The 2016 Chicago Cubs Will Win The World Series

Can't really bury the lede after a title like that, can I? Best to just get into it.

Yes, I will say that again: The Chicago Cubs will be the 2016 World Series champions. That's right, you heard it here first. No take-backsies. Stock up on tshirts with the names and faces of this year's Cubs team. Grab a scorecard from every game you attend this year. Go ahead and splurge on that Jason Heyward Chinese knockoff jersey you've had your eye on. His name will be part of Cubs legend forever even if he opts out after 3 years.

This team will do it. They're better than you think. Yes, even better than that.

It doesn't seem like it would be going out on too far a limb to predict a World Series win for a team that is the current Vegas favorite (7/1 odds) to do so. But the Cubs just aren't any average team, are they? Especially when it comes to being favorites for anything and especially especially when it comes to winning a pennant, let alone a championship.

Yes, I remember 2003. And I remember how the events of 2003 weighed down both the 2007 and (even moreso) the 2008 Cubs when the playoffs rolled around. You could tell watching those teams that the pressure to get even one playoff win was so high got into their heads and they played tight and nervous. I knew then that the next Cubs team that would actually have a chance at getting to a World Series would have to be young enough to not know that pressure. Or be young enough not to care.

And isn't that what we got last season? Even with the addition of Jon Lester in the offseason, 2015 was supposed to be the year the Cubs got to ease their young players into the big leagues and hey, if they finished at or near .500, the season would be a success. Instead the team was powered by equally valuable rookie seasons by Kris Bryant, Addison Russell and Kyle Schwarber en route to a surprising 97 wins, and even more surprising Wild Card win and an even more surprising NLDS win over the Cardinals.

Think about that. The Cubs of last season won 97 games. I feel like a lot of people might not realize how good that truly is because it was somehow only good enough for THIRD PLACE in the NL Central. So not only did this young and talented team come within striking distance of 100 wins, but they also got some big game playoff pressure experience? Got humbled enough in the NLCS to be hungry as hell the next season? How can things get any better than that?

Things did get better than that. A whole lot better in a lot of ways. They Heyward signing, the Castro trade and the Zobrist signing may have made a lot of people believe in the Cubs' chances, but not me.

I was on board before any of that. Not that I'm complaining! Far from it. But even before all of those moves happened, there was still a really good chance that the 2016 Cubs were going to be much better anyway fielding a pretty similar team to the one they had in 2015. THAT'S the reason I'm predicting the Cubs to win the World Series more than any other. I feel like the Heyward/Zobrist/Warren/Lackey additions have stolen all the headlines (and rightfully so) and left a lot of people forgetting about a whooooole lot of other reasons the Cubs will be much better than you think.

Getting Back To A Pair Of Aces

One of the many benefits of Jake Arrieta's knockout Cy Young winning 2015 is that it deflected a lot of attention from Jon Lester's solid-but-very-rollercoasteresque season. Without Arrieta's dominance, Lester's season might have taken a lot of the blame if the Cubs would have missed the playoffs by a couple of games. In 2015 was Lester great? Or was he awful? The answer to both questions is 'yes' depending on what month you look at. Check out his monthly ERA splits:

April: 6.23
May: 1.76
June: 5.74
July: 1.66
August: 5.04
September: 2.36

Talk about an up and down season! Every month he was either Zack Greinke's power mullet or Alfredo Simon's doughy midsection without much in between. But don't forget, Lester posted a 2.46 ERA for the 2014 season, so there's a lot of reason to think he could be much better in 2016. Aside from a 2% increase in home run rate, there really isn't a whole lot of difference between Lester's 2014 and 2015.

And the same can be said of the playoffs. Now we're talking about a small sample size of 2 games, but Lester's ERA in the 2015 postseason (4.50) was definitely higher than the mark he's had across his postseason career (2.85).

My Prediction: Lester has a season not quite as good as his 2014 and not nearly as uneven as his 2015. Let's split the difference with an ERA around 2.90. Spread that across 200 innings and throw in north of 200 strikeouts and a handful of clutch playoff performances and you've got yourself a true second ace behind Jake Arrieta in the Cubs rotation.

The Youngsters Take Another Step Forward

No matter what your expectations were for them in 2015, I think it's safe to say that the rookie triumvirate of Bryant/Schwarber/Russell were better than any of us could have hoped for so early in their careers. And while last year was better than expected faster than expected, is it really that hard to imagine those three getting better in 2016?

It took a little while for Bryant to really get going with the home run ball, not hitting his first homer until his 21st major league game. That would turn out to be the longest Bryant would go without a home run on his way to clearing the fences 27 times to go along with 99 RBI. So what can Bryant do for an encore? How about 40 homers in 2016? It's certainly possible. Bryant had a very respectable .213 ISO last season (ISO = how hard you can crush a baseball), which put him alongside guys like Jose Abreu and Ryan Braun. Those to aren't anything to sneeze at in the home run department, but Bryant showed in the minor leagues that he's got another level of power to potentially tap into. Bryant's ISO in the minor leagues was .342. To give you a comparison, last season NL MVP Bryce Harper led the league with a .319 ISO and popped 42 homers. Giancarlo Stanton had an ISO of .346 halfway through the season before a broken hand caused him to miss the second half and that mark had him on pace for 60+ homers. Now obviously the majors are tougher than the minors, so take that .342 minor league ISO with a grain of salt. But it does show you that the potential for 40 homers is there. If Bryant can cut down the strikeouts by just a hair and raise that ISO up into the .240-.260 range, he could clear the 40 homer mark with ease.

