Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Best of the Cubs: Dansby Swanson leads the offensive explosion

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

In the Best of the Cubs this week, radio color analyst Ron Coomer joined the Mully & Haugh Show to discuss the club’s offensive tear as it swept the Padres; Leila Rahimi and Dustin Rhoades discussed shortstop Dansby Swanson’s heater that included him homering three times Wednesday; and general manager Carter Hawkins joined the Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show to discuss how the Cubs have persevered through injuries to continue having success.

When I saw that score, as I watched that game, I thought for sure Ron had unretired. It was as if the Coom Dog had stepped in up to the plate and started hitting home runs and banging in RBIs. Good morning, Ron. How are you, buddy? I am good. It's just wishful thinking from the guy sitting in a booth, too. That would have liked to have been hitting that day, especially there at the last inning when they had to get lobbing them in there. That's more of my speed now, Mikey, Lou. I'm not, you know, that 95 right now, you know, I don't know, but the 65 is more my speed now. You know, it's funny you bring up the lob, Coomdog, because we were talking early in the show with Destino.

And Dustino hates the fact that they'll throw a position player up there in the eighth or ninth inning. And he said, oh, you know what, it shouldn't count. Shouldn't even be part of the stats that Swanson hit that Grand Slam. And I said, are you kidding me? I've seen enough guys go up there. With the lollipop thrown at them as they're up at the plate, and they whiff on it. You can't take that away from Swanson. No, you can't take it away.

But there comes a point where you also have to, you know, where do we draw the line where it's big league baseball still? You know, and there's got to be some rules to try to help teams that are getting crushed like that. And, you know, because every team deals with it. I mean, we're all going to have that moment, you know, from the Dodgers, Yankees, Cubs, everybody. And then when the teams that are struggling. So there's got to be something in the rule changes, maybe with roster moves that you can, you're going to get a roster move. Something's got to happen.

I haven't given it a lot of thought, but I sure looked at that game yesterday. And, you know, you put up an eight spot. And it looked like Sayah had just said, you know, told them, I'm not getting a hit. And he just flew out to center. because swing before that was like the underwater swing, and then he just lobbed one in the center to get the final out or left. And yeah, so something's got to change, but I'm not quite sure what. I haven't given it much thought, but something's got to change a little bit, I believe.

But you can't take the stats away. It's a big league ballgame, man. You play, you play. Yeah, I said to Lou earlier. I mean, didn't we watch Anthony Rizzo strike out Freddie Freeman? I mean, it was a funny moment, but I'm sure Freddie's not too happy about that having happened. You know, the thing that was amazing

is the eight RBIs. Apparently, the eight RBIs from a number nine hitter hasn't happened has happened only once since 1920, which makes perfect sense because the pitcher used to hit. And the,

and you know, the guy who did it, some pitcher got nine RBI in some game, apparently hit two grand slams. It just, things like that are so weird, when you look at them as a statistic. But Dansby Swanson, he has gone crazy since that Mets series.

He had all those RBIs in the two games against the Mets. And then he turns around and here he is. He's got just, I mean, he's setting records. They're getting so many RBI and they're doing it. His 10-game total 26 RBI right now. I mean, that's going to make you look like you're having a hell of a better season than you were. That's got to make him feel great seeing those numbers kind of match the back of the baseball card. Yeah, I would agree, Mike.

The thing that I saw in New York was him being able to just cover pitches that he hasn't been able to cover in a long time. And what that does then, all of a sudden, the pitcher makes a mistake in the inner half, you're able to, hit it. You know, you're not out in front of it and you're not underneath it. And so he's covering pitches and hitting balls the other way. And then when they make the mistake in the middle of the plate, he's able to pull it and hit it a long way. I mean, he had 15 RBIs in New York. And we were watching and I'm like, wow. He just, and you know, and you know how that goes. Every time he came to the plate, it was like, here you go. They're serving it up. And, you know, he's got two men on again. and he's got three men on.

And he just kept hitting balls in the gap or hitting them out of the wallpark. So I'm really happy for Dansby. As you guys know, this game can really beat you up. Our game, because it's relentless with the schedule. And if you're struggling, man, it just wears you out. And he's dealt with a lot of that heroes of late, you know. And now that he's not, I'm happy for him because, you know, I'm sure the steak is tasting better.

The wine at dinner is tasting a lot better. everything's tasted better right now because when you're getting hits it's a lot more fun all right ron bregman hits a three-run home run second inning back on tuesday night when the cubs win that game over the podrays his first since june 11th second of the month and he hadn't homered at rigley what i think since march 29th how do you get bregman to take what swanson's taken right now well Gregs Who invited Lou on the show, Mike? I swear David hasn't left.

You know, Lou, I'll say this. As a hitting person and somebody who's, you know, obviously hitting a league a long time and has taught hitting a long time, to me, when you get, when you're, first move in your thought of success for hitting is to the pull side all the time, and that's what you work on constantly. I think you lose something, you get something, and you lose something, right?

You've got to give something to get something. Right now, I think his work that I see, I'm not down on the field, but what I see is a lot of balls in his work, in the BP and extra BP, trying to find that swing that can pull the ball and elevate the ball. But that makes the hitting becomes very difficult when you're just trying to do that because timing and everything has to be perfect to do that. If you use the other side of the field in your work like Dansby has done, now the pull side becomes much easier because your timing is very good.

And that to me is the one thing I see Bregman do a little bit. occasion starting out with his batting practice using the other side of the field and then it goes you know where he's trying to in essence he's trying to find that that stroke that's getting him where he was in Houston a couple years ago and he's having a hard time finding that I can tell you that that's what I see I think you have to in your practice stay inside the ball excuse me and and do some of the things that get you on track with the stroke broke in the timing, and then the pull side elevated ball comes. It doesn't come without the first thing to me.

