Rivalries That Aren’t, Big Draft Sleeper, Best Defensive Center Fielder, and Other Cubs

It’ll be nice to get back to Wrigley Field today, watching Justin Steele do his thing. Big game. They all are until the Cubs either fall off or get back to .500.

The Cubs and Cardinals will play on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball the weekend after the Trade Deadline:

The Cubs’ game against the Cardinals on August 4th has been chosen as ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball game. First pitch will be 6:10 p.m.— Meghan Montemurro (@M_Montemurro) July 18, 2024

Makes sense for a couple rivals to face off on ESPN, and speaking of the Cubs and Cardinals being rivals …

MLB will have a “Rivalry Week” in 2025, during which all fifteen series matchups will feature some form of rivalry — geographical (NY/NY, LA/LA etc), historical (Bos/Atl), or the last two left without a lab partner (Sea/SD) pic.twitter.com/oV5SuGcmmZ— SportsLogos.Net (@sportslogosnet) July 18, 2024

Ope! Look, do what you want with the schedule and call it what you want because it doesn’t actually matter, but … a lot of those are not rivalries. Geography does not necessarily make for a REAL rivalry. Cubs-Cardinals? Not playing. Yankees-Red Sox? Not playing. Dodgers-Giants? Not playing. Those are literally the three biggest rivalries in the sport, so I don’t know how you can really try to call this one “rivalry week.”

Pete Crow-Armstrong, the best defensive center fielder in baseball:

MLB Defensive Runs Saved Leaders – By Position
C – Patrick Bailey & Cal Raleigh
1B – Christian Walker
2B – Brice Turang
SS – Masyn Winn
3B – Ke’Bryan Hayes
LF – Brandon Marsh & Daulton Varsho
CF – Pete Crow-Armstrong
RF- Jackson Chourio & Mike Yastrzemski
P – Griffin Canning pic.twitter.com/iBdJN4kT6n— SIS_Baseball (@sis_baseball) July 17, 2024

With Cody Bellinger out for an undetermined length of time with the broken finger, Pete Crow-Armstrong will continue to have some runway out there in center every day as a starter. Keep saving those runs, and let’s see if the bat is heating up.

Cubs VP of Scouting Dan Kantrovitz has some big praise for 11th round draft pick Eli Lovich (Marquee)

“I don’t want to get too far out in front of myself because we still have to go through the physical process,” Kantrovitz said on the latest Cubs Weekly Podcast. “He was committed to Arkansas, which is a top tier SEC school. So it’s gonna be a significant buyout – that’s probably a fair expectation. He had options so at that point, it just comes down to did we save enough? Did we have enough money going into Day 3 to buy him out of Arkansas? And I think the answer is yes ….

“He’s a projection type. He’s got this frame that is dripping with physical projection. It’s something that you look at his parents and look at his siblings and you look his body and it’s not unreasonable to expect our high performance team to help him add about 15 to 20 pounds of good weight over the next few years. He’s already hitting the ball 107, 108 mph off the bat. And so you factor in that and it’s gonna just lead to some strength gains, some exit velocity gains and hopefully that translates to some home runs on the field.”

I wonder if that means Lovich is getting all or most of any overage the Cubs will have available after signing their top ten round picks. He was a cold-weather-city high school kid who was committed fairly close to his home, so it’s at least conceivable that he flew under the radar for a lot of organizations and the Cubs may have gotten a steal.

Baseball America’s midseason prospect of the year for the Cubs will SHOCK you:

“Moises Ballesteros, C, Triple-A Iowa. Rare is the 20-year-old Triple-A regular. Ballesteros recently joined the Orioles’ Jackson Holliday in the club. While he draws mixed reviews for his agility behind the plate, the 5-foot-7 Ballesteros has rare contact-plus-impact potential. In the first half, he hit .300/.363/.483 with 11 home runs in 74 games, 40 of them at catcher.”

Alas, the city is approving the building owner’s plan to tear down a trio of historic buildings on Sheffield over the right field wall (you would recognize them as including the TORCO building and the Eamus Catuli building, and replace them with one giant updated building:

Not unlike the A’s and Las Vegas, the Rays getting a new stadium deal done remains a “I’ll believe it when they’re literally in there playing ball” situation, but this does seem like a meaningful step:

#Rays stadium deal approved by St. Pete City Council; next, and seemingly last, hurdle is a July 30 vote by the Pinellas County Commission https://t.co/PKDRpR0qb4— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) July 18, 2024

Announcer rankings, if you missed it (where Boog and JD just slide into the top ten):