The Ironic Fall Of The 2025 Chicago Cubs

The Ironic Fall Of The 2025 Chicago Cubs

Have you ever left your friend group in life and then everything seemed like it was going great with your new friends that you made, but then a little while later, you realized that everything in your old friend group got better when you were gone, and they were actually better than your current group of friends was as well. Sorry for the dark note to start this video on, but that’s the dramatic irony that Cubs manager, Craig Council, has to sleep with that night, at least for the rest of the year. Craig Council was the longtime Brewers manager. He had a few very good seasons with the Brewers and then eventually he went over to the rival Chicago Cubs. Brewers fans were extremely mad that he chose the Cubs, but I believe that the Cubs made him the highest paid manager of all time at the time he was signed. Now, while Craig Council was the manager of the Brewers, he hired Pat Murphy to be the bench coach for the Brewers because he really liked how he thought of the game of baseball. So, when Craig Council left and went to the division rival Cubs, Pat Murphy was promoted from bench coach to manager of the Milwaukee Brewers. But Craig Council was gone. What happened with the Brewers didn’t matter. The Cubs were really, really good. They weren’t good enough to win the division in 2025 because Pat Murphy’s Brewers came roaring back and overtook Chicago. And after taking the division from council, Murphy even eliminated him in the playoffs tonight. It just happened. He just eliminated him. So, it’s honestly even worse than what I said in the intro. You brought someone into the old friend group, maybe one of your best friends. They stayed when you left and they became the leader of that group. and then they were better than you. That’s the harsh reality of the Chicago Cubs. And I have to admit, it’s so nice that this game didn’t go 15 innings long, so I can actually record this video the night of the game instead of the night after. Also, if you haven’t subscribed to my channel yet, this video is going up on an NFL Sunday, so it’s going to get less views than normal. So, help me out. Less than 5% of my viewers are subscribed to me, so just do it. It’ll push this content out to more people and it’ll just let me know that you appreciate the content. Thank you. The 2025 Chicago Cubs were really, really good in the regular season. They were also good in the wildcard round, but honestly, the Padres’s were worse than the Cubs were good in that series. I’m not trying to take away from the Cubs. They won a playoff series. I get it. But the Padres’s just refused to hit. And they had opportunity after opportunity to put that series away. and they were unable to. Part of that is because of good Cubs pitching. Part of that is because of bad Padre offense. Either way, the Cubs were in the NLDS. They went down two nothing on the road in Milwaukee. Then they won the next two in Chicago at Wrigley. Then they lost game five on the road once again. This is not shocking though because both the Cubs and the Brewers were both very very good home teams throughout the regular season and both were not the greatest road teams ever. The Cubs were significantly worse on the road than the Brewers, but the Brewers also were not that great on the road either. Good, but not great. The Cubs just didn’t have enough in the rotation to knock out what was the best record in MLB in 2025. They got unlucky with the Justin Steel injury. I will not lie. That was the biggest issue with the Cubs this year in my opinion. I think if they had Justin Steel, things would have looked a little bit differently. But don’t get me wrong, the rotation still wasn’t horrible. Shota Ianaga, Colin Ray, Matthew Boyd, and Jameson Tyion isn’t the worst thing ever, but it really would have helped if they had another true stud in there. Imagine if this team had traded for Garrick Crochet in the 2024 off season or they had signed to Max Freed. I also know that there were Bregman rumors to the Chicago Cubs, but I honestly think that a true ace would have been more impactful for a game like game five. Matthew Boyd pitched game one and got absolutely rocked. How does this series change if game one was pitched by an ace like Max Freed? Also, game five was a bullpen game. If you have Justin Steel, he’ll probably be pitching game five and not the bullpen. Not that the bullpen pitched poorly, but again, when you have another true dominant force at the top of a rotation, that’s going to really help out your team, obviously. Starting pitching is the most important position maybe in all of sports outside of NFL quarterback. And the Cubs seemed like they were lacking a little bit there. The Brewers were also down Brandon Woodruff, though, who was just as good as Justin Steel, if not better. So, you can’t really use that as an excuse because you would just assume that they would cancel each other out if they were both healthy. That’s why I’m saying that they really would have benefited from another 2024 offseason edition in the rotation. Now, whether things would have changed or not, that’s all irrelevant because the Cubs have been eliminated by their division rivals, and this team is heading into a really, really weird off season in my opinion. Kyle Tucker was simply not as good as the Cubs would have hoped for. Don’t get me wrong, once again, he was really good, but his 2025 OPS was lower than his career numbers, and his power just wasn’t there as much as it has been in the past. He was really good at getting on base, but he just wasn’t hitting at the same level that he had in the previous two seasons and throughout the rest of his career. He was also injured partially throughout the season for sure. I think he had a wrist thing or a hand thing and I’m sure that that’s part of why the numbers were down a little bit, but either way, it was disappointing for the Cubs. Now, if this guy is going to make $400 to $500 million in the off season, there’s a really, really interesting conversation that you have to have here. The Cubs gave up a lot of talent to get Kyle Tucker, Isach Pedes, Cam Smith, and more. So, having him for just one season and not even making the NLCS would be a big time loss for a trade in my opinion. But again, Tucker is the best free agent on the open market. So, are the Cubs, who have been fairly cheap recently, going to be able to hand out that amount of money? I don’t know. I’m sure most teams are going to be in on this guy. If the Yankees do