On Sunday, CSN Chicago’s Cubs pre and post game “analyst” Todd Hollandworth decided to give his Twitter followers his hot take on what the Cubs “need” to do with Kris Bryant when the team heads north to start the regular season.
If the Cubbies have plans for contending in ’15, Kris Bryant will be at 3B Opening Night. This division is 2 tough to forfeit games w/o him!
— Todd Hollandsworth (@hollytime28) March 15, 2015
@patheraty I’d like to win now. Can you give me a reason besides service time for why he’s not in the BIGS. — Todd Hollandsworth (@hollytime28) March 15, 2015
If the Cubbies have plans for contending in ’15, Kris Bryant will be at 3B Opening Night. This division is 2 tough to forfeit games w/o him!
— Todd Hollandsworth (@hollytime28) March 15, 2015
@desipiodotcom best players should play, end of story
— Todd Hollandsworth (@hollytime28) March 15, 2015
It’s clear that we are stuck with Hollandsworth for a while, so as a public service, I’ll try to talk1 some sense into him.
Dear Todd Hollandsworth,
Since you are going to be doing the pre and postgame work on the network that has the majority of Cubs games this season, and because more people are going to be paying attention to the games, and sticking around to the end, there’s going to be a distinct difference in your work than there has been for the last several seasons.
People are actually going to hear what you say. Â And if it’s as meatball as your Tweets today were, well, the last thing Cubs fans need right now is more dumb.
The simple answer to the Kris Bryant “dilemma” is that there’s no dilemma. Â The owners and the players agreed to these stupid service time rules years ago. Â They are the ones who decided that any player on a big league roster for 172 days during the regular season is credited with a full season. Â Any less and it’s a partial season. Â For Bryant, the key is that after seven seasons he’ll be a free agent. Â If the Cubs wait 13 days (not games, days) into the season to add him to the roster, he won’t become a free agent until after the 2021 season. Â If they don’t, he’s a free agent after the 2020 season.Â
This decision you seem to think is so difficult comes down to this.
Should the Cubs send Kris Bryant to lovely Des Moines for the first 13 days of the season–potentially having him on the roster for 151 games, or, have him for 162 and potentially lose him to the Yankees or Red Sox or somebody else for all of 2021?Â
On what planet is this a difficult decision? Â
Maybe it’s because you think, for some reason, they’ll have to forfeit any game he doesn’t play in. Â I’m not sure about that, you might want to crack the rule book to check on that.
The problem with you being so wrong about this is that there are plenty of dumb Cubs fans who will actually think sending Bryant to Iowa is a bad move. Â They’ll think somehow it must mean the Cubs really don’t want to win this year. Â These are the same dopes who think the whopping three years the Cubs spent rebuilding this roster was “too long.” Â If you want to be king of the dipshits, go ahead.
When you say dumb shit like this, it leaves us to guess about two possible reasons why you would say it.
Is it:
a)Â Because you know sending Bryant to Iowa is the right move, but you want to stir up some ill-informed discussion on it?Â
b) Because you don’t know any better?
Neither is a very good reason.
It certainly seems like the Cubs are going to be good this year, and probably in the division and/or wild card race late into the season.  It’s the kind of season that makes fans want to watch things like a postgame show after a big game. Â
But if this is the brand of analysis we’re going to get, why would we bother? Â If we wanted to be hit over the head by a big hammer of dumb, we can just watch Bill Melton and Frank Thomas. Â
We’ve been waiting a long time for a decent Cubs team, and we deserve better than this. Â We deserve reasoned, intelligent discussion about what’s happening. Â We don’t need inch deep analysis. Â The guys who will be announcing the games in between your stints on the air–Len Kasper and Jim Deshaies will give us the kind of smart baseball talk this fanbase needs so badly. Â But it’s nice that you’ll use your two thirty minute stints on the air to try to make us all dumber.
Joe Maddon’s going to do some smart, innovative stuff. Â It’d be nice if the “expert” who comes on after the game can explain why it was smart and innovative.
As for the moves Jed and Theo are making, it’s the same deal. Â
I’m tired of how dumb so much of this fanbase is. Â
If you want to sit there next to your day-glo co-host and overstate the obvious, that’s on you.
But we deserve better. Â Even those of us who don’t even know we deserve better deserve better.
Stop being willfully baseball stupid.
If you can.
Isn’t this whole thing going to be moot anyway? 2020 or 2021 it doesn’t really matter. If the guy is as good as we all think he is going to be then the Cubs will re sign him to an extension similar to what the Angels did with Mike Trout. The Angels kept Trout down for a year longer to keep his “clock” from starting then 2 years in they extended him to a six year deal. If Bryant plays as well as we all think he will, he is not going to be making the minimum until 2021, they will extend him well past 2021. So how about everyone cools their jets on the issue and relax.
I mean really–should anybody be taking seriously the word of a guy who was too dumb to use me to protect his breakable shins in 2004, thus helping lead the Cubs right out of the pennant race?
The point about Trout would be valid if Trout was represented by Boras like Bryant is. As long as Bryant is represented by Boras, I’m going to assume that Bryant is going to test free agency. So, this really is a no-brainer.
I just hope Hollandworth is coming at it from the perspective of a (dumb) former player and thus backing whatever player-friendly thing should be done in every situation.
On the other hand he might just be a regular dumb guy who just happens to be a former player.
On the other hand, there are some fans, like me, who have been following the Cubs since 1942, and don’t have all that many seasons to look forward to.
Besides, doesn’t everyone want to see if I can lower my robust career batting from .159?
“The problem with you being so wrong about this is that there are plenty of dumb Cubs fans who will actually think sending Bryant to Iowa is a bad move. They’ll think somehow it must mean the Cubs really don’t want to win this year. These are the same dopes who think the whopping three years the Cubs spent rebuilding this roster was “too long.”
You’ve described my brother-in-law to a ‘T’.
He doesn’t like Joe Maddon – and thinks he is bad for the team – because he lets his players listen to music and play cards in the clubhouse.
…dear God, what did I do to deserve this?