It’s Wednesday evening here at BCB After Dark: the grooviest get-together of night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. We’re so glad to see you tonight. You’re always welcome here. Let us know if we can do anything for you. The hostess can seat you now. 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 lost to the Giants this afternoon 3-1. The wind was howling in and honestly, the Giants hit the ball harder on the ground than the Cubs did. That stinks. All you can do is forget about it and move on to Queens.
Last night I asked you which team did you think was the most-likely team to win the NL Central other than the Cubs. Or as I put it, who was the biggest threat to the Cubs. Sixty-one percent of you said the Cincinnati Reds and 34 percent picked the Brewers. No one picked the Pirates, which shows the trolling component (or just the simple misunderstanding) was small last night.
Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies. You’re free to skip that. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Here’s a nostalgic treat for all you Gen Xers and Millennials as well as some of the youngest Boomers I guess. This is the Benny Benack III Quintet playing a lounge version of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” They even break into the theme from “I Love Lucy” in one of the instrumental breaks.
Benny Benack III sings and plays the trumpet. Aaron M. Johnson is on flute, Theron Brown on piano, Tony DePaolis plays bass and George Heid III is the drummer.
This is from 2019.
I finally got around to seeing A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic that was nominated for a whole ton of Academy Awards this year and won none of them. Timothée Chalamet did win a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor.
I liked the film well enough because of the performances. Everyone told me how good Chalamet was as Dylan and yes, he was very good. I was unprepared for how much Ed Norton nailed Pete Seeger and Monica Barbaro got Joan Baez down.
My wife liked the film more than I did, probably because she doesn’t have the same problems with musical biopics that I do. I find then all to be a gussied-up greatest hits records with a sanitized biography bookending the songs. The arc of the film was simply a recitation of a story that I already know quite well: the rise of Bob Dylan as a folk superstar and his eventual move into rock music. In fact, I know Dylan’s story well enough that I could hear myself saying “bullshit” in my head in the many times that the film took liberties with the truth. (The climatic 1965 Newport Folk Festival is especially egregious, to quote Jim Deshaies.) The film is much more based on the legend of Bob Dylan than the truth. In a way, that’s thematically on-point since the conclusion of A Complete Unknown is answered by the title. This wasn’t the same kind of problem for my wife, for whom much of this Dylan biography (or legend of biography) was less familiar.
I very much preferred director Todd Haynes’ 2007 Dylan “biopic” I’m Not There because it breaks from this stale musical biopic formula. Yes, it is more of a story of the legend of Bob Dylan and comes to the same conclusion—that Dylan is a sphinx that even the people closest to him don’t really know—but it has the advantage of not even pretending to be an accurate retelling of Bob Dylan’s story, casting six different actors as different “facets” of Dylan. (It also doesn’t have any of Dylan’s music in it, except over the closing credits.)
Musical biopics are almost all greatest hits packages with the carefully-told biography that the artist (or their heirs) want told because otherwise, the filmmakers wouldn’t get the rights to the music. To be clear, this isn’t a new problem—I’ve essentially described the George M. Cohan biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy from 1942. Sometimes this approach is not terrible with a more obscure artist (although few obscure artists get biopics), but I am absolutely gobsmacked by Sam Mendes’ upcoming four-picture Beatles biopic with one film focusing on each of the four Beatles. First off, there is no musical artist whose story is more well-trod than the Beatles. There seems to be little left in their story that hasn’t been mined to oblivion already. Second, doing four films with each one focusing on a different member of the Fab Four is just a cynical attempt to get Beatles fans to buy tickets to four films instead of one.
You know what I’d like to see? A musical biopic of Paul McCartney that focused on the Wings era. Have it start with the breakup of the Beatles and finish with Paul getting arrested for marijuana in Japan. A lot of weird crap went down with Paul in the seventies and that’s a story that most of you won’t be able to retell from memory. Even with McCartney controlling the story, it would be worth it just to hear his side of what happened when he decided to record Band on the Run in Nigeria. Or the fights with John Lennon that led to “Silly Love Songs” or the time the two almost took up Lorne Michaels’ offer to play “Saturday Night Live” for $3200. But Wings songs don’t sell as well as Beatles songs, so we’ll never see it.