That's just the way I was taught hitting, and I was taught hitting by some really good hitting coaches or guys that played, and I think that works. I really do. So, Ron, I've developed this twisted theory that's probably worthless. This makes my day. I'm going to run it by you. You know, we talk about everything that's going on, particularly with the Cubs pitching staff. And, you know, when you count up the numbers, they had something like 13 guys on IEL,

and it's an entire pitching staff gone. And we talked to Tommy Hadovy, and he said that, you know, when they had the, you know, last couple of starters go, that it was Ian Hap who came over and kind of kind of gave him a hug. How are you doing? Is everything okay? In other words, everyone is aware of what's happening. And I'm not saying you can hit better because the pitchers are hurt,

but it's almost like it's dialed in their focus. It's almost like all of a sudden they know they need run support. They know this is it. They got to do it. They've got to help the guys that are on the mound. They've got to help the bullpen if the starter isn't able to do that. And they're giving run support like mad. Now, this, again, is a twisted, wacky theory.

But could that have helped them in some fashion? There were a different team over the last couple days, over the last couple weeks, really. I think absolutely. You know, the psychology of sports is an amazing thing. You know, and what teams go through, the team psychology of how you get players to play. and teams to compete and be a team instead of a bunch of individuals.

And I think to your point, Mike, I think there's also some other circumstances in that who they've played. You know, the teams that they've played over the last three weeks or so have not been the elite of our game. So it's allowed them to do some things when they needed to. But if you don't want your season to go, you know, down the drain here and we're not even at All-Star break yet because of the pitching injuries, something's got to happen.

And I think, you know, we talked about this two or three weeks ago that the only way you can sustain staying afloat during this season with all the injuries is you've got out-hit it. You've got to out-hit it to cover some of the issues you got. And they've done that. They've done that since, you know, before New York. You know, they had some Colorado series, San Francisco. you know, where they played pretty good baseball.

They out hit some of the issues and got on a roll and now the offense is rolling. You know, the other guy, I do believe that Pete Crow Armstrong, too, he's very animated. We know that. But he's also a guy that does a lot of good. And, you know, in that animated way, you know, can fire up a ball club. And I think the whole group now has taken the offensive group, to your point, is taking it on their shoulders and saying, we've got to do something,

or else, you know, by August we're going to be playing for nothing because you're going to be out of the race. So, you know, I think there's definitely something to that, Mike. Coombs, I'm glad you brought up PCA because I wanted to ask you about P.C.R. Armstrong. And we just saw him have a month that we had seen from a guy named Ruth and Garrig. All right.

And those are the only two other guys that put up numbers, comparable to what PCA did in the month of June. It's amazing. I mean, he has just been terrific, and frankly, he's held the team together through these injuries to the pitching staff, through the difficulties that Swanson had at the plate a month ago, what Bregman's going through right now, Suzuki's gone through his own issues. Specifically about PCA, were you happy when you heard him tell the media the other day, I will not take part in the home run derby this year?

I don't know. I think those things are for his swing, just for his swing, I think the home run derby is not a great thing for guys for their swing. I think it's a different swing when you get into a home run derby. And, you know, so in that regard, maybe yes. But other than that, I don't necessarily, to me, it's a great promotion for our game. and, you know, I don't want to ever feel like you're, you're hindering somebody or want, you know, kind of quietly not wanting somebody to do something that puts them on a national stage and lets them show their skills. I think for Pete that's, you know, in the future, he'll probably do it if he continues to hit the ball out of the park like he is.

And that's okay. I don't have a problem with that, Lou. I don't. I do think there's some issues with it. you know, there's some minor issues with your swing. It's created some issues for some guys, but he's a young guy, and he does well in the, you know, with the national things going on,

and there's nothing wrong with that. I just have always felt that way. I'm, you know, it's okay. And it's great for the Cubs to have more guys in there, you know, and involved if so. But he's not going to do it. Time off as much as he's playing isn't the worst thing in the world. I'll tell you that.

But he's likely to be representing them at the All-Star game. Yeah, for sure. Everyone gets one. I don't know how many Cubs will make the All-Star game this year because the voting wasn't there. He may be the only one. But, I mean, I think he's. It's a hard thing because with that, you know, depending on how many outfielder's you have, it's just a difficult thing.

I'm guessing because of all of the, you know, the national attention he gets that the league would want him to be there. I would see that for sure. But when you're the manager and you're trying to pick your extra, you know, your guys, sometimes, you know, that gets in the way of, you know, and there's a lot of guys that are deserving. So, you know, to say that's an absolute, I would say it's not an absolute. But, you know, there's a really good chance that he plays. But, you know, the All-Star game is tough. It's a great thing, but it's tough on the schedule.

And for someone that's playing as much as he's playing, you know, He'd love to see him get some time off. But once again, it goes like to home run derby. He deserves to be out there. He's one of those guys. So he deserves to be there. Considering how popular he is, guys, I was surprised that he finished 10th amongst National League outfielders in the first phase of voting.

The first couple of faith. Yeah, he was really far behind. But then, you know, they've had an up and down season. And I think maybe. That's timing, though, too. Yes, that's right. That's absolutely timing. When the ballot comes out, what fans do, just from having so many gray hairs now and being around this long time, timing is everything.

So when the ballot comes out, fans look now, who's doing what? You look at stats if you're a real baseball fan quickly, and then who's hot. Well, when the ballot first came out, he wasn't hot. He wasn't the guy. You know, he was struggling. And then all of a sudden he takes off for the month now. you're behind them. You're behind the guys that everybody started voting for.

