Jed insists he never said that thing he absolutely said

He also came down to not sugarcoat anything and then tried to coat everything with sugar

When your poorly designed team is pissing down their leg on a daily basis and losers of nine in a row, you do what you need to do. For Jed Hoyer that was sitting in the dugout before yesterday’s game against the Padres and inspiring his club to…their tenth straight loss.

Remember when the Reds started the season 3-22? I mean that was humiliating, right?

Well, how about this?

So what did Jed have to say? Well, let’s dig in

Asked why he came out to talk to the media on Thursday.

“When the team struggles, I feel like you guys probably have questions.”

Well, I guess we’ll see you tomorrow again, eh, Jed?

Gordo told Jed that David Ross has been taking “heat” on social media. Sure, blame us for stating the obvious.

“I don’t know what’s been written about that. I think he’s done a great job. He’s the same person every day. I think every conversation has been about how to make guys better. I don’t see any issues with him whatsoever.”

This really feels like Jed saying, “I gave him a bad team and he’s driven it right into the ditch like we all thought he would.”

Is it hard to evaluate a manager when his team sucks? Sure. Do you just get a pass for that? Ehh. What we know is that the Cubs have had a lot of lousy teams in their 147 seasons of existence and only one manager has ever led them to three double digit losing streaks in a single calendar year, and it’s David Ross. And that doesn’t include a 2-14 stretch they had last September because they strategically placed one of the wins in the middle of it.

Given the roster he has this year, should Ross have them in the playoff hunt (such that it is)? No. But this isn’t just a bad team, this is an epically bad team, and they are getting annihilated on a daily basis.

Jed talked in the rest of his long rambling answer on Ross about how the matchups and platoons they tried to set up haven’t materialized for various reasons and they’ve had to play with a short bench because of injuries and blah, blah, blah. If you give a guy a ten man bullpen like they’ve had for a while now, that guy should not let a rookie give up SIX homers in a game and he shouldn’t be finishing more games with his rubberfaced goober of a first baseman on the mound than any of his short relievers.

“Fans don’t always know who’s injured, who’s down, who’s not. I know those things, so I know the various constraints he’s had to work under due to injuries and stuff like that, I think all things considered he’s done a great job.”

There’s no fucking way that Ross has done a “great job.” If you want to try to take the most optimistic, happy faced look at what he’s done this season or in any of the three seasons he’s managed you can’t with a straight face say it’s anything better than nearly adequate. And that’s being very generous. Since the Cubs started 13-3 in 2020 their record is 115-153. I’m pretty sure that all of that badness isn’t limited to post July 31 last season.

I’m not advocating the Cubs fire Ross. Honestly, if I have to watch this shit, he should, too. But don’t bullshit us by saying he’s doing a great job twice in the first minute and a half of your press gaggle.

Jed was asked what it’s been like for him, the guy who had the “vision” for what this team could be.

If he thought this team wasn’t going to be this bad he wasn’t having a vision, he was having a hallucination. The fact remains that the Cubs are this bad because they chose to be. It’s not just that they traded away their best players last year. Their strategy was to acquire as many prospects as possible to make up for all the years of Theo and Jed’s shitty drafts and international free agent signings. It’s that when the lockout ended and there was a suppressed market for good, proven, veteran players, they dipped half their ass in the pool and called it good. There is no reason they couldn’t be competitive right now and still have the same guys in their minor league system that the prospect perverts are breathing heavily over. Well, one reason, I guess. They decided they didn’t want to bother. And this is what they got for it.