And did you see Bryant's August and September? He ended the season on quite the tear, slashing .333/.403/.589 during the season's final two months. Now I don't think that Bryant will hit .333 any time in the future, but those other two marks look pretty sustainable and it could be a sign of Kris finally finding his groove against Major League pitching on his way to a monster 2016.

The name that seemed to always come up as an accurate comparison for the Major League upside of Addison Russell?  How about Hall of Famer Barry Larkin? No biggie, right? And from what we've seen of Russell in the minors and majors so far, it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch. At his best, Larkin was good for 15-20 homers, 25+ steals and an OBP above .360, all while chipping in Gold Glove defense at short.

It's sometimes hard to remember that Hall of Fame-caliber potential and comparisons are high bars to clear and that even coming in at 70% of those projections is still really damn good. Russell has already flashed Gold Glove caliber defense at both second and short but his bat wasn't doing much of a Larkin impression aside from promising power. Even at his best, Russell won't walk as much as Larkin or steal as much as Larkin and will certainly strike out more. But even with all that in mind, Russell is going to be an incredibly valuable player as soon as this year. The 20 home run power is there already and it's not out of the question to expect Russell to improve on his walk and strikeout rates from 2015. Remember, dude was only 21 for all of last season. He was the age of your average Junior in college. Most baseball players his age that aren't still in college are only at A or AA, not manning one of the most demanding defensive positions for a team with World Series aspirations and doing a damn good job of it. Let's not forget Exhibit A:

Russell is nowhere near his prime yet. He could turn into a 22 homer/15 steal Gold Glover as soon as this season. Guys that can do that with a strikeout rate under 25% don't grow on trees. Seeing Russell improve every single year for the next 3-4 seasons isn't that crazy of a thought. It should definitely be terrifying for the rest of the National League though. And all we had to do was trade Hot Diarrhea Geyser for him? AND we got to see that very same HDG spew filth and home runs all over the 2015 White Sox season? That's almost unfair!

And now we come to The Big Toe (I heard that somewhere on Twitter and I feel like it's the perfect nickname for Kyle Schwarber. Right? How is that guy not Big Toe material? IT IS DECIDED). There isn't a whole lot to say about Schwarber that you don't already know. The dude rakes. He's raked at every single stop in the minor leagues and he rakes in the majors, both in the regular season and the postseason. In the Wild Card game, Big Toe crushed Gerrit Cole.

In the NLDS, Big Toe crushed Wacha and Siegrist.

In the NLCS, Big Toe crushed Matt Harvey. And for an encore? Big Toe crushed Jacob deGrom on a pitch that was ALMOST A FOOT OUTSIDE.

He's got the quickest left handed bat I've seen in recent memory. Yeah, he strikes out a lot, but he also works the count and takes a bunch of walks. It's not out of the question to think that he has a David Ortiz-like ceiling.

But let's say that Schwarber doesn't take a step forward this season. Let's all be Debbie Downers and say that Schwarber doesn't improve and simply produces exactly as he did last season, only for an entire season and not just the 69 games we saw in 2015. That would still come out to an OBP of .355 and about 27-30 homers. Again, that's what we could expect out of Schwarber if he didn't improve upon his age 22 season. But is there room for Schwarber to improve? Absolutely, especially when it comes to the average department. Schwarber hit just .246 last year, which isn't surprising considering he struck out 28% of the time. But Schwarber also hit .333 for his minor league career, so seeing him take a step forward to the .260 or even .270 range wouldn't be too surprising, especially if he can cut that strikeout rate down. He might not be able to get down to the 20% rate he saw in the minors, but 23% isn't out of the question. And again, Schwarber was the age of a college senior last year.

My Prediction: I think Bryant, Russell and Schwarber all fend off the dreaded Sophomore Slump and improve upon their 2015 seasons across the board.

The Forgotten Man

Oh yeah...the Cubs had another rookie that didn't make too many headlines last year. Jorge Soler's 2015, where he hit just .262 with a mere 10 home runs, was seen as a disappointment. A lot of that was because fans still remembered his torrid September call-up in 2014 where he hit .294 and bashed 5 homers in just 24 games. He also couldn't stay healthy, missing all of June and a few weeks of September. And despite being incredibly cheap (Soler makes just $3 million in 2016 and 2017, then $4 million a year from 2018 - 2020), many fans wanted to move Soler in a rumored deal to Cleveland for Danny Salazar this offseason.

Man, do we have short memories. It wasn't that long ago that Soler was considered the crown jewel of all the prospects in the Cubs' system. As recently as 1 year ago, Baseball Prospectus rated him the #12 prospect in all of baseball. And holy crap, do you all not remember what he did in the playoffs? Here's a reminder of how awesome he was. I feel like Soler is flying under the radar coming into this season, and only on a team as ridiculously stacked as the 2016 Cubs can a guy that could hit .280 with 25-30 homers be considered 'under the radar' and, to some fans, entirely expendable. Dude can hit, and dude is going to hit this year. If you thought the Cubs' offense was stacked last year, imagine dropping a 25 homer Soler season right into the middle of it. I know I keep saying it, but seriously...this Cubs lineup is better than you realize.

My Prediction: Soler settles in and posts a 23 homer season with at least 70 runs and 70 RBI while hitting around .270.

Adding In The New Guys

Over the second half of last season, with Schwarber and Soler in the lineup, the Cubs were 6th in the Majors in scoring so it's fair to say that they were really damn good. Now swap out Starlin Castro's up and down 2015 for a bit more stability (especially when it comes to OBP) and about the same amount of power from Ben Zobrist. Now upgrade from Dexter Fowler to Jason Heyward. And we haven't even mentioned potential breakout candidate Javier Baez as someone that can rotate between 2B, SS and potentially CF. Plus we've got Chris Coghlan as bench depth at OF and 2B.

