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Chicago Cubs: Is Joe Maddon’s lineup Jenga a good thing?
By Bill Quinn
En route to over 400 regular season wins, four-straight postseason berths and a World Series title, Chicago Cubs skipper Joe Maddon has been unconventional.
Somehow, despite the near-endless success enjoyed by the Chicago Cubs since 2015, fans have found something to complain about: manager Joe Maddon‘s ever-changing lineups – a trend that is about as far as possible from the traditional ways of the past.
Joe Maddon has been a net positive for the Chicago Cubs. As Westley tells Buttercup in The Princess Bride, “anyone who says differently is selling something.” I’ve advocated for a Maddon extension numerous times, and it’s pretty clear that he has been, and still is, the right man to steer the Cubs’ ship through the current competitive window.
That being said, no one is beyond reproach, and fans should be able to be critical of decisions as long as what they’re saying has merit and can be backed up with observable information or statistical data. Heck, even without those things, many would argue fans can be as fanatical as they want and should be able to question just about everything and anything regarding an organization that still employs Addison Russell.
In this vein, I was struck by a tweet from Cubs’ beat reporter Jesse Rogers last night, who seemed to take umbrage at a tweet from a fan who was saying David Bote would not be in the lineup on Sunday afternoon following a monster two-home run game on Saturday. While Rogers absolutely deals with the worst of the worst in terms of trolls coming out from under the bridge behind their keyboard, I took heed of this particular tweet and response because I found myself feeling empathy for both sides of this argument. I always have.
It also seems like I’m not the only one who feels a certain type of way about both sides of the coin on this one, as whoever was supposed to be starting his place today went to the manager with other veterans and beseeched Maddon to insert Bote in the lineup today (probably veteran Ben Zobrist).