Greetings blog readers! With the NFL draft kicking off last night, I figured It’d be a good time to go over what’s happening with Chicago sports right now. The NHL and NBA playoffs have kicked off, with the Bulls and Blackhawks continuing their new standard of not participating in them. The MLB season is about a month in, and the cubs are kicking ass. The Bears just drafted a backup tight end after what had been a promising offseason. The White Sox still exist. The core four of Chicago haven’t advanced in a playoff series since the Cubs beat the Nationals in the 2017 NLDS (no I don’t count the Blackhawks COVID playoff advancement). Fun! Let’s dive in.

The Cubs

The Cubs are 16-10 as of today, first place in the NL Central despite having the hardest strength of schedule in baseball. Many, like me, were skeptical of this team coming in but knew there were reasons for optimism. They lost Seiya Suzuki for 10 days to injury, and lost Justin Steele for the year. Matt Shaw was sent to the minors after three weeks, and the bullpen has been atrocious. Yet, they just got done taking 4 of 7 games in the season’s series against the Dodgers and have been scoring a ton of runs. If they can survive April, they’re going to be in a great spot.

It’s frustrating when we as fans begged them to make another move this offseason because we knew that they didn’t have quite enough. We have a black hole, offensively and defensively, at third base. Alex Bregman wanted to be Cub, but we lowballed him and he’s a Red Sock (is this the correct singular form of Red Sox?). He’s been one of the most productive players in baseball this year through the first few weeks.  Great job! The Cubs need starting pitching help without Steele, maybe it’ll come internally but I’d like to see them jump the market before the trade deadline. Also, extend Kyle Tucker. Guy is absolutely as advertised; it’s going to suck when we’re 200 million short this offseason. Keep it up boys, we’re going to the playoffs at this rate!

The Bears

The Bears… Last year we had a ton of optimism after drafting Caleb Williams and Rome Odunze. The team won 5 games and fired their entire coaching staff during a season full of incompetence. Since then, they hired the offseason’s premier head coaching candidate, Ben Johnson, and spent over $100,000,000 on the defensive and offensive lines. We all wanted Ashton Jeanty to fall to pick #10, but unfortunately, he didn’t. Instead, we took Colston Loveland. I’m sure he’s a great prospect, watching a ton of college football in my my life I can’t say that I once noticed this guy. 500 receiving yards last year and we already have a tight end on a big contract. We have three picks on day two, they need to get one of the good running backs and add another edge rusher. We need to hit these next picks, we’ll see what they end up doing before making a final judgement on the draft. 

The Bulls

The Bulls don’t even deserve a spot in this blog. Congrats on making (and losing) the play in game for the third year in a row. They traded Zach Lavine and DeMar DeRozan for nothing and wanted to “let their young guys play”. After a late season surge against tanking or resting teams, they played themselves out of a high lottery pick. No Cooper Flagg, no Dylan Harper. Just more mediocrity for a team whose sole focus is to go .500 and sell tickets. Just not understanding at all that winning increases the team’s value, who cares about millions when you can add billions by winning. Wouldn’t the team that made billions from Michael Jordan understand that? Arturas Karnisovas has proven to be the worst GM in Chicago sports history, and he’ll end up with job security for life because that’s how the Bulls operate. Oh yeah, and viewership is down 60% because these morons partnered up with the Blackhawks and White Sox to launch a TV network that isn’t on Xfinity or YouTube TV. That’s a great way to build your business! This team is a joke, I haven’t been to a game in years, and I wish more people would follow that. Nothing is going to change as long as these idiots think they’re succeeding by selling tickets. 

The Blackhawks

Same things that I said about the Bulls apply here. The team has been involved in more sexual assault scandals than it has playoff wins since their last championship in 2015. Multiple failed rebuilds, and once again we finish at the bottom of the league. I don’t really know what to say. Hockey is the fourth sport, it’s wild they thought they could coast on the last dynasty. Like the Bulls, their viewership was also down a ton this year. They were gifted Connor Bedard last year, and of course he hasn’t quite lived up the hype. They have a loaded defensive prospect pool to go with a lot of draft capital and cap space. They traded for goalie prospect, Spencer Knight, midseason as well and he looks like he’ll be good. Everything is set up for this team to be good soon, but they’ve given us no reason to believe that they’ll stick the landing. Maybe next year they’ll be on TV for us to see them finish last.

All in all, it looks like we have a mixed bag. The Cubs are in a great spot, and it should be a fun summer of baseball. The Bears are close, they have done much right that we need to nail the end of this draft and get ready for playoff push next year. The Bulls are a joke. The Blackhawks are a joke, but at least there’s something to hope for there. I think we all sold our souls for that Cubs 2016 World Series win because since then it’s been tough. Thankfully, that’s part of the fun. There is no room to rise when you haven’t fallen. Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you on the next one!