It’s Monday here at BCB After Dark: the coolest spot for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us for a while. We’re always glad to see a smiling face. The hostess will lead you to your table. Let us know if you need anything. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
The Cubs edged the Rockies today, 3-1 in a game where the wind definitely kept the score down. Although maybe not by a lot, as both pitching staffs looked pretty good. I wouldn’t have expected a game with the Rockies finishing with four total runs, but that’s baseball. As Joaquin Andujar famously said: “Baseball can be summed up in one word: You never know.”
Last week I asked you to pick your favorite rookie among the two currently contributing to the major league roster: Matt Shaw and Cade Horton. The vote was incredibly close, but Shaw ended up edging out Horton by 51 percent to 49.
Here’s the part with the music and movies. You’re free to skip that if you want. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Tonight we have an NPR Tiny Desk concert from just last week featuring Artemis, the all-woman jazz supergroup. Renee Rosnes is on piano, Nicole Glover on tenor sax, Ingrid Jensen plays trumpet, Noriko Ueda is the bassist and the drummer is Allison Miller.
Director Jacques Becker’s 1954 French noir, Touchez pas au grisbi (Don’t Touch the Loot) is one of the most unusual heist films you’ll ever see. What makes the film so odd is that the actual heist takes place before the film even starts and we, the audience, join the plot in the aftermath. It’s like if Goodfellas started with Samuel L. Jackson getting whacked. But not really, because Touchez pas au grisbi is a very different kind of film. The film is really about the friendship between two middle-aged mobsters, Max (Jean Gabin) and Riton (René Dary). Their friendship is tested by the heist, the women they fall in with and the drug lord that is trying to steal their “loot.”
I was predisposed to love Touchez pas au grisbi because it stars Gabin, who is one of my favorite actors of all time. This film was his comeback film, of sorts, as good parts for him had dried up after the war and his failed adventure in Hollywood. (Although Moontide should have been a hit, darn it.) Here, Gabin’s cool, detached acting style comes across as a world-weary gangster who has seen too much and is tired of it all. In fact, Max reveals early in the movie that he wanted this last heist to be his retirement party—he was going to step away from his life of crime and live the rest of his days off the haul.
Max is clearly the brains of the duo, with Riton being more passive and more wanting to live things up a bit after their score. Riton has taken up with a much-younger dancer named Josy (Jeanne Moreau) and seems to have fallen in love with her. Unfortunately, the affection is mostly one-way as Josy is also fooling around with Angelo (Lino Ventura), a local drug kingpin. Riton foolishly told Josy about the heist and Josy told Angelo. Now Angelo wants the money that Max and Riton stole.
There’s some action in Touchez pas au grisbi as Angelo’s gang comes gunning for Max and Riton, but mostly this is a quiet film about small moments. A highlight of the picture is a scene in Max’s safe house (which is actually a very luxurious Paris apartment) where Max and Diton have a quiet meal together, discussing their plans. That the heist takes place before the movie starts is no accident. Becker isn’t particularly interested in the crime but more about who these two men are and what they mean to each other.
Because Diton is such a screwup, Max’s friendship with him is tested. He could cut Diton loose and let him face the consequences (which would be dire indeed) and run off with the money himself. But can he do that to his best friend?
Touchez pas au grisbi was a big hit and gave Gabin’s career a second act. It was also the film debut of Ventura, who had a long career playing tough guys in French cinema and while it wasn’t her first movie, it was another small step towards stardom for Moreau.
Despite being an unusual take on the heist genre, Touchez pas au grisbi is well worth your time because of the mesmerizing performance of Gabin and the portrait of two men whose lives are at a crossroads.
Here’s the trailer for Touchez pas au grisbi. It’s in French, but there are English subtitles.
Touchez pas au grisbi is on the Watch TCM app through Saturday if you get TCM through your TV provider. It’s also on the Criterion Channel and there’s a complete copy on YouTube with Spanish subtitles. It’s too bad they aren’t in English because it’s a good transfer, but if your Spanish is good, that’s an option.
Welcome back to those of you who skip the music and movies.