And then as the vote gets going, a lot of people, if they don't know who's at a position and then they're a casual fan, they take the top guys and then you start falling. And I think that's probably a little of what happened to Pete. Because if you're watching the last month, he's one of the best outfielers in the game if he's not the best right now. You know who else has been playing really good baseball as Seyesizu. It seems like he has gotten so hot with his bat.

And, you know, he hit a home run against the Mizz, for God's sake. He hit the best closer in baseball, he ricochets one off the wall to get them a walk off Victor. It seems like he's really come around quite a bit. He has. There's been the three guys to me that, you know, you look at Pete, you look at Dansby, that, you know, those guys have done in, and say in the Milwaukee series, you know, I really thought the home run that he hit against Mizrowski, Mike, that you brought up was a key swing for him because all of a sudden it kind of, you know, there's a confidence boost to doing something like that

when the whole league's talking about this guy and he's striking out guys at a record number and you take him deep. You know, and then he hits the home run in game three, I believe of that series also. So it was, you know, he is doing very well. He really is. And he's playing, you know, he's also playing pretty banged up as one is, I think his left knee is pretty banged up. So you tip a cap to him that he's out there playing and he was back out in right field too the other day.

So that's good. You're the best, Ron. Thanks a ton. And enjoy your day off. We're sorry we woke you up. Oh, I, you know, I'm just putting it on the list of coffee that between you and David Ome. Now, Lou, you're on the list. All right, I'm on the list.

I'm buying. Lou might actually be able to deliver. That's the difference. Lou, great to talk to you. Great to talk to you, as always. We miss you around Wrigley Field. Mikey, you guys have a great weekend. We're going to celebrate on a 4th of July

with a fireworks display at Wrigley Field. I don't know if I've never seen that. So I'm looking forward to that. And I might have a flight or two while we're doing that, so you never know. Oh, beautiful. That's great stuff. Take care. All right, Coombs. See you, boys.

See you, Ron. That is, he's what a great man. He's the best man. Such a good man. Yeah. Native South Sider, you know. Yes, he is. They say that that makes the man.

Well, I would know. I would know being a native South Sider. I wouldn't have said that if it wasn't the two of us sitting here. Rahimi Harrison Grody. I don't want to break time. I want to yell a marshal. Can we handle more Anthony Heron? Middays 10 to 2 on 104 3, the score.

Dansby Swanson the batter hits a fly ball and a deep left center back toward the wall grand slam. Danzby Swanson with a grand slam to left. He has three home runs and eight runs batted in for the day. And the Cubs lead 22 to 3. It's just not a real. score. No, it's not a real score. That is courtesy of the Cubs radio network, Pat Hughes, Ron Comer, Zach Seidman, the crew. You know them well. This is Rahimi Harrison Grotie. Dustin William, William Rhodes of the morning show is announced for this hour because I wanted him to

talk about baseball with me and he obliged. Thanks for letting me hang out for a couple more minutes with you guys. And I'm just going to go for it. I love that Danesby Swanson has found his swing again. And I know that's something we're going to talk about. But just we just heard the Grand Slam. did a great job. It's great to have Pat back. Zach did a nice job. Always does a nice job. It's always best when the whole crew, all three of them are there. It's a great radio call that we get to have

right here on 104. 3 of the score. Absolutely. But that grand slam as far as his baseball card, I don't think should count. Because if you watch the video, the backup catcher

or the catcher of the Padres is the field position playing. And I know that really aggravates Pat Hughes. He hates position. Yes, he hates that. Ozzy does too, by the way. And I agree with it as well. He's leaning back. It was almost like whiffle ball

or bad softball or throwing it to a little kid. Dansby's up there like he's going to hit a softball or it's home run derby. He pops that thing. That should not, it should count in the score of the game because that's the game. But I don't know that if that's his first and only

three home run game, I'm not so sure you want to have that as your first three run, home run game over that pitcher. That's all I'm saying. Which may be why he was a little more reticent after the game. It wasn't like he was here to like take the flowers and the sash and the crown and wave to the crowd. He wasn't like that. Yeah, Rodolfo Duran, the catcher pitching at that point. So maybe, you know, he's like that.

I could see him not wanting to take full credit for that because of the nature of the situation. Correct. However. It went out of the park. It went out of the park. What was the last time we got to talk about this team scoring runs like this? And it's fun to do it. You still did the work to get there.

And with the way the pitching staff is beat up, this is what you have to do, right? You have to put as many runs across the plate. Listen, what was it the other night? The Cubs had a nice lead and all of a sudden. Nine to three. Yeah. Nine to three lead. And all of a sudden it was nine to six or nine to seven.

That was the final. They hung on to win that game. So it's really, it's really never over. But when it's 23, to three or 22 or 19. And again, you can't take everybody out of the game, right? Because Ian Hap had been removed from the game at that point. Yeah, and the Padres had been removed from the game.

Yeah, the Padres had done a lot of substitutions too. But you only have so many people available too. Exactly. Right. So you had to leave. Again, and I guess I can see it both ways. I'm just talking about from the back of the baseball card. If that was his first three home run game, might need a little asterisk. I think you're right to give that the appropriate context.

and we don't do that enough. So that that's beyond fair. But in the meantime, we know what we're seeing. This goes back to June 17th. That's against the Rockies. There's discussion, Dustin, about him, Dansby Swanson, going over the iPad with John Maley and Tently. This is a guy who also, I think we forget this,

prior to him coming here when he was with the Atlanta Braves, the year that the Braves won the World Series, they talked about how during the season, in the middle of the season somewhere around July, they were not happy with the way the infield was playing. So they and Ron Washington, who was at the time in charge of the infield, decided to adjust. And Dan Spey's got that on his resume. We're not happy with this.

