes it’s going to take four years to rebuild the bleachers.  They talked about Javy Baez cutting down his stroke and his strikeouts.  They talked about Joe Maddon and what kind of impact he can have with a good, young team.

Len gave a great, succinct explanation of why the smart thing for the Cubs to do is to keep Kris Bryant in the minors for a couple of weeks, not to save money in arbitration, but to preserve another full year of club control.  We long ago figured this out.  Maddog probably still hasn’t.

Russo says he likes Starlin (and, to his credit he has talked highly of Castro for a long time), and he and Len discussed where Starlin’s future is, whether it’s another team or another position.

Len did a nice job, but it should be law that every guest has to bait Russo into saying “Bwoowers.”

Here are those annoying footnotes.

  1. Which is most of the time.