not keep Cody Bellinger, Kyle Tucker might be in pinstripes. Or the Los Angeles Dodgers, who tend to jump on anyone, might jump on him as well. Will the San Diego Padres’s look to improve their offense with the guy who eliminated them last season? Who knows? There are lots of teams that are going to be in on Kyle Tucker, and I don’t know if the Cubs are going to be able to outspend them. Just like Alex Bregman, they desperately wanted the player, but they weren’t willing to do what it took to get him in Wrigley. So, will that be the same thing for Kyle Tucker? I don’t know. We have to see how it plays out. The 2026 payroll is sitting at around $176 million. That’s as long as Justin Turner’s $10 million option isn’t picked up. And that’s assuming that Colin Ray, Andrew Kitridge, and Shota Ianaga do get picked up. Luxury tax threshold is around $250 million. So that means that they have around $70 million to work with before they reach the threshold. That’s a lot of money to spend. However, they haven’t reached luxury tax threshold in many, many years. So, I’m not super confident that they’re going to go directly up to the threshold. But, if they wanted to, they could get Kyle Tucker and an ace. A guy like Zack Gallon or Michael King along with Kyle Tucker is extremely possible if they’re trying to get up to luxury tax thresholds. Again, I if they can get close to that $250 million mark, they can get Zack Gallon and Kyle Tucker easily in my opinion, especially if they’re doing some deferral methods or making some contracts creative. But we’re yet to see the Cubs ever touch $250 million on a single season. So, I wouldn’t bank on that, but if they could, that would be big for the Cubs. The last two seasons were 230 million in 2025 and 195 million in 2024. So that’s a decent bit away from what they could spend this off season. Maybe because they were one game away from the final four teams in MLB, they go out and invest in their club. Maybe not. Who knows? The other issue is that along with Kyle Tucker, who’s obviously a free agent like I mentioned, the rest of the bullpen almost is also a free agent. Ryan Braier, Drew Pomerance, Taylor Rogers, Caleb Theelbar, Brad Keller, who was extremely good for the Cubs this year somehow. I have no idea how Brad Keller turned into a backend reliever, but he did. Again, I don’t get it. He was on the Red Sox last year and was the worst player of all time. But this bullpen was a staple for the Cubs in 2025 and five of their key contributors are moving on. And when I say moving on, obviously you can bring them back. But those players are not included in the $176 million that I mentioned earlier. So if each of those players got $4 million, that’s another 20 million that needs to go in with those five relievers. So now you’re sitting at only $50 million to spend in free agency before you add anyone and before you bring back Kyle Tucker. So that’s where that makes a big difference. And you’re probably not going to bring back all five of them for $4 million each. I can’t imagine that there isn’t one player that wouldn’t get $10 million somewhere else. And again, this is also assuming that Andrew Kitridge and Colin Ray, who have options, would get picked up. But if they don’t, there are even more losses to that bullpen. Kitridge is $9 million and Colin Ray is $6 million. They really have to fix that bullpen heading into next season. So many pieces are gone or could be gone again if they’re not ressigned. The guys that actually are on the roster still make up a really good team. Of course, there’s the stars on the offense. Danby Swanson, Pico Armstrong, Sea Suzuki, Ian Hap, Nicoer, even Carson Kelly is really good and Matt Shaw is a promising rookie. This is a really, really good offense. And I even forgot to mention until right now, Michael Bush, who also really broke out this season. Again, if Justin Steel comes back and is Justin Steel along with Shota Ianaga, Jameson Tyion, and Matthew Boyd, this is not a terrible rotation. But again, they could really use one more workhorse at the top end of that rotation. I think Zack Gallon would be a perfect fit for this team. I don’t think he’s going to be as expensive as the other aces, but I think he has true ace upside, and I would really go out and get Zack Gallon if I was the Chicago Cubs. This was a really good season for the Cubs. The offense was incredible in the first half of the season and still good in the second half, but it wasn’t quite as good as that first half dominance. But how much of a loss is Kyle Tucker going to be to that offense if he does leave? And is he going to leave or will they bring him back? This is the biggest question of the 2026 Chicago Cubs. It feels like a makeorb breakak year for this franchise. And I really hope that for their fans, they make the right decision. Whether that’s Kyle Tucker or whether that’s going out and spreading the money across multiple players. But we just saw the Yankees lose Juan Sodto and get significantly worse when they spent the same amount of money on three or four other players. So, I’d recommend just going out and getting Kyle Tucker back. But, we’ll have to see how it goes. If you watched to this point in the video, I’m assuming you enjoyed the commentary. So, please consider subscribing for more. Thanks for watching. Bye.

In a heartbreaking conclusion to their promising 2025 campaign, the Chicago Cubs’ season crumbled tonight with a 3-1 defeat to the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 5 of the NLDS at American Family Field, ending their playoff run just one series shy of the NLCS and extending the North Siders’ championship drought to 117 years. Despite entering the postseason with a 92-70 record and high hopes fueled by Seiya Suzuki’s three postseason homers—including a solo shot in the fifth that briefly sparked life—the Cubs’ offense sputtered against Milwaukee’s stingy pitching, managing only six hits while stranding eight runners on base. Starter Justin Steele labored through four innings, allowing two runs, but the bullpen faltered late as Colin Rea surrendered the go-ahead run in relief, drawing sharp criticism for manager Craig Counsell’s lineup decisions and failure to secure home-field advantage during the regular season. Fans vented frustration on social media, pinning blame on ownership and tactical missteps, as the Brewers advanced to face the Dodgers, leaving Wrigley faithful to rue another October collapse amid whispers of offseason upheaval.

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