One Man's Admittedly Dumb Opinion on the Kris Bryant Vs. Cubs Situation

If you read the title to this post allow it to serve as my self-aware warning label for what I’m about to write about the Kris Bryant situation with the Cubs, which (ugh) is the main talking point on the eve of the new baseball season. Consider this like a comedian who knows he or she is about to bomb, but grinds through the set anyway.

Here we go. Strap on your hazmat suits.

I, Mike Cardillo who writes about the sport of baseball on The Big Lead dot com, isn’t wholly fascinated by the Kris Bryant/Scott Boras/Theo Epstein/Chicago Cubs melodrama about service times and collective bargaining agreements that’s been the talk of the sport the last 2-3 weeks.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As I touched upon earlier this month (alert: I am recycling my own crummy opinions), since I possess neither an MBA nor a law degree, this sort of big-level contractual, labor-law stuff leaves me mostly in the cold. Every single shred of logic says Bryant should be the Opening Day starting third baseman for the Cubs — except for the baseball collective bargaining agreement about how many days on a Major League roster constituent a full year of service time(*). Meanwhile it’s in Boras’ best interest to stamp his feet and throw out words like “ersatz” to deride the Cubs’ decision. It’s also in Epstein’s best interest to keep Bryant in Triple A until mid-April to gain another year of team control.

The dress is white and gold, the dress is blue and black. There is no in-between from the two dissonant perspectives.

I’m not 100 percent sure it’s a “bad day for baseball” as the MLB Player’s Association said on Monday. This could, however, develop into something during the next set of CBA negotiations, should the MLBPA feel that strongly.

The worst part about this is whatever the resolution, nobody exactly wins. Sure the Cubs — seven years from now — gain what will likely be a Pyrrhic victory, keeping Bryant through the time he’s 30 before he hits the free agent market. Of course a lot can happen, but it stands to logic to think future negotiations between Bryant, Boras and the Cubs will be soured by this decision.

Fans? Haha. Like they matter one iota in this decision. It’ll be hilarious when ticket-buyers inside Wrigley Field Sunday night in the season-opener vs. the Cardinals start posting pictures of Kris Bryant t-shirt jerseys for sale inside the Cubs’ team shop. (Please RT.)

So we’ve managed to take what could be a great, ready-made story of a young prospect potentially living up to the hype (if nine Cactus League home runs count for anything), and turned it into an argument about collectively bargained labor law. Maybe that excites you, it certainly doesn’t get my engine revved up.

Call me a hot take spewing buffoon crazy but sometimes I actually let myself enjoy sports for sports. Like George Costanza, my fleeting dreams of running the baseball operations of a Major League club are over and done with at this point. I’ll never actually have to sit at the negotiation table with Boras after exchanging arbitration numbers.

The dream is dead.

Sorry for wasting your time with this swing and miss of a Sports Internet Blog opinion post.

(*) FanGraphs has a nice breakdown of service time in this post.