We're going to do something about we're going to adjust. And then we saw what happened. It paid off in tenfold for them. They won the World Series. That's enough of a resume. So we know he's capable of making these in-season adjustments. Hitting is a little more difficult. You know, infield alignment is a group project.

but since June 17th, he has hit 366 with nine home runs and 29 RBIs. He had the 11 RBI day, as we know against the Mets, but this is not a flash in the pan. Oh, no. No, I mean, listen, he is really good. I understood why about two and a half weeks ago, most people wanted him to take a couple days off. Right. I mean, myself included. But the problem was, and I believe he said it to Mully and Haw, Jed Hoyer talked about the backbone of this team is the defense.

And that really upset a lot of good Cub fans that you're going to go out there and say this team is built on defense, defense, defense. Well, then you can't take Danesby Swanson out because he is arguably the second best defender on that team behind PCA. He's your best infield defender. Now, don't get me wrong. It's either him or Nico. Nico's very good as well. But Swanson, I think, has touched better as far as a defensive, defensive player. I agree with that.

And we forget about the fact that, you know, you and I both know that there were a couple of years. We're definitively and purposefully this team was built to win two to one ball games. Absolutely. And acquiring Dan Sby Swanson was part of that. Is that how you win in modern baseball? I don't think so. Probably not. No.

But that is, I see why they hold that position so dear and why that is so important. It's why they extended PCA. It wasn't the bat necessarily. It was his center field defense. You can't, that's not, I don't think you can teach that kind of defense. Those are God-given abilities. You can, to your point about placement, strategy, knowing, okay, this is the way we're going to approach the hitter.

So I might shade a little bit that way. I might shade a little bit this way. Based on the runners, I'll play a little bit farther in. I'll play a little bit far. That kind of stuff. But there are catches that he makes that, you know, they have those probabilities where, you know, 95% of the time that is a hit. Stackass, yeah.

And he takes those hits away. That's it. He does. And that's how it turns into defensive run saves. That how it turns into wins about replacement. And Dansby, to his credit, I think has really made the adjustment. Now, if you talk to Dansby, he doesn't sound like he wants to bring it up as much. So we're going to hear from Craig Counsel as far as what he's seen out of Dansby during this stretch.

Yeah, I mean, I don't, you know, we never have it figured out. We never have baseball figured out. and I think this this tells you that you think you know a guy's probably he probably went through the roughest patch of his career and on the other side that is the best stretch of his career you figured out I don't I don't think I don't think Dan's we could explain it to you either but you know I think it's the same thing as say it like now you know I think moving forward Danes we just try to try to keep it keep it rolling as long as you can because he's impacting the game He's impacted so many games the last 10 days in a major way.

So it's been great. It's been fun to watch. That's Craig Counsel. Our baseball coverage on the score is presented by Xfinity. Score the most reliable Wi-Fi. One price, five years guaranteed. Xfinity, imagine that. Dustin, why do I feel like this is an episode of all shucks with Pat Murphy when I heard

Craig Counsel say that? Do they just not want to talk about the adjustments that haven't made yet? Because it's not just as simple as math is happening. this is all just happening to him at the plate. Well, you get a lot of the Craig's famous lines. Like, if you were going to create like a soundboard of like drops that we play here on the score. Or rotation. Right. That's baseball.

Like, you know, you're going to have good days. You're going to have bad days. If we could figure it all out, then why would you need me, Craig Counsel, the $8 million a year skipper of your Chicago Cubs? But they also maybe don't want to give away the secret sauce. Yeah. And that's okay. Like your KFC, right, really protects that recipe, right? It's like, you know, locked down.

But what, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you. You might know one or two, but we're not going to give you all 11. Now, he has been... He's been working his baseball, unfortunately. He's been working his rear end off. And it's nice to see it pays off. And that's kind of big picture, big life, right? If you work hard, eventually you're going to get out of your rut, but you've got to keep

going. It's not going to happen in a day. It's not going to happen in 48 hours. It's not the karate kid where the montage happens and then suddenly you're able to win the All Valley Championship. Love those movies, though, Leela. I love the karate kid. It taught us too much, though.

We can't just montage our way into this. I mean, who hasn't tried to do that kick? The crane? We all have. Who hasn't, you know, and then with the, you know, sweep the leg. You got a problem with that, right? I mean, these are classics. I mean, Cobra Kai.

I know they tried to make Cobra Chi sound like it was misunderstood, but I think we'd all know what Cobra Kai was about. Oh, everybody who went to a halfway middle-sized or bigger high school, knew some cobra-kai types. No, no, did I, you know, my ordering sweep the leg on, say, the Packers? Maybe, you know, maybe. But not for everybody. So our friend Jesse Rogers did have this quote.

And he says, here's Danesby Swanson, late last night on working with hitting coach John Mayley more recently. Really good stuff. So I want you to hear this, Dustin. He says, I think the one thing that he's really done for me personally is just like I'm always best when I'm just convicted in something. So this kind of goes back to the karate kid idea. Or I believe in something in he, meaning Maley, is just really, really been on me in a good

way of just walking me through it, coaching me, not coaching me hard, but like holding me to a higher standard and just kind of creating an avenue of like work that I can believe in. You can go into the cage and you can try to fix your swing. If you go to the driving range, you can go there and try to fix your swing. It's also nice to be able to get to the point where you're like, I'm not in there trying to fix anything. I'm in there trying to groove my swing to repeat the same good thing every time. So muscle memory, something else you'll hear from golfers, right?

