Pete Crow-Armstrong is slashing .259/.343/.448 (124 wRC+) with 11 HRs and 13 stolen bases.
He's also leading the NL with 3.0 WAR.
But, sure, you saw a couple of glaring defensive miscues as you casually check in, so you still think he sucks.
Pete Crow-Armstrong currently leads MLB in:
OAA
FRV
DRS
5-Star catches
Jump
PCA's lead over 2nd place in OAA, jump, and FRV is huge. He is the best defender in baseball.
With a decimated bullpen, other one-off injuries to deal with, and no off-day for travel, the Cubs just went out to the West Coast and split six games against two of the best teams in the NL, the Dodgers and Padres.
That's quite good.
Ten years ago, the Kings, Blackhawks, and Penguins were the class of the NHL. At the end of that period, the Kings held on to Doughty/Kopitar, the Pens hung on to Crosby Malkin, and the Hawks let go of Kane and Toews. The Pens and Kings are about to be swept in their final runs of mediocrity, while Chicago is gearing up for a decade of playoffs.
Tear down when you tear down. Don’t half ass rebuilds.
JD Vance: "I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding. I think the Iranians thought the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn't. We never made that promise, we never indicated that was gonna be the case."
I mostly avoid commenting on what President Trump says from day to day, while pulling no punches in my assessments, whether positive or negative, of his policy. His Iran ultimatums feel different. Making such threats is a policy. If he were to follow through on them, the consequences would be immediate, irreversible, and catastrophic on a world-historical scale.
So while some will inevitably insist he should be “taken seriously rather than literally,” or that he is executing a sophisticated “madman” strategy in a complex game of 5-D chess, or that he needs everyone’s steadfast support to maximize his leverage, now rather than later seems the time to say that the actions that he is proposing would be a disaster for our country, both strategically and morally, which makes the remarks themselves a terrible mistake.
Simply put, what’s the point of all this? If these are empty threats that we all know he will not carry out, then they are ineffective threats (the Iranians are on X too!), merely making the president and our nation look foolish. If they are not empty threats, then the president is asserting the American position that such actions are acceptable in this situation and ones we are willing to take. We are not living in some quantum thought experiment where he simultaneously is and is not serious. We cannot expect the Iranians, but only the Iranians, will believe him.
Whether the threats are empty or not, we should be willing to say: This is wrong. We should not establish a pattern of threatening escalation from a blockaded strait to elimination of a civilization. We should not launch strikes intended to devastate the lives of millions of people and take our nation to total war without indisputable justification, or before the American people have deliberated upon and assented to the path with full understanding of what total war might mean for them. Those principles are vital to our Republic, independent of whether the strategy could “work.”
But it’s also worth emphasizing that the strategy is a dead end. This war is actively weakening American power, increasing the danger to American citizens, and frustrating the president’s important efforts at addressing our many domestic challenges. It has closed a strait that was previously open, strengthened the incentive for other nations to pursue nuclear weapons, and in this most recent rhetoric made more plausible their use. Our choices for continuing the war appear to be catastrophic escalation of the air war or extensive deployment of ground troops, neither of which were planned or had support at the outset.
Stepping back from these threats and admitting such actions do not offer a path to resolving the conflict may be unpalatable, but it is by far the least unpalatable option available. Let us all hope cooler heads prevail.
**Breaking News** Per @JesseRogersESPN on Kap and JHood on @Espn1000 Cubs star Cade Horton will visit Dr. Keith Meister in Texas today after his MRI was not clean and not good. Trending down a bad path.
Ian Happ is gonna finish his age-31 season with 5 straight Gold Gloves and inside the top-10 for HRs among Cubs all time and some Cubs fans are still gonna be like “he’s mid.”