The Cubs have clearly upgraded over last season at SS and CF. And a bounceback by Soler would give them an upgrade over last year's squad in RF. Schwarber will have a full season in left. If Bryant and/or Russell take even a small step forward, we could be looking at the best offense in baseball. Hell, it's not inconceivable that Anthony Rizzo could step up his offensive game too. Did you forget that he's only 26?

As we mentioned here last week, Lackey slots into the rotation behind Arrieta and Lester and bumps Jason "Goddamn" Hammel from the playoff rotation. Adam Warren and a full season of Clayton Richard and Trevor Cahill mean the bullpen could potentially go 6 deep (Wood/Strop/Rondon are solid).

My Prediction: Theo and Jed went out and filled every single hole that the 2015 Cubs had. There's no more work to be done. This team is the best team in baseball top to bottom. We could lead the league in both ERA and scoring offense next year. I cannot remember the last time the Cubs were this good. This is the best Cubs team since the 1969 Cubs. This will be the Cubs team we all tell our kids and grandkids and strangers kids about.

The 2016 Cubs will win the World Series.

Next year is here.

Cubs Offseason Review: Baller $tatus

It certainly took a while, but this has finally been the offseason we've been waiting for since 2006.

You remember 2006, don't you? Dick Cheney shot a dude. Zinedine Zidane headbutted a dude. Barbaro (what ever happened to that horse?) almost won a Triple Crown. And the Cubs...well, the less you remember about the 2006 baseball season, the better. Outside of Aramis Ramirez having one of his finest seasons and the solid, workmanlike play of one Thunder Matt Murton, the 2006 Cubs were a tire fire full of some of your least favorite names: Michael Barrett's pasty face was offending sensibilities across Chicago. Ronny Cedeno OPS'd .610 (for comparison, Carlos Marmol's OPS was .696 in 24 at-bats). Tony Womack got paid to basically hang out and be 103 years old. Hell, even Greg Maddux posted a 4.69 ERA, his worst in 19 YEARS.

(Surprisingly solid in 2006? Jacque Jones! His triple slash was .285/.334/.499 with 27 homers. Talk about one of the most "underrated solid effort by a guy you swear was putrid" Cubs seasons ever. If Jason Heyward puts that season up this year, we'll be calling him a bargain!)

Did I mention that the Cardinals won the World Series?

And then everything turned in the offseason. Dusty Baker got shitcanned and replaced by Lou Pinella. And the front office decided to make a run at the playoffs by signing Alfonso Soriano to an 8 year, $136 million contract, the 5th largest in baseball history at that point. The Cubs rode the momentum of that offseason to consecutive playoff appearances in 2007 and 2008.

Then we got pretty old and pretty bad. Theo and Jed came in and cleaned house and we knew it would be a while until we would be major players in free agency again. But even then, Cubs fans still hoped to sign a big free agent to build around, something to signal that better times were ahead.

But sometimes, it turns out that the moves you don't make can be as important as the ones that you do make. I remember I was hoping for the Cubs to sign Prince Fielder in the 2012 offseason, but what would have happened to Anthony Rizzo? If we would have gotten what we wanted in 2013 and signed Masahiro Tanaka, it definitely would have hampered what the Cubs were able to do this offseason (and would have looked doubly bad when his elbow finally blew up, which it will this season). Last year's Lester signing was a great start, but no one saw the 2015 season playing out like it did. We still knew the best was yet to come.

And that leads us to the offseason that will officially be wrapping up 2 weeks from today when pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training. Let's look at the major events of the offseason and my grades for each one.

1. Red Sox sign David Price

This one stung. We knew that the Cubs were going to try and flex their financial muscle this offseason, and as the 2015 NLCS showed, the Cubs were a bit short on starting pitching. I mean, I love Kyle Hendricks, but he has no business being the #3 starter on a team with World Series aspirations. The patented Joe Maddon Connection didn't come through and Price went to Boston.

HOT TAKE: This turned out to be a positive. I was really disappointed initially, but I think it's because I didn't think Heyward was a real possibility. I thought it was basically Price or nothing. But seeing how the offseason eventually played out, signing Price would have prevented the Cubs from doing all the other awesome things they've done this year. And as fearsome as an Arrieta/Lester/Price playoff threesome would be, the Royals showed us last year that you don't need a stacked rotation like the Mets to go all the way. You just need some reliable guys, a great bullpen and a lineup of high OBP guys that can get on base against power pitchers. And while the Cubs are much flashier on offense than last year's Kansas City squad, they made a few Royals-esque moves soon thereafter.

2. Basically trading Starlin Castro for Ben Zobrist and Adam Warren

Sure, Zobrist wasn't technically part of the Castro trade, but both moves were companion pieces to each other. Zobrist's contract is being paid with the money saved by shipping Castro out of town.

HOT TAKE: I was not a fan of this initially. Don't get me wrong, Adam Warren is a decent starter and has the potential to be a really great bullpen arm. But he's not worth getting a decade older at second base. And even with Castro slipping the last few seasons, there's no way that Zobrist's age 34-37 seasons will be better than Castro's age 25-28 seasons. I even posted a very curt Facebook status about it. But we'll revisit this in a moment.

3. Signing Jason Heyward

OHHHH SLAMMMM! The Cubs come up big and beat out the Nationals and the stupid Cardinals and sign Heyward to a deal that turned out to be less money than any other team offered. Some people tried to argue that Heyward wasn't worth all the money the Cubs dished out for him, and I guess I can see that point of view to a certain extent. If you're paying Heyward to be the big slugger in the middle of your lineup, you're going to have a bad time. Heyward isn't going to hit 30 home runs or drive in 120 RBI. But he PERFECTLY fits everything the Cubs desperately needed: someone to play great OF defense next to The Schwarber Project in left field and someone that has a great OBP that doesn't come with an inflated strikeout rate. He'll always be a better real life player than fantasy baseball player, but he is the perfect addition to the team on offense and on defense. For that reason, he was worth every penny.

