Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Seiya Suzuki won't be ready for Opening Day due to knee injury

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Marshall Harris and Mark Grote reacted to the news that Cubs slugger Seiya Suzuki won't be ready for Opening Day on Thursday due to a knee ailment.

Hello again everybody and welcome in to Rahimi Harris and Grotie on the score. Marshall Harris is back. You and I are back together, my friend. I haven't seen you in forever. It's been a long time. But I'm happy to see you especially because baseball's coming this week, Bigfella. It is. The Cubs and the White Sox both have their opening days on Thursday.

The Cubs host Washington on Thursday, 120. Hopefully you guys were giving me some distrusting. disturbing information about potentially bad weather on Thursday. They've got Friday locked in if they need it. First opening day in Chicago? Is this potentially bad weather? Is that what you told me, Grody? You're right.

In my head, I should be thinking, yes, there's been millions of these. I wasn't exactly saying it's inconceivable that there would be bad weather. Honestly, I just don't. I'm out a five-day forecast. I don't know if you figured this out about me, Marshall. I live my life day to day. I'm giving you two options here, Grody. Yes, sir.

You can have a Thursday, 60-degree day. in which there are scattered showers throughout the day for opening day, or you can have completely clear on Friday, but the highs, let's say, 32 degrees. Give me the 60s sporadic. I'll take a rain delay or two. I know that that doesn't make our friends in the broadcast booth particularly happy, but they'll be ready for it. Or the starting pitcher on opening.

Matthew Boyd probably would not be happy about that either. You're right. Get up, get down, get up to get back down. Exactly. So that might make things complicated. But yeah, Cubs, Washington, 120 right here on 670 to score. Matthew Boyd against a righty for Washington, Cade Cavilley, the 27-year-old former first rounder.

So it's important to point out that it is a right-hander on the mound considering what the Cubs have going on right now, which we'll get to here in just a second. But yeah, the White Sox also open up at Milwaukee. Important for the White Sox, important for the Cubs, because you've got the Shane Smith pitching situation, as we mentioned against your guy, Marshall Harris, Jacob Mizorowski.

How is he my guy? I don't know. Is it because I never said that the Cubs had clinched the division last year? Does that make Jacob Morowski my guy? Ah, yeah, we're doing that. I'm the one who makes bad predictions about the Chicago Cubs and statements about the Cubs.

Not you. I will, ladies and gentlemen, here in the year of our Lord, 2026, I'll try to do better with the Cubs this year. That's all I can do, Marshall. Every year we try to do better. Every day we strive to do better, Mark. And I believe in you.

You'll do better. I just don't know how much better you'll do. That means a lot to me. There is news, breaking news for the Cubs, I guess, if you consider breaking news over a 24-hour cycle like I think everybody seems to do. If you hadn't heard, Sayas Suzuki has the Cubs right fielder ruled out for opening day with the PCL, sprain, which means that they don't have to make the decision until Wednesday, whether or not to put him on the disabled list, the 15-day, excuse me, the injured list until Wednesday,

but it sure feels like all indications are, I would say, 99% chance that he's going on the 15-day injured list because of this PCL strain. Well, it would be the 10-day IL, which they can backdate, so they don't have to worry about missing that much time. He could be back early next week. I'll say this. For Say it's Suzuki, it's very simple to me, Mark. It's the start of the season. Make sure that man is healthy before he gets out on the field. And understanding he's not even to the point where he's starting and stopping as far as running yet,

it doesn't sound like he's close to being able to play baseball. There's no reason at all to rush him. What this does do is it supercharges something that we've seen coming. And that is Matt Shaw as a utility player, but really Matt Shaw as a utility player. a right fielder at Wrigley field, straight up, off the top. And I know people are going to say, well, Michael Comforto, he's a lefty, he could be, no, no, no, no, drop that man into right field and Wrigley and let him go.

Let him go. That's what the Cubs need to do right now. Shaw has been hitting consistently throughout the spring. He has been fielding to various levels at different positions. Right field, he had two errors in one game. I mean, that's going to happen. They know that's going to happen, but you have to give him a baptism by fire. treatment and say we need his bat in the lineup. And more importantly, we need him to have some

sense of confidence. So that's why you go ahead and just put him in right field. The candidates are for right field. And I tend to agree with you and I'll tell you why in a second. But the candidates are, as you mentioned, Matt Shaw first and foremost, the most prominent. And I have a feeling that Matt Shaw, whether in right field or in field or left field or wherever they want to use him, DH occasionally, I got a feeling Matt Shaw is going to play in about 140 games this year. I don't know if a good thing or a bad thing. I think he's going to play a lot more than maybe we expect him to right now. But here's why I agree with you for the most part on Matt Shaw is because of the documented improvement this man had in the second half of the season.

