Mark Grote

I think other teams are circling the Cubs now, like Vulture, saying, we see your situation with your salary and how you're dangerously close to having to pay the luxury tax.

Let us take that problem off your hands by taking a guy making $12 million off of your team, and Nico Horner will gladly replenish you with young talent that is salarially controlled for the next five-plus years.

And I think the issue is, back to what we were just talking about when we were talking about all the other trades that are made that seemed crazy maybe at the time,

Grody didn't want Charles Oakley gone from the Bulls.

But you had a Michael Jordan and a Scottie Pippen.

My point was this.

It's very simple.

According to baseball reference, he had the eighth highest war in baseball last year at 6.2.

And if you want to go with fan graphs, his baseball war was still at...

what, 4.8, which is still 27th and second only to Pete Crow Armstrong on the Cubs.

He is an essential part of why they were able to win as many games as they did last year and go back to the playoffs.

He's a terrific player.

There's no doubt about it.

But I'll go back to two words Layla just said.

trading high it's a it's a scary thing to do it's a gutsy thing to do and like i gave a couple of examples of times where i was thinking about i've given all these like old example herschel walker back back in the day like the shocker so all that was a deal they couldn't refuse

That was a deal they couldn't refuse.

There's no doubt about it.

So all I am saying is I agree with everything you just said.

And yes, Nico Horner is a friend of the station.

And even if he left, I'd like to think Nico Horner would still be a friend of the score.