HOT TAKE: The Heyward signing was great on its own. The side effect is that it made the Zobrist signing better too. Sure, 3-4 years from now Castro will probably be outplaying an almost-40 Zobrist. But we aren't concerned with 2018 or 2019. The signing of Heyward was a clear sign that the Cubs are serious about winning a World Series in 2016 and 2017. And for those two seasons, yeah, I think Zobrist can do exactly what we need him to do: get on base and not strike out. Remember how the Mets rotation carved up the Cubs lineup in the NLDS only to get slapped around by the Royals in the World Series? It's because the Cubs strike out a ton and the Royals have a bunch of high OBP, low K rate OBP machines. Now the Cubs have 2 more guys to do exactly that. The OBP potential of the Cubs without any additions was high enough, with Rizzo, Bryant and Schwarber all with the ability to OBP somewhere between .350 and .390. Add Zobrist (.359 last year) and Heyward (.359 too!) to that and holy crap, this lineup is going to run up pitch counts in a hurry. Then all of our big boppers get to feast on the awful bullpens of the NL.

4. Signing John Lackey

And there's the rotation depth we needed. Yes, Lackey is old enough that if he completely fell apart next season, it wouldn't be shocking at all. But that's why it's awesome that we got him on just a 2 year deal. You can eat a bad signing for 2 seasons. Hell, the Cubs ate 5 years of garbage from Edwin Jackson and came out ok!

HOT TAKE: I'm for it. And if Lackey dies in a fire of horrible performance, the Cubs still have guys like Almora and Baez to trade at the deadline for another starter if one is needed. Signing Lackey is a calculated risk, but for only 2 years of commitment, I'm game. And really, who else were the Cubs going to sign? Jesus, Jeff Samardzija got SEVENTY MILLION DOLLARS.

So the Cubs got more defense and OBP and another solid starter to boost the rotation. We're almost the new Royals! Now about that bullpen...

5. Signing Clayton Richard and Trevor Cahill

Both guys were nails in the playoffs last year, with Trevor "Fat Baby" Cahill coming up HUGE in the NLDS. Both guys seem like the types that can reinvent themselves from failed starters into great relievers and both seem like solid clubhouse guys.

HOT TAKE: I love it. And for the first time I can remember, the Cubs bullpen is actually going to be a strength rather than a grease fire. Rondon is perfectly adequate as a closer. Strop is solid as a setup guy. Grimm and Neil Ramirez? Good to great relievers! Adam Warren was great when he moved to the pen last year. And now with Clayton Richard in the fold, Travis Wood won't have to throw 3,000 innings a year and wear down like he did in 2015.

This has been as close to a perfect of an offseason as I could have hoped for. I wasn't onboard with every move initially, but all of the puzzle pieces fit together beautifully, with Theo and Jed once again proving that they are much smarter than I am when it comes to running a baseball team.

I could probably outdo Jim Hendry though.

Thunder Matt: The Force Awakens

In 2006, Jake the Terrible Cubs Fan and a few ragtag college dropouts started this site to pay tribute to one "Thunder" Matt Murton. Sure, he was just a 4th outfielder on a team that was going nowhere, but the only thing that burned brighter than his ginger curls was the passion for which they loved writing about the Cubs. As Murton's legend grew, so did this website, catching the eye of Cubs beat writer and Professional Chemistry Teacher Impersonator Paul Sullivan, who in 2007 named us one of his 5 favorite Cubs blogs.

Mirroring the Cubs' success on the field, we were a heavy hitter in the Cubs world in 2007 and 2008. Yes, there were other Cubs news sources that were "bigger" and "concerned with sticking to facts" out there, but did any of them bring you hard hitting hot takes about how underrated hotel room dresser handles are? Were any other baseball websites inexplicably posting fantasy football rankings? Going in depth about getting kicked in the balls? Up to the minute career status checks on Jeremy Piven (NOTE: That's still accurate 7+ years later)? Nope. And that's what we excelled at - giving you all the nonsense you didn't ask for and never knew you were missing out on.

After Thunder Matt was traded in 2008, we started to fall apart. With multiple bartenders having 2 kids and a demanding job, this place just sort of went to shit. Then came back, had 2-3 identity crises, and died again. For years, I've wondered if we could ever get it back. Maybe all we needed was a sign.

And that sign is here. GUESS WHO IS BACK IN THE FOLD???

After six years away from the MLB, Matt Murton has signed a minor league deal with the Cubs on Wednesday night, according to a report.

(This is where we bust out the champagne, drink too much and have a 2.5 day hangover because we're all in our mid-30's now)

As Murton goes, so goes this site. We're opening the doors to the Saloon again. I feel like it's too cliche to use the old "Don't call it a comeback, we've been here for years" lyric, but in this case it's actually pretty accurate. We never officially closed this place down. We just...stopped showing up. But the return of the Ginger Chosen One is the sign we were waiting for. We're back, like a glorious phoenix, rising from under a pile of Old Style empties. Maybe 'glorious' is too nice a word. We're some kind of phoenix. We're not the shittiest phoenix out there (Phoenix, AZ). We've got a better reputation than University of Phoenix. We're definitely more alive than River Phoenix (although it was touch and go there for a few years).

With the Cubs going into 2016 as the World Series favorites, we feel like the world needs our voice now more than ever. A whooooole lot of words are going to be written about the Cubs this year and when all the hottest takes and think-pieces start to blend together into a gray blob of incoherence, you'll need us to cut through the fog with our completely fabricated stories of Cubs of old and game recaps that were clearly written while watching something else on TV.

