Article: Grizzled Veteran Joins New Team

[RandallPnkFloyd]

Hello. I’m Randy Holt, and I’ll be joining the crew here at Northside Baseball. Let’s get to know each other.

It’s been a minute since I referred to a Chicago Cubs website as a writing basecamp. Long enough, anyway, that recalling the last time–when I was a freshman in college–made me feel very sad about my age. In any case, I’ve been around. I’ve spent time at RotoGraphs, FanSided, Beyond the Box Score, and a handful of places in between. And while I now primarily reside at Pitcher List, I jumped at the opportunity to focus on my first love of Major League Baseball once again: Our Cubs.

My Cubs story is not a super complicated one. My mom’s side of the family are Cubs fans. My dad’s side lean White Sox. Mom won. And while I spent pretty much my entire life into high school moving around to or adjacent to military bases (which did complicate things a couple times for an impressionable youth who went to a disproportionate number of games in Philadelphia), it always came back to the Cubs. 

And realistically, that’s where I still find myself. I won’t lie: Living in the southwest and spending a lot of time recently in San Diego, it’s hard to resist the pull of what they’ve got going on there. But, amid whatever in the world the organization has done to undermine our collective loyalty since 2016, I’m still here. 

So there’s that. 

Inside and out of the Cubs, if you are unfamiliar with my writing (as you likely are), there’s a few things I tend to hone in on. 

1. Defense. Give me a slick turn on the middle infield or a pick at first base all day over a 450-foot homer. My favorite baseball archetype is the elite defender who can’t hit. And I unironically love the fact that most defensive metrics in existence are widely criticized and deemed unreliable.   
2. Swing aesthetics. I wrote a whole piece a couple years ago at BtBS attempting to quantify a swing that was visually appealing for the eyeballs. The bottom line was that lefties just do it better. And I’m excited to watch Cody Bellinger’s beautiful hack in 2023. 
3. “Vibes.” Every spring, everybody always talks about the vibe(s) in camp. The Cubs, apparently, had very good vibes in Mesa. Starting on Opening Day, I plan to track vibes throughout the season as part of my aim to quantify them. The Cubs will be the litmus test. I still don’t know how it’s going to work, but I’ll have a metric for vibes by year’s end. 
4. The mental side. When I was teaching, I had a bit with my students when they were worried about accruing student loan debt. I told them that my plan was to continuously go back to school for the rest of my life and then one day, I would die. Problem solved. More importantly, on one of those trips back, I acquired a master’s from the University of Florida that specialized in athlete development. Dansby Swanson’s focus on the psychological side of baseball is of utmost interest to me, and it’s a conversation I intend to continue to spread. Because it ain’t happening enough in the world of baseball.
5. Jake Lamb. I live in Phoenix. He was an All Star. I still believe the breakout is coming. No further questions.

Which brings me to the 2023 Chicago Cubs and why I’m excited that this year, in particular, is the one in which I can set up shop here at North Side Baseball. 

I love a process. Development, in any field, and all of its facets fascinate me. For better or for worse, the Cubs are at a very delicate stage of that process. Granted, it’s the second time we’ve seen this sort of process play out in barely over a decade, and this one hasn’t quite brought the level of anticipation that the first one did. Nonetheless, we’re at the turn. 

I don’t have a particularly high opinion of the 2023 Chicago Cubs. I think they’re going to have a decent staff, a fun defense, and will ultimately struggle to score runs. Given the top-heavy National League, .500 is probably the best we can hope for. But where the Cubs go from here in the process is going to be wildly interesting. There are so many intriguing arms in the system. There are several interesting bats. They won’t all make it, and the organization won’t have room for all of them even if they did. Watching this take shape is going to be a blast. Having the opportunity to look at the many components of a rebuild process at this stage is something that I take great joy in.

The joy in 2023 will manifest itself in the middle infield defense, in Hayden Wesneski’s slider, and in the continued development of those intriguing guys in the system. Maybe 2023 joy is Matt Mervis’ first homer later in the year. Or someone like Cam Sanders breaking onto the scene. Perhaps joy comes in the form of a Cody Bellinger return to prominence. There will be joy, though, and that’s the important thing.

And so here we are at Opening Day 2023. No matter how cynical you’ve grown about the Cubs–or the sport at large–there’s still something mystical about it. There’s an energy there that you can’t quite describe. I almost disassociate while consuming Opening Day baseball. Just taking it in. The analysis can start on Day 2. 

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[Brock Beauchamp]

Welcome, Randy! I'm excited to see what you have in store for the site!

[UMFan83]

Welcome! Looking forward to your contributions, especially on the defensive front as this seems to be a major focus for this year's team.

[pitchcs]

Digging the Dazed and Confused username