And similarly in pitching, repeatable mechanics, right? So there's a couple more here. from this quote to Jesse. And it starts to just show up in game because you're just doing the same right thing over and over and over and over again. And so essentially that that's what he's done for me. I mean, I straight up asked him. I was like, dude, I may be 32.

I may be close to 10 years. And when he says, I mean service time, which is a big deal in baseball. I may have had a lot of success in this game, but I still like being coached. I still sometimes like having my handheld and walk through with and he. He was just the one that has been doing it for me lately. But all the hitting guys, they've also been awesome and positive and consistent and supportive. And I think they've all put their heads together and kind of just like said, hey, this is what we are going to do. And Males, John Maley, was just the one that was able to kind of relay the message to get through it to me.

And it's obviously made such a difference. Good reporting. Excellent to be able to get that kind of info. John Maley gets a lot of love. from his hitters. I've heard Nico on the station talk about John Maley quite a bit. If you've been watching the Love Will Reunion stuff, there's an episode with John Maley that can't miss, you know, Marquis re-showing those episodes. You're right about that. I worked with John in Houston. Okay. And same thing. You know, Jose Al-Tuvae definitely credits him with becoming who he was as a

hitter. You saw the progress there out of that team. There's a reason he's got such a good reputation in baseball. But it is curious to me that Dan Ansbee doesn't necessarily need, hey, it's not a leg kick. This is not a toe tap. It's what I'm telling myself. And that sounds like what's happening here a bit. Absolutely. Yep. And he's just repeating to what we just spoke about. He's repeating what he's been doing. And it sounds like Maley reinforced to him. You just got to keep doing. And it's, you know, keep doing what you're doing. Let's not really change too much up. And you'll work your way out of it. And that's why it's 162, right? That's why it's 162 games, and you need that in this sport to really figure out what you got.

Now, Dustin's Price, I'm bribing him with iced tea from Starbucks to stay another segment. That's Dustin William. William Rhodes, our morning show producer here on Rahimi Harrison Grody, and Dustin's hanging out with the first hour with us today talking a little baseball, which I certainly enjoy. We'll get Dustin to talk about the White Sox, which you do in the pregame show. People only think you do Cubs, but I know that's not true. No, I've got thoughts on the socks. There's a massive series coming up against the Guardian, so I want to get Dustin's thoughts on it next. I know, I know they lost, but come on.

This is what it's all about. And then we'll talk with Dustin for another segment. And then Chuck Swirsky is set to join us at 11. So thanks for hanging with us today. And Rahimi Harris and Grotty on the score. The 2-0 delivery. Breggman swings. It's a high-fly ball deep left.

Taylor back at the wall. Gone! Three-run, home run, Alex Bredman, his seventh of the year. year and the Cubs now up five to one over the Padres here in the second second home run in the inning for the Cubs Danesby with a bomb to center and now Bregman gets one and he hooks this ball and hits it a long way to straight left and now you know why the pitching coach was going out there you walk guys in this environment that we have here tonight at Wrigley with that wind blowing out Bregman didn't miss this one no he did not that is wrong

John Coomer, Zach Zainman on the call, the Cubs Radio Network. This is Rahimi Harrison Grody on 104 through the score live from Gallagher way, and we are happy to be joined by the Cubs general manager Carter Hawkins is here. And during our conversations with Carter Hawkins, we remind you about Paws Chicago's mission to build no-kill communities and overpopulation of homeless animals and transform animal welfare. Visit Pawschicago.org for more information. Salvation Army is here. We've got a wonderful cause going on there where you can give your gently used clothing and pause Chicago.

So good vibes all around ahead of what we hope to see, Carter, is a serious sweep today. Yeah, absolutely. And to add on to those good vibes this morning, we celebrated our 100th Cubs Scholar, which is a program that our Cubs charities does and allowed us to or allows kids in Chicago to go to college and otherwise wouldn't have that opportunity. So, yeah, a lot of good vibes and be even better vibes if we can take a win today. Carter, be honest with us. Just be transparent.

If I gave you the list of all the players who are on the injured list right now for your team, would you expect to be in a situation where you've won eight out of nine and 14 out of 18? The odds were definitely stacked against us. I'll put it that way. I mean, I think we've all realized in this game that you just don't know what tomorrow is going to bring, both in terms of injuries but also in terms of performance. And then our guys have stepped up and taken care of opportunities here in the recent term. And hopefully we just continue to put ourselves in position to win baseball games like we have the last couple days.

Carter, obviously, everybody wants to know what are you guys going to do about the injured pitchers, both in the bullpen and starting. You guys have begun that process with the signing of the trade for David Peterson, which obviously for one game looks pretty good. Can we assume that there are more conversations that continue to go on as it pertains to, let's just say, starting pitching specifically? I mean, I think these things aren't binary. They're not off and on.

We don't flip a switch. You know, I think counts mentioned it, and you probably was understating it. You know, the Peterson conversation has been going on since, you know, April, right? And there's other conversations like that that are constantly in the hopper, whether it's for starting pitching or whether it's, you know, for all different types of trades. So the short story is like, yeah, we're talking about how to help our team, how to help our organization towards our goals, you know, every single day. You know, when those things actually come to fruition is a combination of, you know, our needs, their needs. and just where the different teams are, the further away from the deadline that you are,

the more teams are considering their alternatives and more teams are considering their alternatives, the bigger margin of a win they want for a trade, which just means it's less likely that trades are going to happen, but they do happen. And we're just going to make sure that we're in a position to make those trades or make those deals in whatever form they may come at any point. Well, it's fun that we at least get to talk about a deal