(NOTE: There's just as much a chance that this post is never followed up on and nothing actually happens. It's that kind of lackadaisical attitude that gives us our charm.)

Butt

TMS Beer Project: Shock Top Belgian White

With the name Saloon included in our moniker, one could surmise that we here at TMS like to drinky drinky. One that would make such an assumption would be correct, thereby throwing out the whole, 'when you assume you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me' bullshit. We also like to plagiarize each other. In the same vein as the Wrigleyville Bar Project, we are proud to bring you another installment of the TMS Beer Project. The premise is simple: we review beers. Each rating will feature a variety of scores from 1-10 and comments from the bartender. This is a public service damn it. We don't want you to be the sucker who pays $15 for a six pack of some overrated Belgian cat piss. Now, we all drink massive amounts of beer so we know what we speak of. Each of us seem to have a favorite style of beer though. Will we be reviewing macrobrews like Bud and Coors? Oh you bet your Aunt Susie's ass we will. For purposes of this science experiment, and it is in the name of science, those will be the "control" group. Use them as a base line for when we review lesser known imports and microbrews. Without further ado, I bring you our next beer:

Shock Top Belgian White

Brewery: Shock Top Brewing Co. Anheuser-Busch

Type: It thinks it's a Belgian Style Wheat

Receptacle: 12 ounce bottle someone brought to my house and left here.

Drinkability (1 being Jim Jones' kool-aid, 10 being the nectar of the gods): 5
All 5 points go to the fact that I can drink it with ease.  No points go to the fact that this is the shittiest excuse for a Belgian White I've ever had. Maybe a small bit of citrus detected but the coriander is non-existent.  Did they just waft a bowl of coriander over the top of the brewing tank and call it good?

Look I don't like to get all beer snob with these but for fuck's sake look at the label in the photo.  If you advertise coriander, you better deliver some god damn coriander.

Heartiness (1 being fresh mountain spring water, 10 being a pureed British steak infected with mad cow disease): 4
Hearty? If Karen Carpenter was a bottled beer, this would be it.

Intoxication (1 being your friend's weird pentecostal grandmother high on Jesus, 10 being Boris Yeltsin on a week long bender in the Crimea): 5
It's 5.2% so I suppose it'll get you drunk, if I chose to drink more of this shit.

Celebrities You May See Drinking This Brew: Jim Edmonds.  Fucker is probably sucking one back now.

Affordability ($ being chicklets in Tijuana, $$$$ being diamond encrusted braised lamb shank from a trendy cafe on the Champs d'Elysee): $$: As far as six packs of "microbrews" go, I don't think it's too terribly expensive, but why the fuck bother? If you really want this beer then go get some Goose Island 312, or even some Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat. I cannot tell you enough how incredibly not good this beer is.

Overall: 2
This beer is as phony as the crappy "microbrewery" that makes it. I have a hard time liking much of anything in St. Louis, and Shock Top certainly doesn't help matters.  If you must drink St. Louis beer then I wholly endorse the fine brews from Schlafly. Check those out instead of this pee water.

Castro & Rizzo, Oops, That's Castro & LaHair to All Star Game

"Don't You, Forget About Me"

Starlin Castro and Bryan LaHair were named to the All-Star Game.  While Castro was a no-brainer, it was a little surprising to see LaHair get the nod.  He did get off to a hot start, but has cooled significantly as the season has progressed.  Plus with all of the Jizzo'ing for Rizzo'ing going on, I'm surprised that anyone remembered Bryan was still on the team.

It's Rizzo Time!

It's official.  Anthony Rizzo will make his Cubs debut tomorrow night. We want to wish Rizzo all the best as he begins his major league career. Hopefully it's a successful one.  At least successful enough to unseat Stockard Channing from the top spot when I Google Image Search "rizzo."

Also, we call dibs on trademarking the catchphrase "I'M JIZZO 4 RIZZO!"

WTFATG*: Luis Valbuena

Quien?

Apparently I slept through spring training this year because I don't remember Luis Valbuena at all.  If you're like me, you're wondering who this guy is.  I thought he was one of our young farm guys.  Not so.

Valbuena's MLB career started in 2008 for the Mariners.  The Venezuelan was later traded to the Indians, then sent down to the minors in 2011 and eventually traded to the Blue Jays.  The Cubs claimed him off waivers from the Jays in April 2012.

It's been a small sample size, but I like what I've seen from Valbuena.  He looks solid in the field and he's got two homers and 7 RBIs in 6 games.  He's also not Ian Stewart.  His career stats don't really suggest that he'll continue on his current pace, although he hasn't played much the past few seasons.

Valbuena saw action in 17 games for Cleveland last year, following a 91 game campaign in 2010 and a 103 game run in 2009.  He hit 10 home runs in 2009 with a .250 average, his best season.  Homers dropped to 2 in 2010 and his average fell to .193.  In the 17 MLB games he played in last year, he hit .209 with 1 home run.

So obviously Valbuena's probably not the long term answer at third base.  Stranger things have happened though and the Cubs have a dearth of talent at third in the minors.  He's only 27 and the job seems to be all his for the moment.  Let's see what he does with it.   

*Who The Fuck Are These Guys? 

White Sox Fans: Take A Knee

This picture has nothing to do with anything. I just thought it was dumb.

I like to think I have a pretty good idea of what still counts as "stupid" in this country. It seems like year after year, the bar is lowered further and further, to the point where it's almost now just sitting on the ground. Getting into how the good ol' US of A got to this point is another post entirely.

