It’s Trade Deadline week here at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us. We’re always glad to welcome a friend. There’s no cover charge tonight. We still have a couple tables available. The hostess will seat you now. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters
are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
I don’t really care about tonight’s game. I will sometime soon. I am going to say something about Ryne Sandberg. I don’t want to, because it’s not fun to say goodbye to your idols.
Like many of you, I grew up watching the Cubs on WGN. Like a few of you, I grew up watching them in Wisconsin and the Cubs appealed to me far more than the Brewers ever did. (I’m sure that I got every Cubs game on WGN on cable and only a few Brewers games were televised over the air played a big role in that.) As a kid, my favorite Cubs player was Bruce Sutter, whom we also lost far, far too young. But my affections easily turned to Sandberg during my high school years. Even when he went 1 for 32 to start his Cubs career, I could just feel he’d snap out of it and become a good player. He had that look about him. I never dreamed just how good he would become, of course.
Like many of you, I have a lot of memories of coming home from school, turning on WGN and watching the Cubs. And so many of those great memories came out of Ryne Sandberg. A lot of those memories also come from my mother, whom who sit with me and watch when she got home from work. (She worked in a school, so she was often home just a few minutes after me.) My mom wasn’t a sports fan, but she would watch so she could spend time with me. So many of my cherished teenage memories were in the living room and they included Ryne Sandberg. And of course, I thought he was going to almost single handedly break the “curse” in 1984 and 1989.
I never met Sandberg personally and others will have to tell you what a terrific guy he was. I can’t speak for that, but I can tell you that he always put his best public face on in front of the fans. He was very quiet during interviews early in his career. I think he was afraid of making a mistake that might set a bad example for young people. His teammates told us he was a quiet assassin in the locker room with his practical jokes. He didn’t talk about that ever, although Rick Sutcliffe loved to. But all that just goes to show he was human.
Ryno wanted to manage and he wanted to manage the Cubs. He was willing to start at the bottom and he managed the Cubs affiliates in Peoria, Tennessee and Iowa. He was good at that—those jobs required someone who was a teacher and a motivator. But the job of a major league manager in the 21st Century was very different from what Jim Frey and Don Zimmer did. He was passed over for the Cubs’ managerial job and when he finally got hired to be the Phillies manager, he realized that the game had changed and he hadn’t.
But what never changed in Ryno was his love of the game and his belief that you should always try to be the best version of yourself, because you don’t know who may be watching. I know he was taking a shot at steroid users in his famous “play the game the right way” speech at his Cooperstown induction ceremony. But I think his larger point was to play the game the way you would want the next generation to play. Fairly, and with kindness and compassion. Think about more than just yourself, on and off the field.
That’s what I learned from Ryne Sandberg. I may not always live up to it because I’m not a Hall of Famer. But I will try to always carry a little bit of Ryne Sandberg with me for the rest of my life.
Last time I asked you how seriously you took the rumors connecting Padres pitcher Dylan Cease to the Cubs. Mostly, 41 percent of you think there’s something there, but just “a bit.” You feel the Padres are listening and the Cubs are calling, but that it’s just the Padres seeing if someone will give a big overpay. Another 27 percent think it’s just all “silly season” stuff where rumors with little or nothing behind them. Twenty five percent think there’s some real smoke there, but it was still unlikely he’d go to the Cubs.
Flugelhorn player Chuck Mangione died last week at 84. I can’t say that the reception that Mangione’s music got among jazz aficionados matched his popularity in the wider pop world as his disco-tinted hits of the seventies made him more of an icon and progenitor in the smooth jazz world than the straight jazz world. But the man had his chops. Cannonball Adderley covered one of his early compositions and he was a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers early in his career. Dizzy Gillespie mentored him as a kid. You don’t do that if you don’t have real talent.
And if you were alive in the late-seventies, you are aware of just how. . . .omnipresent Mangione’s 1978 hit “Feels So Good” was. That song was everywhere. It was on the radio constantly. It was on TV. You’d hear it in grocery stores and office buildings. It was bumper music during programs.
There was a reason for that. “Feels So Good” was undeniably catchy. And in a time where jazz on the pop charts was increasingly rare, Mangione found a way to get Top 40 stations to play instrumental fusion/smooth jazz.
So here’s a trip down memory lane with “Feels So Good.”
I had an essay on the French film Rififi (1955), directed by Jules Dassin, about half finished when the Ryne Sandberg news broke. I’m not in the mood to finish it nor do I think any of you will be in the mood to read it. It’s too good a movie to waste writing about on a night like this. I’ll just say that Rififi is the greatest heist film ever made and in many ways, it’s the first real heist film. Roger Ebert argued just that, writing that John Huston’s earlier The Asphalt Jungle (1950) got the idea of the heist film right but not the details.
In any case, I hope you recorded Rififi on TCM this past Saturday like I told you to (assuming you get that channel) because as far as I can tell, the only other way to watch this classic at the moment is by getting your hands on the physical media. But it has streamed before and I assume it will stream again at some point and somewhere. So keep an eye out for it.
But I’m going to save that for another day.
Welcome back everyone.
The game must go on, it stops for no one. And the trade deadline is upon us on Thursday.
