We cover the coverage like PCA covers center field. Now in our eleventh season.
Greetings. It’s true, this is the first episode of my eleventh season at the helm of this questionable enterprise, Cub Tracks
that is. We generally steer clear of the mainstream but occasionally muddy the waters with our polluted stream of consciousness, dear reader, and we would have you drop anchor for a bit while we endeavor to entertain and inform you.
The proliferation of ‘artificial intelligence,’ generative algorithms, that is, the rapid spread of paywalls and paid narrative, and the decay of textual journalism have determined that a lot of our links are to video rather than text.
There’s still time to get your costume on and ship out.
*means autoplay on, (directions to remove for Firefox and Chrome). {$} means paywall. {$} means limited views. Italics are often used on this page as sarcasm font. The powers that be have enabled real sarcasm font in the comments.
- Michael Ginnitti (Spotrac*): Chicago Cubs offseason preview. “… the front office doesn’t appear to be ready to back down any time soon.”
- Matt Ostrowski (North Side Baseball*): Splitters are suddenly everywhere. Do Cubs need to throw more of them? “The Cubs already throw plenty of them, but is there more to mine?”
- Andy Martinez (Marquee Sports Network*): What Pete Crow-Armstrong breakout season means for him, Cubs in 2026. “Not only did he have a huge role on our team offensively, but when you think about our run prevention, he’s right there at the top.” More PCA from North Side Baseball*.
- Frank Pingue (Reuters*): Manfred optimistic about MLB participation in 2028 Olympics, but hurdles remain. “The owners have kind of crossed the line in terms of we’d like to do it if we could possibly make it work,” said Manfred.
- Jim Bowden (The Athletic {$}): Top 50 MLB free agents for 2025-26: Contract predictions, team fits for Tucker, Schwarber, more. “… Tucker is expected to be the highest paid free agent in this year’s class…”
- Darren Rovell (Clict*): Chicago Cubs World Series fan ring sells for record $50k. “How could a fan ring appreciate in value like that? Well, the consignor has the Cubs to thank.“
Food for thought:
Please be reminded that Cub Tracks and Bleed Cubbie Blue do not necessarily endorse the content of articles, podcasts, or videos that are linked to in this series. We will not wittingly publish A. I. – driven articles.