It takes a whole lot for something to be so idiotic, so incomprehensibly dumb, that it stops me dead in my tracks and causes my brain to hurt trying to make a modicum of sense of what I'm seeing. It's even harder for something to have that effect on me when I see it on Facebook. Because I regard Facebook as mostly a dumping ground for the very first unfiltered thing that pops up in people's brains, my tolerance for seeing things there that make me want to light myself on fire is pretty high.

But holy shit, I cannot keep what I saw this morning to myself.

As someone that went to high school and college in Illinois, I have a lot of friends on Facebook that are Cubs fans and a lot of friends that are White Sox fans. When both teams clash, I see a lot of updates on Facebook (from both sides) that make me shake my head and move on. But what I woke up to this morning...I'll just jump into sharing it with you. All names have been blocked out to protect the innocent as well as the idiotic.

In case you can't read what the caption says, it's "(Name Withheld) tell this dummy they have the worst record in baseball and sit down lol". This in and of itself is perfectly reasonable. The Cubs do have the worst record in baseball, and in a rivalry like this, it's something that's bound to come up.

As we look at some of the comments that continue under the picture, things start to spiral out of control. Here's the first comment posted:

Well then. If you've ever seen bad improv before, you know that when someone can't think of anything remotely clever to say, they usually resort to excessive swearing or vulgar references, hoping they can get a cheap laugh. The internet equivalent of this is calling someone gay. The biggest difference is that for the improv performer, they're on the spot and have to say something. No one was clamoring for this person's two cents to be thrown in. There is no excuse. But at least we get the mandatory homophobic comment out of the way first. It frees up the rest of the conversation to go in any direction. Of course, it goes in a very predictable one.

There's a very real chance that the guy pictured at the top was being a drunk asshole and ruining the experience for everyone around him, If that's the case, he deserved to get booted out. But to the best of my knowledge, I don't think our homophobic friend was actually at the game. And if that's the case, they're saying the pictured gentleman deserved to be kicked out of his seat just because he was a Cubs fan that had the audacity to cheer for his favorite team in a game that just so happened to take place in the city that team also plays in.

Got it. So what you're saying is you're losing to the Cubs on purpose because you feel sorry for us? Now I know that this person probably doesn't actually think the Sox are losing to the Cubs out of pity. But even saying it makes your team look stupid. Either you look bad for tanking a game or you look bad for getting pasted by the worst team in baseball. You look bad in both cases.

Last night was the only Cubs win of the entire season??? Seriously??? I thought that a team that had an 0-66 record coming into last night would have made more news than it did. I didn't hear about this anywhere else.

The funny thing is that the simple addition of 3 words would have made this a valid statement. "This may be your only win all season against the Sox" would have been infinitely better. It's funny that taking out those 3 words would turn a valid point into one that makes zero sense.

I think my favorite part is that even when making a ridiculous statement, this person can't stick to their guns. If you're going to talk impossible smack, you say "THIS WILL BE YOUR ONLY WIN OF THE SEASON", not "this may be your only win this season". Have some conviction!

Also, talking about how terrible the Cubs are doesn't really look good for you. The "worst team in baseball" just hung a dozen on you last night. And you might want to call Kenny Williams about these "charity wins" you're giving to teams you feel bad for. You're .5 games up in your division and way back in the Wild Card. You can't afford to give many games away. I don't think Detroit will return the favor and tank against the worst teams they play.

What a fantastic bow to tie on the entire conversation.

First off, you wish your team sucked at trading? Even if we had the ship in Prometheus, I don't think we could discover a world where that makes sense, even as a joke.

The other thing that actually made me excited was that I'm connected through a mutual friend to someone that works in a MLB front office! How awesome is that? After all, the only way this person could ever know that the Cubs are currently "sucking" at trading Dempster and Garza would be if they were actually in on those trade calls between Jed Hoyer and other GMs across the league, right?

/sarcasm

Seriously, this is about the dumbest statement out of all the ones you've seen here. The Cubs have two prime trade chips in Dempster and Garza. Since they're still on the team, that means the Cubs have to be terrible at trading them, right? It's not because we're waiting for the best deal to come along, is it? It's not that we can get more for them closer to the deadline, using potential injuries and pitting other teams against each other to drive up the price, is it? This guy seems like the type of person that sends you incredibly lopsided trade offers in fantasy baseball, and gets pissed at you when you don't accept them.

I know that the people above aren't representatives of all White Sox fans. Hell, the person who posted that picture in the first place is a Sox fan, and one of the more knowledgeable baseball fans I've ever met. But the other commenters need to realize that they're making all White Sox fans look like idiots.

Sucking With Purpose

Well, the Cubs lost another series last night, dropping 2 out of 3 to Boston.  This team has been every bit as bad as I expected them to be, but losing hasn't bothered me as much as it has in the past.  Reason being, I'm still confident that Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer have a plan to rebuild not just at the major league level, but system wide.  That kind of sea change takes time and isn't going to happen overnight, much less over the course of a single season.

The only thing I've found frustrating is some of the comments and complaints I've read from some Cub fans on the internets.  A lot of people seem to have missed the memo on just what's going on the North Side right now.  There was no chance in hell the Cubs were going to be competitive this year, so please dispense with the bitching and moaning about Theo not knowing what he's doing or calling for Dale Sveum to be fired.  It just makes our fanbase look foolish.

Yes, the Cubs suck.  However, I would argue that this year, the Cubs suck with purpose.  As one of the ESPN announcers pointed out last night, this is audition time.  Any of the players on the current team might be trade bait or cannon fodder.  Guys like Darwin Barney need to step up and prove they deserve to be on this team when the rebuilding dust settles.  Theo and Jed are going to be watching carefully to determine who stays and who goes.  Meanwhile, they appear to be ready to trade anybody they can get good prospects for, even ready to eat some money in order to do so.  Along with the draft and the addition of Jorge Soler, this will go a long way to replenishing a barren farm system.  Theo has admitted he made some mistakes in Boston, but most of those mistakes were on the free agent side.  This guy knows talent and I have confidence he can build a first rate farm system, which to me is the foundation for sustained success.  What a nice change from the Hendry regime, who merely threw oodles of money at the major league roster.  The Cubs had a few good seasons with this method, but no sustained success.

