Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show
Alex Bregman is a Chicago Cub! Plus, The Bears Keep Rolling and the Cubs Make a Splash on the Trade Market | The Compound
14 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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The Compound, hosted by Ian Happ.
It's a grand slam for Ian Happ. What a play, Ian Happ into the ivy. And Dakota Mekas. 6'7", 250-pound Mekas. Swing and a miss, struck him out. Struck him.
Welcome back to the Compound Podcast. This is episode 292. 292 of the Compound Podcast presented by our friends at Parse Rum. Go to Binnie's. Get your Parse.
Chapter 2: What was the significance of Alex Bregman's signing for the Cubs?
Everybody in Chicago could have had a whole bottle of Parse last night. What a day for the city. What a day for the city.
Real quick about Parse before you poop on me. My grandma today, who doesn't drink, was asking me. She loves this podcast. She doesn't drink, but she's like, where can I go buy that parsley? I just want to buy the parsley and take a picture with it. I was like, I don't know if they really sell it around here, Grandma. I go, also, what would you do with it? She's like, I would just pour it out.
I was like, you want to buy parsley rum to take a picture? With it and then just pour it out. She's like, yeah. I was like, I'll see what I can do for you. More people should do that. More people should do that.
I was like, I want you to just send in a picture. You know, we'll just, we can just post the picture without the par se. We'll make, we can make an exception for your grandmother. Yeah.
I was like, you can give the bottle to me. You don't, you don't have to pour it out. I will drink it.
If you want to go get a bottle of binnies, go get into binnies. And then instead of pouring it out, gift it to a friend. There we go.
Honestly, we don't care. Once you buy it, do whatever you want with it. If you want to pour it out, pour it out. Your choice. A sale is a sale.
It was a monumental day in Chicago yesterday. It was. Blackhawks won and the Bulls won, which was really the headliner.
Yeah, that's what everyone was thinking.
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Chapter 3: How did the Bears perform in their recent game?
So it was a lose-lose game for me no matter what.
I can't imagine. I was in the stadium for the last Packers comeback. I can't imagine after that one in the playoffs. That must have been just insanity.
You got to get on the PCA program. He was on the field pregame. This guy's like living in Chicago sports lately. Yeah. He's definitely going to be there next week too. Yeah, well, that's the thing. I will fully admit I sold it on wanting the Packers. I still hated the Packers. I am fully behind either whoever they face. It'll either be Eagles or Rams.
I will absolutely be rooting for them to dominate the Bears.
Why can't you just root for your division, man?
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Chapter 4: What were the reactions to the Cubs' trade market moves?
Root for somebody from your division to go win it all. I can't, one. I can't be rooting for them to go farther than the Lions did last year because if you lose, I can just be like, oh, nice. You guys made it to the same thing we did last year. Congrats. What does that get you? A worse draft pick. Congrats. Two, the division thing? No. No chance.
You're telling me when you lost to the Brewers, you sat at home, watched the NLCS, and said, go Brew Crew. Not on your life would you say that because it's not true. It's just not true.
Drew Falls. And watching the NLCS with his little Brewer helmet on. Yeah.
Here's the Brewers. Like, no one. You don't root for in-division.
There have been times when we've missed the playoffs where I've rooted for our division. I guess I see that, but not to win at all.
You would root for the Cardinals? You would root for the Cardinals? Not to win at all. There's lines. There's lines. I don't think you'd root for the Cardinals. No.
There's no way. I'm going to move on. I'm going to move on from this topic. Thank you. Okay, thank you. All right. This is a big episode. We've got to get through a lot here. We've got the Bregman deal, and then we've got the Cabrera-Casey trade. Let's start Bregman. Start with the most recent. Okay.
I mean, how it was introduced was incredible, but do you think the only thing I thought about was If they'd somehow just not told anybody, they could have brought him out on stage at CubsCon like a pro wrestler, and it would have brought the house down, and I was like, I would have loved to have seen that. That would have been the most incredible way to do it.
This might be the second best way, though, how it turned out.
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Chapter 5: How does the Cubs' roster depth impact their strategy?
It's pretty good. It's going to be tough to determine who goes where in that lineup because you have so many options for every part of it. Your middle of the order can change. Your top of the order can change. It's a good problem to have. Oh, 100%. Obviously, lefty-righty, you have Bush leading off or Nico leading off or you leading off. It's a fun, like you said, very good problem to have.
And I was – I think Tom texted us, and that's the first I saw of it, and I was pumped.
The ability – I mean, the ability here, as I wrote the lineup a couple times, the ability to split up the lefties. We talked about this when we talked about it the first time. But whether Bush is hitting somewhere between one and three and Pete's going to be in there somewhere – the ability to break those guys up so that you don't have a lefty reliever that can come into the pocket.