that's already done, Carter, in the win for Peterson. So you're talking to the Mets for several weeks, You guys are all familiar with each other. How does that go down? What are some of the processes that happens when this is something that you all had been working on for quite some time? Because that's not something a lot of people know. Is that a conversation could be ongoing like this and it ends up happening weeks later? You were working the phones regarding trying to get some pitching help.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's, you know, I think the other misconception is, you know, these things are very much team efforts. You know, so, you know, Jared Banner was actually leading our negotiations for this, one of our system GMs, leading our negotiations for this particular trade. He has a really good relationship with Andy Green over in New York. But as a team effort in those different types of conversations, we split up teams based on our relationships. So those things are just happening constantly,

and we're just constantly getting information. Their pitchers get hurt, our pitchers get hurt. You know, our prospects end up doing something, or their prospects end up doing something. And that just changes the dynamic on a day-to-day basis until there's one day where we're kind of saying, all right, we're heels in the sand, this is where we are. and if there's overlap with that team, then you know, you get a deal done.

We often say that, and the thing just falls apart, right? And vice versa, the team will say, this is where we are, we're not moving off of this, and the deal falls apart, and maybe you come back to it a month later, maybe you never come back to it. But these things are just there just happening constantly, and then in concert with, you know, we've got the draft coming up, when the international is always going, and we're, you know, getting ready for all these different things with the major league club on a day-to-day basis.

Who's pitching tomorrow? Yeah. So, you know, who's pitching Saturday? Yeah, exactly. Right, exactly. No, seriously. Yeah, yeah. Yes, I do.

But so it's this constant, just trying to make sure we're always in a position to make decisions. I also like that you shouted out Jared Banner because Pete Quiro Armstrong did too. You know, he got a lot of credit. After the extension, he mentioned him in the relationship that was there from the Mets as part of how that relationship kind of came to fruition. So that's a really good insight as to how the personnel does help matter. these situations. No doubt. Yeah, J.B. has been a huge part of all of our success over the last several years. You know, was our farm director when I first came in and inherited him, so to speak. He had been the farm director in New York, but he's really been involved in all facets

of our operation, including pro-acquisition, really involved in the Major League Club. Just a real, real awesome part of our organization. So glad we have them. Carter Hawkins, Cubs, General Manager, joining us here live from Gallagher way here on Rahimi Harris and Grotie. You mentioned the draft is coming up, and we've been all trying to figure out what are all these teams going to do as things kind of change. NIL money is involved. A lot of things are different now. I am curious about the track record that you guys have, though. Specifically, when you talk about post the fifth round, the draft spending changes,

and you guys have spent very little on pitchers, is that a strategic choice year over year, or is that something that you guys have just kind of been stuck with once you get to that point of the draft? How do you guys see that as an organization? Yeah, I mean, if you look at the cumulative amount of money we spend on pitchers, it's pretty average. Now, we haven't done as well with drafting pitchers we have as drafting position players and the aggregate yet. You know, there's still a lot of stories that have yet to be fully told. But that's definitely a focus for ours is how can we be better at selecting, you know, not just position players, but also pitchers. And how can we better at developing those players as well?

It's really a team effort. You know, if you don't select well, if you develop well, it doesn't matter. If you don't develop well and you select well, it doesn't matter. You've got to have both of those things working together. That's been a big focus of ours, and certainly an area that we have room to approve. But in terms of a strategy, our strategy is really just try to get the most wins out of the draft. And oftentimes that ends up being a position player. Oftentimes that ends up being a pitcher.

But we're not going in with this one thing that we're looking for because when you start doing that, you start to leak wins. And that's okay to make that decision once. But if you make that decision 100 times, now you've leaked 100 wins or less than that. So it is a case-by-case scenario then? 100%. You set your goal, right? So our goal is to get the most wins out of the draft. Wins.

It doesn't matter if the wins come for pitching. Doesn't matter if the wins come from position players. And then it's how do we put our draft together with all the signing bonuses, our pool, how good we think these players are going to be to help achieve that goal. And oftentimes you end up with a pitcher. Oftentimes you end up with position player. We have been objectively more successful with our position player selections. But that doesn't mean we're not going to continue to try to take pitchers and improve on those selections.

and their development, because it's a team effort, kind of as I was talking about. That is Carter Hawkins right there, the GM of the Cubs, Rahimi Harrison Grody. We are at Gallagher Way right now, getting ready for Cubs and Padres. You can smell the hot dogs in the air. I just got a big... Thanks, Grotty. Yeah, yeah, just got a big... Now I'm hungry.

We've got food coming out here as well. I have a financial question as well, because you guys obviously did a lot of spending with the extensions that you gave out, with the signing of Alex Braggman, you guys poured some money into this. Does that affect financially where you guys are in terms of the trades that you have to make or would be desirous of making? In other words, do you have to be more careful because of the money that you guys already poured into this year's team? I would say first off, we always want to be smart with our decisions.

We're going to be profligate by any means. But on the other hand, Tom, whenever we needed resources, he's been there for us. So that's just not our concern. Certainly that doesn't mean we're going to go add $100 million to our payroll at the deadline. I think if there's a good move, it's good for our franchise and good for the current and future state of the Cubs, I think the resources will be there for it. Okay, so I always say, like, if I've thought about it or we've thought about it, you guys have thought about it. I feel that way when it comes to just putting the fake GM hat on.

