Mark Grote

And with the way the Cubs are playing, they haven't really since that second 10 game winning streak had a stretch where you're like, okay, the Cubs are about to play their best stretch of baseball.

It's more two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, three steps back.

And so it's,

If you're in the middle, especially when you're playing catch-up, it's one thing to play that way when you are leading the division, but now where the Cubs are and they're playing catch-up, it's really hard to find yourself in a winning situation playing baseball that way.

Yeah, it was actually something that I was talking about with our own Bruce Levine when I was at the ballpark earlier this week where you just, at some point, you don't have enough.

And you are starting to get to that point, especially if every other week you have a guy going down.

There's not enough guys pitching in Iowa for you to just be able to call them up and have them pitch on your big league roster.

You're going to have to get healthy here soon.

And look, it's June 17th.

The trade deadline is in seven weeks.

And I'm very curious what shape the Cubs are in on August 2nd.

For everybody out there, trade deadline is on August 3rd.

And are the Cubs even in a position to make moves of consequence at the deadline?

Or are we talking about a team that's three to five games back at the trade deadline and they have to make a tough decision on what they want to do with the deadline this year?

Yeah, and if they haven't, in the eyes of Jed Hoyer, earned the right for them to add on.

If he's not convinced that, hell, if I go out there and buy these things for you kids and you don't use them and they end up outside in the rain, then there's going to be a problem.

And then it brings me to, Russ, the idea that...

that there's not any rebuild here but there's going to be a remodeling of this Cubs team that maybe you start that at the trade deadline because you next year you know Ian Happ is a free agent say a Suzuki a free agent uh Jamison Tyone I believe is a free agent there are myriad players that that we're talking about that will change the face of this Cubs team and I hate

to kind of dance around it, but the idea of potentially being sellers or just looking at your team through the lens of, dare I say it, next year.

Yeah, I think that's what this next six weeks is for the Cubs, right?