Chicago Cubs: It sure doesn’t sound like the Giants loved Kris Bryant

Remember a few months back when it seemed like a foregone conclusion Kris Bryant would eventually re-up with the San Francisco Giants? Yeah, not so much anymore. The longtime Chicago Cubs star finds himself very much in limbo right now after Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic made it pretty darned clear the Giants – and he – weren’t overly impressed by the former MVP this year.

You can read the full transcript from Greg Zumach here – but the long and short of it seems pretty evident. There are holes in Bryant’s game (at least in San Francisco’s eyes) that might make them cautious when thinking of making him a long-term addition.

Since the interview (and it subsequently blowing up in the Chicagoland media market), Baggarly pushed back a bit on his comments – but if you read the transcript, Zumach was pretty spot on in his assessment of the remarks, at least in my opinion.

Regardless, if the Giants are interested in bringing back the former NL Rookie of the Year and three-time All-Star, does that make a reunion with the Chicago Cubs more likely? I’d still lean pretty heavily toward ‘no’ for a myriad of reasons, although money shouldn’t be one of them given the team’s financial standing right now.

More than anything, I just feel like Bryant grew tired of the constant circus in the Windy City. It started with his service time grievance suit and became intermingled with incessant trade rumors, criticism over his performance and fans slapping him with labels of ‘soft’ and ‘often injured’.

If I were Bryant, I wouldn’t want any part of signing up for that again. Even if the Giants are out on him (which I think will be dictated more by his price tag than anything else), there are still multiple suitors out there who will be going after his services, including some clubs I hadn’t thought much about until recently – like the Seattle Mariners.

Chicago Cubs: A reunion with Kris Bryant seems very, very unlikely to happen

So when you look at all those reasons and throw in the recent report that Jed Hoyer is wary of long-term, high-dollar deals, especially this early in his tenure, I suspect the only time we’ll see Bryant back at Wrigley Field will be in his road greys – the same as we did earlier this summer when San Francisco came to town.

Bryant is yet to recapture the magic that drove his first two seasons in the league, when he won Rookie of the Year, then MVP (along with a World Series ring). But he’s still an above-average talent (as Baggarly himself noted) who’s going to get paid. Right now, though, it doesn’t seem like that check will come from the Cubs or Giants.