Dale Sveum may not have been the sexy hire the fanbase was hoping for, but honestly, if I see one more doofus bitching about Sandberg not being hired, I'm going to slap them around.  I'm not sure why these people believe the results would be different with number 23 in charge.  I loved Sandberg the player, but Sandberg the manager has never managed at the major league level.  There's no way in Hades he'd magically be able to make this a better ballclub.  Being a Cub icon ain't gonna make Ian Stewart hit for average, reverse Soriano's steady decline, improve Castro's concentration, or solidify the duct-taped bullpen.

I see Sveum's role much like Alan Trammel's in Detroit a number of years ago.  The Cubs have a motley collection of youth and veterans and Sveum's job is to stress the fundamentals and teach these kids to play the game the right way.  As they get better, add some better free agents over the next two-three years and all of a sudden, you're ready to compete.  Whether Dale will continue to be the manager at that point is anyone's guess, but I think he's the perfect guy for the task at hand.  The only thing that worried me at first was how he handled the bullpen, but the bullpen is so bad, there's really no way of telling if he's handling it right or not.  It seems like a complete crapshoot as to what kind of performance you're going to get from any Cub reliever at this point.  Hard to pin that on Dale.

I hate to say it, but as fans, all we can do is be patient.  I think we can look to what's happened in Detroit and Tampa Bay over the last decade to see what the future might hold.  You build from the bottom up, not the top down and I think your team is going to always have a chance to be in it.  The Cubs are going to have more money to spend than either of those teams in the next few years, but before you start spending money, a solid foundation has to be there.  That's what the Cubs are doing this year: pouring the concrete.  Yeah, watching it dry isn't going to be super exciting, but what the Cubs build on top of that just might be what Cub fans have been waiting for this past century and change.              

TMS Beer Project: Grain Belt Premium

Apparently everyone at the Saloon forgot we were running a fucking blog again.  In an attempt to keep some content fresh, allow me to revive an old feature.  Also did the Cubs win?  Eh, it doesn't matter.

With the name Saloon included in our moniker, one could surmise that we here at TMS like to drinky drinky. One that would make such an assumption would be correct, thereby throwing out the whole, 'when you assume you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me' bullshit. We also like to plagiarize each other. In the same vein as the Wrigleyville Bar Project, we are proud to bring you another installment of the TMS Beer Project. The premise is simple: we review beers. Each rating will feature a variety of scores from 1-10 and comments from the bartender. This is a public service damn it. We don't want you to be the sucker who pays $15 for a six pack of some overrated Belgian cat piss. Now, we all drink massive amounts of beer so we know what we speak of. Each of us seem to have a favorite style of beer though. Will we be reviewing macrobrews like Bud and Coors? Oh you bet your Aunt Susie's ass we will. For purposes of this science experiment, and it is in the name of science, those will be the "control" group. Use them as a base line for when we review lesser known imports and microbrews. Without further ado, I bring you our next beer:

Grain Belt Premium

Brewery: August Schell Brewing Co.

Type: I don't know, fucking BEER I guess.

Receptacle: 16 ounce god damn tall boy

Drinkability (1 being Jim Jones' kool-aid, 10 being the nectar of the gods): 7
It's not bad, but it is a heavy so if you have a vagina and can only handle light beers you're probably not going to fare well.

Heartiness (1 being fresh mountain spring water, 10 being a pureed British steak infected with mad cow disease): 6
It's a regular blue collar beer.  It's got some meat to it but it's not going rape your taste buds (it may rape your soul).

Intoxication (1 being your friend's weird pentecostal grandmother high on Jesus, 10 being Boris Yeltsin on a week long bender in the Crimea): 8
It's a traditional macro, and the fact that the ABV isn't labeled leaves me to believe it's probably around a 4.9%.  However these are tall boys that I'm drinking.  In fact it was a 12 pack of tall boys.  I didn't know such things even existed until tonight.  What else have I missed in my 33 years of life?  So many more questions than answers have arose.

Celebrities You May See Drinking This Brew: Prince, Tim Pawlenty, Jesse Ventura, Rod Carew, Zombie Kirby Puckett, Brian Dennehy.

Affordability ($ being chicklets in Tijuana, $$$$ being diamond encrusted braised lamb shank from a trendy cafe on the Champs d'Elysee): $$: Grain Belt seems to sell at a higher price than PBR or High Life.  Sometimes too high in my opinion.  You shouldn't be spending over 10 bucks for a 12 pack.  Unless of course the 12 pack is god damn tallboys.  Seriously, tall boys in a 12 pack? What an age to be alive!

Overall: 8.12515
In the world of blue collar macro beers, Grain Belt is really overlooked and underrated in my opinion.  PBR has the hipster crowd locked up.  Schlitz has the hipsters that have tired of PBR.  Old Style has the Cub fans.  And High Life picks up the rest of America that shakes their cock at shitty light beer.  If you haven't tried Grain Belt I highly recommend it if you can find it.  More often than not it comes in bottles.  But if you happen to find tall boys in a 12 pack, you buy that shit and never look back.

Hey Post-Dispatch, Asterisk This!

Come now. If you're going to put asterisks next to MLB achievements at least be consistent!