One player the Cubs have been connected to lately is Nationals All-Star left-hander MacKenzie Gore. Newly-extended team president Jed Hoyer has made it clear he doesn’t want to trade away top prospects for “rentals,” that is, guys who will be free agents at the end of this season. He’d prefer to pay more for someone who is going to stick around for a while. Gore can’t become a free agent until after the 2027 season.
Confirmation the Cubs are interested.
The Cubs’ interest in MacKenzie Gore outweighs concerns about the rotation becoming ‘too left-handed’ alongside Boyd and Imanaga.
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) July 28, 2025
Gore’s contract is appealing (FA after 2027), and lefties could be an advantage against potential NL playoff opponents like LAD & PHI.@MLBNetwork
I’ve been fairly obsessed with Gore since he was in the Padres organization and he was the consensus top pitching prospect in the game. His route to becoming a star pitcher has not been fast or direct, and he definitely struggled early in his career. You can argue that he’s still not a “top of the rotation” pitcher, but I strongly believe that if he’s not one right now, he’s close enough this year and will be one in the next two seasons.
You’re pretty much all familiar with this chart by now. Here’s Gore’s numbers this season.
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That is more the chart of a very good pitcher than a great one, except for those strikeout rate, whiff rate and chase rate. Those are numbers I buy and why I believe that Gore is ready to take the next step and become a number-one or number-two starter. (He’s probably already a number two.)
Of course, if he’s so good and the Nationals still have two years of control after this one, why would they trade him now? Only for one reason. Because they think that Gore will bring them back a big haul to restart their stalled rebuilding efforts. The Nationals hit a home run with the Juan Soto trade, netting Gore, CJ Abrams and James Wood, along with Robert Hassell III, who struggled in his first exposure to the majors but is still a pretty strong prospect.
The Nationals issue is that the players they’ve surrounded the stars they’ve gotten in the Soto deal aren’t very good. So they’re thinking if they can do the same thing again with Gore, then maybe they can be a contender again.
Soto, like Gore, had two years and two months left until free agency when they traded him to San Diego. Now Gore isn’t a generational talent like Juan Soto is, so he won’t command nearly as much in return. But the Nationals want a lot for him.
I’ve read and heard a lot of rumors about what the Cubs have offered and what the Nationals are asking for. I’m skeptical about all of them, except that I know that if the Nationals weren’t asking for a lot, Gore would be a Cub already.
So I’m going to ask you what you would give up for MacKenzie Gore, based on some of the internet rumors I’ve heard and some speculation on my part.
One: The Cubs send Matt Shaw and a non-Jaxon Wiggins pitching prospect to Washington for Gore.
To me, this one is a no. If the Cubs trade Shaw, then who is playing third base? Even if the Cubs trade for Eugenio Suárez, he’s a free agent at the end of the season and the Cubs have their hands full trying to re-sign Kyle Tucker.
But if you’re not sold on Shaw as a major leaguer, then this is a very good deal for the Cubs.
Two: Cade Horton and a non-Owen Caissie hitting prospect for Gore.
This one doesn’t make sense to me as the Cubs would then have to trade for another starting pitcher to replace Horton. And it’s very possible that Horton is as good or better than Gore in a year or two. But again, if you’re not sold on Horton, then sell him now.
Three: Owen Caissie, Moisés Ballesteros, Jefferson Rojas and Jaxon Wiggins for Gore.
In this deal, the Cubs trade four of their top six prospects for Gore. This has the advantage of not hurting the Cubs chances this year. It also kind of guts the Cubs farm system. But it’s the type of talent return the Nationals would want if they don’t get any major leaguers back.
All four of those players are good prospects. All four of them could be stars. All four of them could be busts. If you think at least three of them would bust, it’s worth it to get Gore.
Four: Owen Caissie, Jonathon Long, Jefferson Rojas and Ryan Gallagher for Gore.
To be clear, this is what I think the Cubs would offer to the Nats, not what they would necessarily accept. The Nats get an outfield prospect with great power potential, a first baseman in Triple-A with the chance to be a solid major league starter, a potential above-average second baseman (albeit one who is just starting Double-A and is a few years away) and a promising pitching prospect who probably has a ceiling of a number-three or a number-four starter.
Of course with prospects, there’s always the risk that they don’t turn out.
I would do this deal. I don’t think the Nationals would, but they might. It’s probably more than they would get at this time next year if they wait. But they might be able to get more than that over this upcoming winter.
So which, if any, of these deals would you agree to for MacKenzie Gore?
And please, if you’re suggesting your own trade, make it realistic. The Nats are not taking Jonathon Long and Brandon Birdsell for Gore.
Also, I expect the price for the Twins’ Joe Kelly will be about the same.
Thanks for stopping by on this sad night. I hope we had a cry together. Please get home safely. Tip your waitstaff. And stop by tomorrow evening for more BCB After Dark.
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- Chicago Cubs vs. Chicago White Sox preview, Sunday 7/27, 1:10 CT
- Cubs vs. White Sox Sunday 7/27 game threads
- Minor League Wrap: Smokies win second-straight, 6-5 over Blue Wahoos
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