But here’s your chance to try to change my mind about musical biopics and tell us your favorites. And to be fair, there are some musical biopics that I enjoyed despite the crushing limitations of the genre. I liked A Complete Unknown because of the performances. The Buddy Holly Story is a great rock-n-roll movie. It’s just too bad it’s not about Buddy Holly. Speaking of Todd Haynes, his student film biopic of Karen Carpenter, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, is absolutely brilliant. You can’t watch it legally because Haynes didn’t have the rights to the music and Richard will never in a million years grant it, but it’s easy enough to find copies of it online. All the parts are played by Barbie dolls.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
It’s no secret that the Cubs are down their two best starting pitchers. While Shōta Imanaga is expected to return—well, not “soon” but “soonish”—Justin Steele is out for the season. We’re still all waiting to see if the Cubs play the Cade Horton card this weekend, but while I have high hopes for the Cubs top pitching prospect, there’s no guarantee that he’s going to be effective immediately in the majors.
So the Cubs are no doubt looking at the trade market for another starter. They have the minor league prospects to get a quality starter should one become available. The issue is that at the moment, no one is willing to trade a quality starting pitcher.
The name that keeps coming up is 2022 Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara. Alcantara was a dominating true-number one pitcher that year. But he fell off quite a bit in 2023 with his walks up and strikeouts down. But his biggest problem in 2023 seems to be that he wasn’t keeping the ball down, as hitters were making more hard contact in the air and a lot of those fly balls turned it to home runs. He wasn’t terrible in 2023, but it was a warning sign of what was coming next. He was shut down with an elbow injury in September and it was eventually decided that he should undergo Tommy John surgery in the offseason.
Alcantara missed all of 2024 recovering from Tommy John, but he was ready to go to start 2025. Maybe he shouldn’t have been, because quite frankly, his results this season have been terrible. Over seven starts, Alcantara is 2-4 with an ERA of 8.42. His first two starts this year, against the Pirates and Mets, were OK. Since then, he’s been battered from pillar to post.
Looking at the underlying data, we can see what Alcantara’s issues are. His velocity is down a tick not enough to be the cause of these results. He’s still throwing in the 96-97 miles per hour range.
But Alcantara is not getting hitters to chase pitches out of the zone. He’s also had some general control issues and between those two issues, he’s striking out fewer batters and the walks are way up. Another issue is the acceleration of the trend that we saw out of Alcantara in 2023—he’s just giving up more hard contact and more “barrels” to opposing hitters. Whatever is wrong, he’s not fooling anyone. Walking batters and giving up hard contact when you don’t is a recipe for disaster.
To be fair, Alcantara wouldn’t be the first pitcher to struggle with control after returning from Tommy John surgery. And usually (emphasis on usually) those pitchers eventually find the zone and return to their old form. But Alcantara’s issues with control are especially bad even for someone coming off a missed season. Also, while Tommy John surgery seems routine these days and surgical techniques are always getting better, it should be noted that somewhere between five and ten percent of pitchers who go under the knife never return to what they once were. You have to start wondering if Alcantara is one of the unlucky ten.
So is Alcantara still someone that the Cubs should be targeting for a trade? To be clear, the Marlins have no incentive to trade Alcantara now, in May. For one, he’s under contract for 2026 with a team option for 2027. With how poorly he’s been pitching lately, it would behoove them to wait a while to see if he recovers his form before putting him on the market. But in a month or two, the Marlins are going to start testing the market. If they don’t see a deal they like, they can keep him for the rest of this year and hope that he regains his form next season, where there will still be many teams looking for a pitcher with Alcantara’s upside.
Of course, the Cubs and other teams might be glad to take Alcantara for next to nothing, although that contract might give pause if you truly think he’s done. That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a deal that would require at least one Top 100 (or close) prospect plus other pieces.
Basically, I’m asking you if you think Alcantara can regain his form this season. If you are confident he can and are willing to take the risk, vote “yes.” If you have serious concerns that Alcantara might be done as a top-level pitcher, at least for this year, vote “no.”
Poll
Are you still interested in the Cubs trading for Sandy Alcantara?
0%
Yes. He’ll bounce back to his pre-injury form soon
(0 votes)
0%
No. He looks like a mess right now that won’t be right this year
(0 votes)
0 votes total
Thank you for stopping by. I hope we’ve cheered up your evening. It really is a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Please get home safely. Clean up around your table and recycle any cans or bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join Sara Sanchez for more BCB After Dark. I’ll be back on Monday.