After all the early season struggles he had, especially, mostly at the play. We know that his third base play for the most part was excellent. Let me throw you this out. I got this watching the Cubs game yesterday. By the way, Cubs 12-0-0 win over the crew. That doesn't go out of style, does it? Who was on the hill for the Cubs in that game? That'd be Cade Horton.

Oh, yeah, I think, yeah, Kate Horton, that's the dude you need to be paying attention to. Horton, here's a who. He heard six innings, six shutout innings yesterday, for all you spring training fans, four hits, three strikeouts, no walks, 60, how many pitches did the man have? 68 pitches. Hey Mark, will that dog hunt? That dog will hunt. That dog will hunt.

And Bregman, Hap, head home runs, your guy, Moe Baller, Moises by Asteroes, just hitting doubles, you know, like he does. Best pure hitter in the lineup. Write it down now so that you don't, you're not one of these Johnny come lately's on it. He's the best bat in the lineup. Best pure hitter in the lineup. Yet they're talking about him being a platoon situation. So are you a pure hitter? Are you the best pure hitter if you don't hit lefties? I mean, and I get that's a tough trick for any lefties. Are you the best hitter if they don't allow you to hit lefties? Hey, Michael Bush, what's up?

Oh, you're going to hit lefties this season, aren't you? He is hitting lefties. I listened to, I guess it was. There were so many great baseball shows on hit and run came back this weekend. He's got the premiere show. You got the, you know, Matt Spiegel's hitting and run. Two hours of Inside the Clubhouse. I believe it was on Inside the Clubhouse.

Yeah, Michael Bush was on Inside the Clubhouse with Bruce and David Haw. Welcome back, David Haw. He was on and talking about how excited he is to hit lefties. But anyway, before the All-Star break last year, Matt Shaw played in 63 games, had a batting average of 198, two home runs. He slugged 280. His poll percentage was 32.9%. And again, shout out to the Marquis Sports Network for coming up with this graphic. Post-All-Star break, 63 games.

convenient is that. Hit 258 that's up from 198. He goes from two homers to 11 home runs. Slugging goes from 280 to 522. Pull percentage goes from 32.9% to 55.4%. Those are not subtle improvements from Matt Shaw. There was a period of time where he was just on fire to the point where I jokingly said he's the real PCA.

And that's when PCA was, wee, going downhill. And Marshall's giving me that the look that you give me, I'd say 60% of the time in our life, whether on the air or off the air, that get out of here. Because you say a ridiculous thing sometime. And listen, one of those guys was a gold glove finalist. One of those guys won a gold glove. Do you know which one is which? Yeah, I do know which one is which.

Yeah, one of them did play in the world baseball classic. One of them, yes, was a legitimate gold glover in Pete Crowe Armstrong. No, I think Pete Crowe Armstrong's ceiling higher than the ceiling of Matt Shaw. Just at the time when we couldn't figure out PCA and how horribly wrong things were going. And Matt Shaw was sizzling. That's when I said that. I'm very emotional. I do like your pre-post all-star break splits, especially since they're both 63 games apiece.

It makes it feel a little more fair than usually when you talk about after the break. it's a shorter sample size. But I will say this, he had a really good August last year in which he hit 240, ended up slugging 547, which was by far his, but he didn't slug over 500 any other month. New PCA. And then he kind of fell off in September, October, where he ends up batting 222, slugs 375. The OPS falls to 688, and that was more in line. Now, still, the 688, way better than what we saw in the first half of the season.

but I think overall for him specifically, he's now going to be in a more comfortable situation because he knows his bad as being dependent on in a way that it wasn't last year. And he's got more major league experience. Point blank. He got sent down. He came back up.

