¡VIVA EL MAGO! - Javy Baez Is *Probably* Getting Extended Before Christmas
A lot of people have been asking me if the Cubs should prioritize a Javy Baez extension and the simple answer to that simple question is Fuck Yes. Actually let me change that to Absolutely Fuck Yes.
The better question and focus of this blog though is Would you have done it 2+ years ago when he was trending up and the price tag wouldn't ultimately cost you well over $100,000,000? Hopefully the answer to that question is an even stronger yes. And it's a damn shame we can't jump in a time machine and go back to revisit this discussion.
It's pretty crazy when you think about it. Javy Baez has played all 9 of his professional years within the Cubs organization. And notwithstanding his first 18 plate appearances in 2011, ALL of his time has been under Theo's watch. And what do we know about Theo's Guys?
They're really good at evaluating talent, building an organization, blah blah blah.
So what happened in the 9 years leading up to November 2019 that prevented the Cubs from extending Javy Baez? Was there uncertainty this time last year that he had a long-term future with the club? What about after 2017 when he was an everyday starter with huge upside? Or 2016 when he won a World Series as the team's swiss army knife. Surely the braintrust could envision a future that saw Javy Baez being a regular, high-impact contributor to a winning baseball club.
So why didn't they extend Javy before now? Why did we have to wait for him to become an MVP candidate and the everyday shortstop? Why did we have to wait for Addison Russell to be utterly dispensable in all material respects? Why not $10m a year after 2017, etc.? I could spend the next thousand words reasonably suggesting Javy Baez contract extensions from 2016 through 2018 and all of them would sound exponentially better than what he'll command now.
For both of our sakes I wont - likely because after the entire exercise, it will be revealed that I was wrong all along because Javy Baez doesn't want to be extended.
So instead, let's just agree that it's great news Javy could be locked up as a Cub through his prime while also agreeing that the Cubs are *probably* late to this party for reasons that could otherwise be described as Total Fucking Bullshit (TFB).
If we can agree on that then we're lockstep with every other Cubs fan since winning the World Series: very happy, generally confused and blindly hoping we're not completely fucked in the long-run.
¡VIVA EL MAGO!
PS - I flexed Christmas in the title and that's not going to change any time soon. No disrespect to anyone else. I'm just a Merry Christmas guy and if you got a fucking problem with that you can take it up with HR.