Philly Front Office

I just couldn’t bring myself to write about baseball yesterday considering the sputtering Phillies current state, but, oh man, what a difference a walk off makes! Anyway, next year is the 10-year anniversary of the Chicago Cubs winning the 2016 World Series and breaking a 107-years long championship drought in the process. That World Series team was LOADED with young talent. Unfortunately, the Cubs decided not to pay any of them and the team was gradually dismantled. None of the team’s core signed an extension with the team except Kyle Hendricks who was the last to leave in 2024. Let’s take a look at what happened to all that home grown talent.

Kyle Schwarber – The People’s Champ. Schwarber famously got hurt the 3rd game of the season and made it back for the start of the World Series where he hit .450, including leading off the 10th inning of game 7 with a hit. His pinch runner would tie the game a few batters later. The Cubs simply released him after a down 2020 season. He rebounded nicely by hitting 25 dingers in half a season in Washington before being traded to the Red Sox. The Phillies then gave him his first big contract (4/$79m) in 2022 where he has become a Paul Bunyon-esque folk hero. He is probably playing the best baseball of his life right now.

Jake Arrieta – I still don’t understand what the Phillies were thinking signing him in 2018. After absolutely shoving in 2015 and winning the Cy Young, Arrieta was down a bit but still good for the World Series team (winning games 2 and 6). He was even more down the following year, and the Cubs wisely didn’t resign him. Instead, despite seemingly no other competition considering it didn’t happen until March 11, the Phillies signed him to a 3/$70m contract. Predictably, he was “just okay” and then bad for the life of the deal. Arrieta always seemed like an a-hole to me.

Addison Russell – When writing about the Not Oakland A’s a few weeks ago, I found myself wondering whatever happened to Addison Russell? Afterall, he was the #3 prospect in baseball when he was traded to the Cubs from the A’s for Jeff Samardzija and starred on the World Series team the following year. Well, 2 years later he was accused by a 3rd party of abusing his wife. He was initially suspended 40 games, came back briefly, and was then released.¹ Since then, he has bounced around the Korean and Mexican leagues always putting up solid numbers. No one seems to be very interested in bringing him back to the big leagues though.

Jorge Soler – Careers do not get much stranger than that of Jorge Soler. At 19, he defected from Cuba and signed a 9 year, $30m contract with the Cubs the following year. After winning the World Series, the Cubs traded him to Kansas City. 5 mostly mediocre years later, he broke out big time with the Royals hitting 48 homers with a .922 OPS in 2019. He came back down to Earth the following year and was then traded midseason to the Braves for basically nothing in 2021. He proceeded to ignite again the second half of the season, propelled the Braves to the playoffs, and then won them the World Series with 3 homers winning MVP. The Marlins see that and think “we could use someone like that to trade to a good team”, and they give him $36m. He mostly underperforms even with a 36 HR season mixed in and never nets the Marlins their expected trade prize. For some reason, the Giants give him a preposterous 3/$42m deal, only to be traded back to the Braves for not much soon after. The Braves shed his salary to the Angels the next season where he is currently hanging out and getting paid. Teams just can’t stop betting on his size, strength, and propensity to get randomly scorching hot.

His real claim to fame though is getting to meet a little league team called the Ironpigs. The team’s first baseman (7 years old) goes up to him and says “my dad’s a Phillies fan and he doesn’t like you.” The kid points to me and they both give me a thumbs down and boo me. What the hell kid? I have the honor of saying I have been booed by a World Series MVP.

Willson Contreras – Contreras debuted with the Cubs during the World Series year and provided 7 seasons of reliable catching services before simply leaving for a 5/$87.5m contract with the rival Cardinals. Noticing a theme here?

Javier Baez – Its hard to remember now, but Baez was once an MVP runner up with the Cubs. They traded him to the Mets in 2021 for…Pete Crow-Armstrong! PCA has since become a legit MVP candidate himself for the north-siders. Baez would leave Flushing that winter. Great trade Mets. The Tigers signed him to a 6/$140m contract which has basically crippled the team’s spending the last few years. He has been a below average player these last 4 years in Detroit. Considering the free agent contract, lack of production, and PCA trade, not extending Baez is probably the best decision the team has made since the WS. That’s saying something considering the next guy.

Kris Bryant – Bryant fought with the Cubs from the beginning. His service time was initially manipulated preventing him from reaching free agency by an additional season. No matter, he would win Rookie of the Year. The parties briefly discussed an extension before the 2016 season but got nowhere. No matter again, he would win MVP and the World Series. Then, that was it. No more talks of an extension. The Cubs would go year for year with him and he milked them through 4 years of arbitration for around $63m. They finally ended up trading him for nothing to SF in his walk year. Despite fading production, Bryant signed a massive 7/$182m contract with the Rockies in 2022. He has since been one of the worst players in baseball. What the hell happened?

Anthony Rizzo – Did you know Rizzo was originally drafted by the Red Sox but traded to the Padres in the Adrian Gonzalez trade? After making his debut for the Padres, he was traded to the Cubs for Andrew Cashner. In a rare Cubs move, they signed him to an early 7/$41m extension before he really blew up with 3 straight top-10 MVP finishes. As with everyone else though, when it came time for an extension, Chicago traded him to NY where he was a fan favorite before dealing with lasting concussion issues.

That 2016 Cubs team was loaded with potential MVP candidates, all entering their prime, and all playing on the cheap. Other than an early deal for Rizzo, none of them would sign a second contract with the Cubs. In almost all of those situations though, they were right in doing what they did. Of all those guys, only Kyle Schwarber has produced since leaving Chicago. Crazy to see how it all worked out.

One more story from the World Series roster. I know he’s not a homegrown Cub, but Aroldis Chapman has one of my favorite stories attached to him and it is somehow not him being the victim of Jay Bruce’s awful defense in the 2010 playoffs. Throughout his career, Chapman has dominated the Phillies. However, before one of the Cuban’s first regular season trips to Citizen’s Bank Park he was met with a gift from Phillies Spanish Language Broadcaster Rickie Ricardo, who is also Cuban. In 20 appearances that year (2013) Chapman had only given up runs in 3 of them. However, on this day, for the first time in his career, Chapman gave up back-to-back home runs (to Erik Kratz and Freddy Galvis of all people), blowing the save and the game in a walk-off. Earlier in the day, Ricardo went to the best Cuban bakery in Newark and brought Chapman 2 big boxes of pastalitos, flaky guava and cream cheese pastries of which you should really only have 1 or 2. Well, Chapman had 18!!! He would only give up 3 hits in his next 13 appearances. How often should a broadcaster get credited with a win?

1. Before anyone blasts the Cubs for bringing him back, it is my understanding that teams cannot simply release a player for this. They have to be allowed back and released based on legitimate baseball reasons. Basically, they let him come back and as soon as there was a roster crunch, they cut bait. ↩︎