I mean, he was breaking with the club in Japan and then he had to go back to the bottom. Well, Iowa was not the bottom, but he had to go back down a level to get things figured out. I'm glad he got to figure out. I think now, though, they're calling. on him and Moises-Biastiros, the guys who were minimal contributors last year are going to have to be major contributors now. I thought the Cubs handled Matt Shaw well last year. It's always

tricky, especially with a first round pick like Matt Shaw, who's a man who seems to be, I don't know him, but very sure of himself, very confident, very set in his ways, and they had to break him down a little bit. So it makes sense that maybe this year is the year where we see a little bit more from him. This Thursday, Marshall, joined the score and Circus Sports, Illinois at Sluggers in Wrigleyville for our ultimate home opener broadcast. Our show will broadcast live from 10 to 1245 before the home opener on the north side. Then Zach Zabin will have pregame up until the first pitch. So come out and join us on Thursday at Sluggers starting at 10 a.m. It's all brought to you by Circa Sports, Illinois, sports betting the way it should be. Is that an invite for me? Because you're like, this Thursday,

Marshall. And I was like, am I invited? Can I come? It is absolutely for you. And Layla will be there too. Okay. I'll be there. So we'll have a good time as what you're saying. As well, and in the cold and the nasty. Ray, Ray, are you going to be there too? I'll be there. But more importantly, Ron Coomer will be there with us. Oh, the Coombe dog is going to be in the house. By the way, speaking of Coombe, do we have Coomber? We're going to do that in the next segment. The Ron Coomber audio. Okay. So while we're talking about Matt Shaw, this is a perfect time to do this, I think. Matt Shaw, as we said, who has had all sorts of different manifestations, adjustments, if you will, at the plate. It all started with the ridiculous lay kick. They had to

figure that out, keeping the head still, all of that kind of stuff. Like, it feels like there's been three, four adjustments. It would seem that there was another one this year. Bruce Levine, one of the things he said, and we'll talk to him later on, one of the things he said on Saturday, was that the most underreported story of the spring, I guess as it pertains to the Cubs, but, has been Matt Shaw's hitting. Let's hear what Ron Kumar has to say about what Matt Shaw is doing these days. Well, they're trying Bruce to eliminate movement in a simplistic way of describing it. You know, as we all saw last year, the high leg kick, your foot coming up off,

the front foot coming way up off the ground, then hovering and then going down, that's a very difficult way to hit as you're talking about by a sterileus and being on time. And because of that, he wasn't on time a lot. And so he had big areas in the strike zone that pitchers could throw to and get him out fairly easily because of that issue. The second issue he had last year was once he tried to get that foot down earlier, now the foot was going down and the head was moving forward. And when your head moves forward towards the pitcher, that's just like, you know, open season for the pitcher. to get you out when your head's moving. You just can't have a lot of head movement going towards the pitcher or forward.

And so he had that combination and he really had to fix that. So Johnny is shut down the leg kick. He hovers it a little bit, but it doesn't come up off the ground and it gets down quick. And I know they're working hard to eliminate that movement of his head going forward. that's an aggressive feel like you're doing something good but you're not because that movement just makes it tough to recognize pitches it hinders the mechanics of your swing so that's what they're really trying to do and he is getting that done i i do believe that there's there's some some positives there and some movement forward for him to use that same term i'm in a positive way where he's getting better that's that's for sure What I do hate about this, and that's all great analysis from Ron Coomer, sounds spot on to me. Why wouldn't I trust what Ron Coomer asks is I hate that Matt Shaw's had so many things to think about. And that does make sense.

Don't move your head up there. The idea that there's a bigger strike, that guys' pitchers are using the strike zone to get the guy out in multiple places is frightening. But I don't like that he's got to think so much. It feels like McShaw. This seems like the simple one, right, though. Just stay still, keep your head still. it's kind of a fundamental thing going back to low-league baseball. You know, you see little kids out here moving every which way,

and then they're not ready for the pitch. And now at the major league level, you got to donate, is this to denote, excuse me, off-speed, fastball, splitter, change. It's a lot of work up there. So you want to keep the simple thing simple. It's a great point. Coming up here on Rahimi Harris and Grotie,

another thing from yesterday's game, a 12-0 went over Milwaukee. Did we see the Cubs opening days? lineup. It looked pretty real. Like I said, yesterday was kind of a real game. Kate Horton going the six innings. We'll talk about the Cubs lineup. We'll tell you what we think about it.

Shoutouts to our producers today. Ray Diaz and the Butler, Beuterbaugh. Log on to Twitch.tv slash the score Chicago, our score video producers. Today, Connor O'Donnell, Jacob Stutz, and Max Curtis. We keep the Cubs talk hot next on

Rahimi Harrison Grotie on the score.