You know, one of the issues that we, we talked about last year was just when you would have Bush and Tucker too close to each other with Pete. You know, those guys were hitting in the first four together quite a bit in the middle of the year. And it would just present an opportunity for a team to bring in a lefty reliever and a big spot in the seventh or eighth inning. And so, um,
Having that broken up a little bit with, you know, Nico Bregman, say, Dansby, all crush lefties, Carson Kelly crushes lefties. So all those guys to be able to break that up is awesome. It's going to be, you know, the infield. Now you look around and you got Bush, Nico, Dansby, Bregman. Nico, Dansby, Bregman all have a gold glove. Bushy, we know, has been great at first base.
The offensive and defensive capability of that infield is pretty special, and that's a really good fit for us, but it's just going to make the lineup deeper. Defense is in a great place. It's a really good move for the depth, and then you have Dansby and Bregman that are going to play together for the next four years. It's great.
Yeah. I mean, it's the move I said I wanted all offseason. And it was no knock on Matt Shaw, but it was one where if there was an open spot that kind of could be filled, it was at third base with Bregman.
And bringing him in, like you said, with the lineup depth and being able to switch the matchups around, I mean, I think he slots in perfectly to the two-hole, but he could also be three-hole, five-hole. He's someone you can really put anywhere. And we were talking a little bit ago about his numbers. He strikes out at 12%.
He doesn't strike out and he still walks. And that was something that Tucker is really good at. There's not a lot of guys that are able to do that. Generally the guys that walk a ton also have a decent amount of strikeout just because they're deep in counts to get to that point. And he's one of the rare cases where he, he walks at 11%, 12% clip and, and strikes out at a 12% clip.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of the Bregman contract structure?
So it's one of those where I don't know what Steele's timeline is, but I'm guessing it's probably close to midseason. So when he's ready to come back, that's going to be a huge boost, but...
With Cabrera, like you said of how lefties hit his fastball a little bit, I bet it's another one of those, like we talk about all the time, of the Cubs are probably going to work with him and be like, we can add this pitch or do this to get lefties out. Maybe it's, hey, four seams up in the zone, or they teach him a cutter running in on the hands.
i'm sure they have ways to like kind of combat like hey you get hit around by lefties a little bit like here's how we fix that so yeah and if there's one if there's one pitch that they handle well it's like all right how come we adjust where you're throwing that or the usage if you do i don't like a six-man rotation not a fan of it just gonna be honest but if you do you know how many starts you need between these six guys
You need 27 starts apiece between six guys to get through 162.
I remember last year, you guys had basically two starters down in April. Pretty quickly, Colin Ray went from bullpen arm to in the rotation.
Goat. He's going to be the closer this year.
The closer?
That's my goat. That's my goat forever. Any role. You put him in any role, he'll compete.
I really like the way, and C-Ray is also, he's going to be in our bullpen. He's another guy that gives you length and options. But I really like the way that Cabrera's pitch mix plays with our guys. The two righties that we have, Cade is throwing 97-mile-an-hour cut fastballs. where Cabrera's a guy that's sinking it, so it's going the other way.
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Chapter 7: How does playoff experience influence player value?
That's a great deal. Make up for when he loses the case. That's a great deal.
Whoever loses gets to keep the pay-per-view. It's just an Ian. Ian went through it, obviously, as we know, but like, It's such a crazy concept to me of like, you have to go to this meeting and listen to, like you said, they outsource it, but it's still coming from your team that you are working for telling you all the reasons why you're not good enough to get this much money.
And then you just have to go to work the next day, whether you win or lose and play for that team. And then you just sit there training.
It's like, right. It's like right before spring training. And then you show up, you either win or lose and you show up to spring training. I found out that I won my hearing on the plane to Arizona for spring training.
That's insane. And it was the day after your arbitration hearing?
Or how long does it take once they have it? Because they hold the results until all of the cases are done so they don't influence the other cases. There could be a situation where... glaber and i were going through at the same time right and if my case gets decided that glaber can use it as a comp or so they hold all the cases until smart they're all done yeah yeah it makes sense
Wait, so the outside lawyers, I think that part's so interesting because I would have assumed the team does it. Are they outside lawyers? Are they talking baseball? Are they talking statistics? What is their full-time job? Are they like contract negotiators? How does the team feel like they're qualified to talk about baseball? You know what I mean? I was going to say. Tom wants their credential.
I don't know. That's a good question.
I just would be so curious how you get that job because you have to know about baseball. Obviously very well to argue a case like that. And if you don't work for the team, that's got to be weird.
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