Seriously. I understand if you're upset because of the bad call.  But show some respect to Santana. It's an official no-hitter so just recognize it as such. You wanna complain about the botched call then do it in your article instead of making a grand juvenile statement in your damn headline.  It just makes you, the Cardinal fans, and your city as a whole look extremely petty.

Grow up St. Louis.

2012 WAIW Pub Crawl: The Aftermath

It seems like ages ago when I posted about attending the 4th Annual Wasting Away in Wrigleyville Pub Crawl. I had promised that I would video document the event and then publish my footage of each bar stop back here at the Saloon.

Well I've got good news and bad news.

First, the bad news. It turns out, that the first handful of bars provided nothing real interesting.  Unless you enjoy watching relatively sober people quickly chug a beer before heading to the next bar.  So I pretty much scrapped any ideas of posting that footage because it's pretty terrible and worthless.

Now the good news.  I did eventually get some footage that's pure gold.  Apparently shit doesn't start getting crazy enough until after the 8th inning.  That footage, my dear readers, you will get to see.

So here's a basic bar-by-bar recap of what transpired, with the few amazing video clips I got added in.

Pre-Crawl: Lucky's Sandwich Shop
Standard meeting place every year.  The plan is to fill up on one of their giant sandwiches to give yourself a solid base before the marathon of boozery begins. This may draw the ire of some folks, but can I just say, on the whole I find Lucky's sandwiches to be woefully overrated. Are they decent? Yes. But holy shit, can we take a knee with the fries and cole slaw on top? They make up 75% of the god damn sandwich.  I'll happily take both items as sides with my normal sized sandwich thank you. It's disappointing when several bites turn out to be nothing but a french fry and cole slaw sandwich.

1st Inning: Blarney Stone ...aw shit, um Rebel, I guess
Classic Pub Crawl moment. It never fails that at least one bar won't be open for us when we get there. Rebel turned out to be a decent Plan B mainly for its proximity.  I drank a Bud Light then I left.  That's about all I can say here.

2nd Inning: The Stretch
Always a nice place with good staff. I avoided the wait for a beer and instead bought one from WAIW's Steve's bucket. Fellow TMS Bartender White Chili retells us his story about the time he stole someone's birthday cake from this place.

...on the way to Merkle's, WAIW John (aka Muldoon) offers some solid advice.



(This is the only worthwhile thing I filmed for 8 innings)

3rd Inning: Merkle's
Oh Merkle's. Home to so many terrible drunk moments I either don't or rather choose not to remember. After drinking two pee water Bud Lights I was ready to strap on a real beer so I went with the Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA. It was nice to finally have a beer that tasted like something. Not much else happened. They have Colonel Sanders statue at the entrance.  I have no idea why.

4th Inning: Mullen's
Got an Old Style here.  Spent a good chunk of time talking with Corey from Ivy Envy about how to podcast. Most of this conversation has now been lost in a booze-induced fog.  I think you gotta record some shit and then put it on the web and... damn. I need to talk to Corey when I'm not drinking.

5th Inning: Sluggers
Like a dumb kid, every time I forego any beer and immediately run upstairs to the batting cages, where I then flail wildly at pitches and see how fast I can give myself blisters from the shitty bats with no gripping on them.

6th Inning: Captain Morgan Club, -wait, seriously? What's that? The Dugout is actually open? The day is saved!
In a strange twist of irony the Captain Morgan Club was close yet The Dugout was open.  We must've gotten lucky and got there during one of the 4 hours a week they're open.  Two years ago The Dugout was supposed to be a 7th inning stop but wound up being closed, therefore we spent an extra inning at Captain Morgan's instead.

7th Inning: Sports Corner
I never went to the old Sports Corner but the new incarnation is quite nice looking.  Drank some High Life and played foosball. A few folks learned two things by being my teammate. 1) I'm fucking terrible at foosball. 2) I'll cheat like a motherfucker. I'm honestly kind of surprised I've never been punched while playing.

8th Inning: Murphy's
OK, now things start taking a turn.  And the one firmly grabbing the wheel and veering us towards certain doom, is our good friend Malört. I do believe I had two shots of the stuff while there. Possibly three? It's not that important. What is important is that said Malört consumption then led to this.



After touching the Wrigley Field wall (and Mr. Funk apparently making out with it?), I decide to sprint like a drunken ass down the sidewalk to some folks up ahead. One of which, is our good friend, Mr. John Carruthers. As you can hear in the video as I reach them, John shouts "KARATE KICK!" followed by an audible "thunk" sound and then me making a grunting sound.  The "thunk" would be John's foot landing squarely in my stomach.  It knocked the wind out of me and I completely biffed on the sidewalk. Impressively though, I maneuvered to protect my iPhone. Aside from a few scrapes I was fine, and once I was able to breathe again I couldn't stop laughing.

9th Inning: Bernie's
We made it! Mostly unscathed. Once I got a beer and sat down I was able to have a word with John asking him to explain what just happened.



Cool story bro!

A little bit later I got some classic footage of a Pub Crawler passed out at the bar.



Post-Crawl: Gingerman
Ah yes. The official bar of Thunder Matt's Saloon. Had some PBR, did some more shots of Malört, and tried to make friends with an old Puerto Rican dude who was a marine in 'Nam. Pretty sure he was ready to stab me when I left. Oh, and I also made this disturbing discovery. Let me also say that I was pretty much shit-rocked at this point.



Thankfully I wound up not having AIDS. Mr. Funk and I later adjourned and went to the Double Door that night where we saw Electric Six, who managed to render me deaf for at least two days after.

And that's it.  Fun times had by all. Oh and the Cubs lost the game too. I guess we were following that supposedly.  I can't wait for next year's pub crawl. Hopefully I remember to not go in to John's dojo, WHERE KICK, MEETS CHEST!!!