Cubs right-hander Ben Brown has struggled in the month of May. On Sunday, he got rocked for eight runs over 4 1⁄3 innings. That was OK because the Cubs’ bullpen was nails and the offense feasted on the Reds bullpen and staged a comeback win. But the start before that, the Marlins pounded Brown for six runs over 4 2⁄3 innings. The Cubs came back again in that game, but that time the bullpen had a meltdown and the Cubs lost.
Overall on the season, Brown is 3-3 with an ERA of 6.39. That’s pretty bad, although one can argue that he’s been the victim of bad luck. His FIP (fielding-independent pitching) is a very solid 3.42 and his expected ERA is an OK 4.37. Brown is striking out 11 batters per nine innings and walking just 3.2. One could argue that Brown’s been the victim of bad luck, with Brown giving up an extremely high BABIP (batting average on balls in play) of .393.
On the other hand, Brown has given up a fair amount of hard contact and home runs. It also does seem like he tends to give up hits in bunches. If those hits were scattered throughout his starts, maybe Brown would have an ERA around 4.00. But instead he seems to get rattled for an inning and let things spiral out of control, only to find himself again and dominate for a while before losing it again. I don’t have any data to back that up, but that is what happened in the last two starts against the Reds and Marlins. Also, neither one of those teams are considered to be offensive powerhouses. The Reds are slightly above average in runs scored, but they also play in a strong hitters’ ballpark. The Marlins are among the worst offenses in the National League. So getting lit up by those two teams is a bad sign for a pitcher whom the Cubs would hope to start against the Tigers or Phillies in the coming weeks.
All of this has some people saying that Ben Brown should be taken out of the starting rotation. Many people on this site have said that Brown’s stuff would play better out of the bullpen and that he’s miscast as a starter anyway. Maybe they’re right.
So tonight’s question is “Should Ben Brown be moved out of the starting rotation?” It’s easy enough to say that Brown isn’t doing the job and should be replaced, but it bears mentioning that the Cubs are down three starters already: Justin Steele, Shōta Imanaga and Javier Assad. Imanaga and Assad should be back this year, but neither is returning anytime soon. Imanaga is probably three-to-four weeks away from a return and who knows when Assad is coming back. After the All-Star Game is probably the soonest he could be back.
So the Cubs are a little short-handed as far as options to replace Brown. They’ve already called up their top pitching prospect Cade Horton to fill in for Imanaga. Their second-best pitching prospect, Brandon Birdsell, is still recovering from a lat strain suffered in Spring Training and hasn’t pitched yet. The most obvious choice to replace Brown is Jordan Wicks, but he left his last start in the first inning with an apparent injury, although he hasn’t been placed on the injured list yet. Maybe he’s healthy enough to pitch, maybe he isn’t.
The only two real options down in Iowa are Connor Noland, whose middling pure stuff (albeit with nice command) and 4.53 ERA in Triple-A don’t exactly scream major league call-up, or the recently-signed Kenta Maeda, who has been terrible for Iowa and was released by the Tigers at the start of the month because he was terrible.
The only other choice, and perhaps it’s the most realistic, is to move reliever Chris Flexen into the rotation. Flexen was a pretty solid starter for the Mariners in 2021 and 2022 and a pretty terrible one for Seattle, the Rockies and White Sox in 2023 and 2024.
But the Cubs signed Flexen in Spring Training and he’s been very good so far. Since his call-up, Flexen has pitched 10 1⁄3 innings out of the bullpen and has yet to allow a run. But he was a starter in Iowa before that. In the five starts he made for the I-Cubs, Flexen threw 23 1⁄3 innings and went 3-0 with a 1.16 ERA.
So would you switch Ben Brown with Chris Flexen right now? Or would you call up Noland or (gulp) Maeda to take Brown’s spot? Or maybe the Cubs should just ride it out with Brown and hope that he can right the ship soon?
So what would you do if you were Craig Counsell? What would you do with Ben Brown?
Poll
What should the Cubs do with Ben Brown?
0%
Leave him in the rotation
(0 votes)
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Move Chris Flexen to the rotation and Brown to the bullpen
(0 votes)
0%
Call up someone from Iowa and send Brown down.
(0 votes)
0 votes total
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