And you mentioned the conversations with the Mets regarding David Peterson. Obviously, we're all also wondering about Freddie Peralta. Who? We see what the Mets have done. We understand, we all have a familiarity with him having been in the division. Are there conversations like that that go on where you do try to get a side-d- discussion and on somebody like that who is also on the team. And if you can tell us anything about him in specific, that would be great. Yeah, we'll talk about him specifically. But I will say that,

you know, as we said before, the amount of players that get brought up in trade conversations is so much more than gets released publicly, obviously, to the point where probably every single player is worth assault is brought up, you know, whether it's, you know, with guys with us and our guys with other teams, you know, as we're tracking our conversations, we're basically tagging the players in our system as we're talking about them. And I think if you pulled that list at the end of the deadline, you know, you'd have 70% of our roster that gets mentioned. So, you know, when you see the, you know, this player mentioned in conversations,

it's like, that doesn't really mean anything. That's just somebody decided to tweet that day. Now, some of those become serious, obviously, but most of them don't. So, you know, to say whether a guy came up or not is so irrelevant. You know, it's really like, are we close to a deal on that guy? And that's not something we're going to share. I would love to see your guys' reactions when you see stuff out there that you guys are not putting out there and you guys are reading it just like us. You're like, where the hell did that come from?

And some of those are test balloons too. You know that. My best strategy, just don't read it. Don't listen to it. You can't avoid that, though. Of course we can avoid that. People don't bring it up to you, though. Like whether it's not even colleagues, but like family friends, whatever.

My dad every once in a while will ask me about something. That is true. Can't stop the parents. Yeah. Can't stop the parents. He gets to like, I'm going to pick up his call, right? He's, you know, about the 30, you ask how the kids are,

does all the things he's supposed to do as a father. He said, don't tell me about this Peterson guy. That is so funny because... So that's our formula. We've got to get to my dad. That's because all his buddies are asking him. You know that that's what's going on. Hey, hey, ask your son this.

That's probably right. Carter, when you look at where you are right now, you mentioned pitch your wife. You do know who's going to pitch that, you can't share that with us, who's going to pitch Saturday? Whether it's in bulk or... I'll let Counts announce that one. Okay.

But you guys, you guys, You guys know who our pitchers are, and it's going to be one of those guys. We can figure it out. Got it, got it. One of the guys that's already up. That's what I heard. Well, I mean, there's been a lot of discussion, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And with James and Tyone, he spoke yesterday, and I'm just curious. Like, is there a chance he pitches for the Cubs before the All-Star break? It's possible, right? He has a rehab outing coming up this weekend, most likely in AAA. You know, we'll see where that goes with him, how he's going after that. We'll see where our position is, you know, towards that. I mean, once he goes a rehab outing, theoretically he could throw in a big, in a big league game as well, but we also want to put him in the best position for success.

And the question I wanted to ask about is you guys, we're looking very barren just a couple of weeks ago at the AAA level, and now we see guys like Liam Hendrix and Aaron Bummer, Drew Pomerant, who of course Cubs fans are very familiar with. Is it just a situation now where you're just trying to get as many arms in front of you as possible to see who could possibly help the team? Is it, am I oversimplifying it when I say it like that? Almost, but not really. I mean, it's, we're looking for guys that. that can help raise our level at the major leagues. And part of that is bringing in a bulk of guys that can do that

and get a lot of shots on goal. But certainly you want to bring in guys that you think have a legitimate opportunity to raise our level. And those three names you mentioned are guys that have had a lot of success in their career, so everyone knows them. But there's also guys that aren't as name recognized that potentially could help us out a lot. You see a guy like Tyler Ferguson last night. Heck, he was unbelievable from the right side here in the last couple of games.

Then Ryan Rawlinson, you know, nobody was really. excited about the Ryan Rawlinson trade that we made, you know, this offseason. But every year, some of those guys that come up and compete, it's interesting. You know, every year in spring training, we basically say, look, like, here's the eight-man bullpen coming out of, coming out of camp. It will not be the same eight-man bullpen. We'll talk to the, you know, all 60 guys in the room and say, look, like, there's a lot of guys here that are going to, you know, to Iowa that are going to be impacting our club. At no point did we think that it was going to be this eight-man bullpen, right? But it just, we just, we just don't know.

So just every day we have to make great decisions about how to acquire players, how to optimize those guys when they get up to the big leagues. You're seeing some of that happen with the Ferguson's and the Rollsons of the world most recently, but we're just going to have to continue to do it because headwinds will hit us again and we'll just have to overcome those challenges when they come at us. Bryce Wilson doing what he did against Milwaukee. And then Jordan Wicks. Yeah, Trent Thornton.

These are not guys that people were super excited about. Yeah. We were excited to bring them on in the same way that we're excited about. Jay Speck and double A, right? It's just, you know, there's guys that, you know, are going to help us that no one out here knows about. And, you know, even I couldn't predict. But we just try to make everybody as good as we possibly can. Well, I think Jordan Wicks is a good example because we saw what happened against St. Louis, for example. And we knew that was going to change what happened to him on the big league level? And to bring him back up and to have that high pressure situation to have the faith in him to be able to call on him and have that performance. You know, what do you think that says about him and how you guys evaluate him from here on? out. Yeah, I mean, it was a short outing, so hard to take a lot other than from it, other than, than, you know, he came up and he met the moment. Jordan is a talented pitcher. Jordan is going to have a long major league career if he continues to put the work in to have that long major league career. He's gotten punched in the face several times, you know, with us recently. He's shown that

he can have success in the major leagues. Two years ago was a really good major league starter. That's in there. I really hope it's with us. I really hope that we're able to give him the opportunities and he's able to meet those opportunities like he did the other day. But he's kind of at that inflection point in his career. And I have a lot of belief that he's a guy that can help us for a long time. And it's on both he and us to make sure that happens. The bullpen Carter, when you look at it right now, I don't expect the same guys that are there now to be there at the end of the season necessarily. I'm curious as to if the bringing guys in the way you have just recently, we talked about the guys at AAA, is that a better solution from your standpoint,

