Baffoe: Savor Kris Bryant Instead of Whining
By Tim Baffoe--
(CBS) Veruca Salt: "Hey, daddy, I want a golden goose!"
Charlie: "Here we go again."
Mr. Salt: "All right, sweetheart, all right. Daddy'll get you a golden goose as soon as we get home."
Veruca: "No, I want one of those!"
Anybody with any tangential interest in Kris Bryant, the Chicago Cubs or just fun baseball should be really excited right now. The Cubs are in the final stages of building one hell of a magnificent Chocolate Factory, in some ways more figuratively than others. After a 2014 season in which he was named the Minor League Player of the Year, Bryant will play Major League Baseball in 2015, and he will most likely be good. Like everyone's-favorite-for-National-League-Rookie-of-the-Year good. Save for bad luck injury woes, Bryant will be good for a years to come. Choose your representational "Carlton Dance" gif or "giddy Ron Swanson" gif at will.
I'm Charlie in that Chocolate Factory, just really happy to be here. I'm going to take my time and savor all that I'm lucky enough to be given. And I have genuine Kris Bryant Everlasting Gobstopper joy. That is, until I read and hear about the travesty of his being Gulaged in Des Moines, Siberia for a few weeks in April.
We all have Golden Tickets to enter and view in wonder at something that was once just a bedtime story. Like being given a key to any candy shop, though, we can't just rush in and gorge ourselves on all the sweets without spoiling the experience.
But tell that to the Veruca Salts out there who refuse to stop whining about Bryant, the Cubs' golden goose. They're turning what could be sensibly savoring plenty of Bryant time into a collective upset stomach.
Gooses! Geeses!
I want my geese to lay gold eggs for Easter…
Bryant is going to put up some swell numbers, but it'll be a few weeks after Easter. Sorry.
At least a hundred a day…
Yeah, I have a feeling that the same people clamoring for him to play on Opening Day are the ones who will be first to question him if he's not producing at an inflated rate shortly after his debut.
And by the way…
I want the world
I want the whole world
I want to lock it all up in my pocket
It's my bar of chocolate
Give it to me
Now!
Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.
"He needs to play now."
No.
"What if the Cubs finish just short of the playoffs?"
Stop.
"Hypotheticals -- what about those frightening hypotheticals?! And something something 100-plus years something curse something?!"
(Sprays you with seven fire extinguishers.)
"Actually, it's about ethics in hitting dingers."
The argument is over. Done. No mas.
The promotion timeline for Bryant -- if the Cubs leave him in the minors for a few weeks, they'll have contract control through 2021 instead of 2020 -- was never really an argument to begin with. At most, it was something to spill some ink about in the offseason and as spring training got underway. But nobody in his or her right mind really thought in their heart of hearts that Kris Bryant was going to be on the Chicago Cubs' Opening Day roster unless for some plague of injuries or measles after Jay Cutler's kids visited the locker room. And even then, the Cubs would have likely plugged in some free agent for a few weeks.
And, not for nothing, but the Bryant binge in spring training is just that — in spring training.
Notes the astute Joe Sheehan in his newsletter:
"Eyeballing the rough measure of spring-training pitchers faced that baseball-reference calculates, Bryant is facing, on average, Triple-A quality arms. His two homers Saturday came against Jesse Hahn and Evan Scribner. Of his six others, three have come against pitchers trying to make teams -- Matt Lindstrom, Cesar Ramos, Brett Marshall -- and the last against Trevor Bauer. You'd rather have Bryant hitting home runs than not, but his performance this spring hasn't told us anything that we didn't already know about him."
Yet here we are arguing, despite the rationality of what the Cubs are doing. Opponents to that rationale are led by agent Scott Boras. A sugar high makes strange bedfellows, eh?
We're swimming in a sea of Kris Bryant hot takes -- point/counterpoints of a long ago fait accompli issue being barked at the damn moon.
Starting Bryant in Iowa makes complete business sense for the Cubs. The best counterargument that isn't just pure whining is one of labor issues and the MLBPA maybe not fighting hard enough against teams doing this to young players. In that case, fix the system, but don't fault the Cubs or any other team for legally using it.
The same process worked with Kerry Wood. It's worked with others like Evan Longoria. It'll work with Bryant.
Just please stop ruining this for the rest of us who understand that and who lack a child-like impatience to see a guy hit into the chilly April wind at Wrigley. Savor what will be plenty of long lasting 145-ish games of Kris Bryant sweetness.
After her bratty solo, Veruca Salt is sent down the chute for bad eggs and to the garbage incinerator. I kindly ask that all continued Bryant whiners take a similar seat on that scale that weighs the logic in all this.
Follow Tim Baffoe on Twitter @TimBaffoe.
