Chicago Cubs: Manny Machado is not the Cubs’ cup of tea

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It would be great if some team president or executive-type, when asked about the possibility of signing Machado in the offseason, fired off a press release or called a news conference to say, “Manny isn’t our cup of tea,” to paraphrase Manny’s own comment about hustling.

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In addition to his comments on hustling and playing hard, he has also been involved in a couple of noteworthy plays in the NLCS that some have deemed “dirty.”  In fact, almost everyone has called them dirty.  Christian Yelich, the 2018 National League MVP (yes, I think we can say that right now), went on a tirade about how dirty it was.

Now, we’ve all been down this road before, namely when Chris Coghlan or Anthony Rizzo chose to slide in a manner not consistent with or in the gray area of current baseball rules. Whether you are old school or not isn’t really the issue at hand here. The issue is more that this has become a trend with Machado.

It’s also an issue because it isn’t just about one dirty slide anymore, as he clipped (or kicked, if you’d rather) Jesus Aguilar at first base while running out a routine ground ball to short in Game 4 of the NLCS.  There was clearly no reason to do what he did, and Major League Baseball agreed as they fined him an undisclosed amount for doing so.

When asked about how hard Machado was playing against his team in regards to that moment and play, Brewers skipper Craig Counsell leveled one of the best lines of the postseason when he uttered, “I don’t think he’s playing all that hard.”