trying to make a trade at the deadline because you have other needs, mainly starting pitching? Just a different solution. You know, we only have so many prospects. You know, we only have, you know, so many roster spots. And, you know, certainly we will navigate the trade landscape. And if there's guys out there from trade that we can bring in, that, you know, we feel like the cost is right. We'll do that. If guys in AAA are actually better than the guys that we can bring in from a trade standpoint, we certainly would do that because the cost is low. So it's just continuing to just try to identify, you know, what's the best decision for the Cubs at the time. And, you know, look at all those different avenues. I know that's kind of a

wish-washy answer, but it's the real aspect of that we go about it. Wait, so you were going to say something about Freddie Peralta? Did we cut you off? No, it was not. Okay. She said he can. I wanted to make sure. Not about any particular pitcher. Sorry to be... Sorry to be so hopeful.

But that is a good example of, okay, here's a rental situation. Highly paid for by previous team. We'll take the scenario, not necessarily the individual. You know it's probably going to be a lot of prospect capital. Is that something that you all are entertaining, just that concept? I think we're going to entertain any concept. We're not in a position where we can dictate what

direction we're going in right now. I mean, heck, we were 10 days ago, you know, this guy was falling. And, you know, 10 days from now, who knows what we're going to be. We're focused on winning a baseball game today and trying to get through this game today. When we get to, you know, closer to the deadline and depending on where we are positioned as a club, we're going to make the best decision for the Cubs, that is a scenario where that's the best thing for us. depending on the cost, depending on how we feel about particular pitchers or particular position players or whatever is out there from a rental perspective. But to say that one is definitively going to happen over the other right now

would be pretty foolish. Yeah, thank you for that. I think really indicative of the, use the phraseology, the sky is falling. And we echo that, no doubt about it, because we have been on the roller coaster on this show. PCA is symbolic of that because the sky was falling for him earlier in the season. It's like after the bad second half last year. Is this the best you've seen PCA, and do you think this is the sustainable PCA? I mean, it's pretty incredible.

I think there's more in there, which is wild to say. What more is there in there for what you're saying? I think there's more in there because PCA thinks there's more in there, right? Like, I'm not going to put a cap on how good anybody can be by any means, you know, whether that's a player, whether that's a staff member. What I'll say, though, is, you know, look, like, it has been a roller coaster of a season on paper. it is not felt that way in the clubhouse as much. We have a really professional group that knows their talent.

Certainly the injuries and those types of things, those are gut punches, but their process has continued to generally be the same. We've adjusted where we needed to adjust. It counts does such a great job of just making sure that every day feels like the season. That's just today is the day that we're focused on. And so, yes, totally understand the noise around the club

when we play the way we've been playing. But in terms of internally, it doesn't feel that way quite as much. And I think that's why we've been able to come out of some of these holes. Another genuine question before we let you go. Carter Hawkins, Cubs, general manager, joining us here on Rahimi and Harris and Grody here at Gallagher Way. Which one of these injuries was the biggest, I can't believe this? For me, it was the Hobie Milner appendectomy because I was like, what? I've had this like an inordinate amount of appendectomies in my career.

Oh. It feels like, yeah. It's like once every other year it happens. I'm like, how often are guys kids? Like, I have no family members that have had appendectives. And it just keep on half. So that I'm not quite sure about. Core muscle strains.

Pip flexors. Yeah, something in the Gatorade, maybe. I don't know. So that one hit you harder than, I don't know, like, earlier the season when Matthew Boyd's playing with his kids. I'm like Kate Horton. I mean, the Kate Horton. Yeah. That hurts the most, right?

It's, you know, it's a young pitcher that you just, you know, have so much hope for that year. You know, his story is he's got many chapters left. but that was a gut punch. The other ones, it's kind of like, I mean, we can't control for Matt Boy picking his kid up. We've all heard ourselves picking our kids up, or at least those of a certain age. And yeah, that was, you just shake your head on that one.

But at the end of the day, like, you get punched, and you get back up and you go, what are we going to do about it? And that's our jobs. That's the jobs for the guys out of the clubhouse. That's jobs for Jed, me, J.B., others upstairs. And, you know, if we do that well, day over day, we got a chance. Getting older is a constant threat to your meniscus. That's all I've learned.

100%. Like every other sentences, better not be the meniscus. That's all I've learned. Carter, thank you so much for your insight and your perspective. This has been great. Carter Hawkins, as we want to remind you during our conversations with Carter, we remind you about Paw Chicago's mission to build no-kill communities and over population of hopeless animals and transform animal welfare. Visit pausechicago.org, a wonderful organization for more information. Carter, thanks again.

Thanks so much, guys. Appreciate it. That is Carter Hawkins, live with us from Gallagher Way, and he is correct. The vibes are high because there are good causes abound. We are live from Gallagher Way outside of Wrigley Field. And for Donation Day with the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Centers and Thrift Stores, bring your gently used clothing to donate right outside the ballpark. Donors receive a special Cubs pin. It is a PCA pin that we got, and it's really cool.

Sick. One per person, wild supplies last. I love some flare, and I love the Salvation Army. We are here until 1245, followed by Zach Zadman's pregame show right here on 104 through the score. Let's react to what we heard out of Carter Hawkins. Also, Bruce Levine has checked in with us and has some fresh clubhouse interview with Alex Bregman. I just saw him walk by. He didn't even look at us.

Well, he was in the zone. I guess so. Yeah, I mean, Bruce is on the loose, man. He's out here reporting for you. So we're going to listen to what Bruce gathered in the clubhouse. And we'll also react to what Carter had to say. He was very informative. We'll do it all next.