Monday Morning North Sider: Introductions, More Brennen Davis Injuries, Early Returns on Owen Caissie

I hope this will be the genesis of a weekly column here at North Side Baseball. Peter King - he of Monday Morning Quarterback fame - just retired from doing his weekly column at NBC. He was a huge inspiration to me, and his tightrope act of informal tidbits and excessively niche insider information was and still is unlike anything else in the sports journalism space. 

Now, these columns won’t be the same as King’s: I do not have the necessary connections to discuss the game of baseball at the level King spoke about the NFL, nor do I have the time to pump out 10,000+ words a week in this space. I imagine that’s just dandy with most of you since 1,500 or so words of my rambling tend to be enough in most cases. 

I will use the Spring Training period to trial-and-err precisely what I want this column to look like so that when Opening Day hits, we can go right at it. I hope this becomes a collaborative environment, and I’ll try to implement the feedback I get from the editors and the readers (you) throughout the year. I can’t promise this will be the best Cubs-related blog out there, but I’ll try to ensure the weekly articles provide some value or nugget of knowledge that makes it worth reading. 

As a first go, I will start with bullet-point formatting since that seems the easiest way to rattle off scatterbrained thoughts in a rapid-fire manner. Generally, the column will begin with a discussion of the Cubs’ previous week at the top, followed by any administrative news/announcements, and we’ll conclude with some other entertainment-related topics (other sports, movies/television shows, music, etc.). Sound good? Let’s dive right into it. 

• Discuss the Cubs and their Spring Training performance. The North Siders are currently 9-7-2 (tied with the Reds twice), good for sixth in the Cactus League. 

• Owen Caissie has been the best hitter in Cubs camp all Spring, as he’s now slashing .440/.517/.680 through 25 at-bats. He’s flown a little under the radar due to Pete Crow-Armstrong’s proximity to the big leagues and the Cubs’ suddenly burgeoning farm system around him, but Caissie is a legitimate top prospect. Don’t be surprised if he’s batting between Nico Hoerner and Christopher Morel at some point in 2025.

• I was working on a Brennen Davis piece after his scorching start to the Spring, and then he went and suffered yet another fluke injury, this time a concussion after being hit by a pitch in the head.

• It’s frustrating to see Davis routinely miss time with these bogus injury issues. It wasn’t too long ago that he was considered the top prospect in the farm system, and most outlets had him among the top 25 prospects in all of baseball. His long-term spot in Chicago is now a giant question mark, with Pete Crow-Armstrong knocking on the door of Wrigley Field, but Davis is still a wildly talented player when he is healthy. 

• Speaking of wildly talented players, Christopher Morel plays third base daily and has been in Spring Training. It’s been hit-and-miss, but the team is ready to ride it out with his mistakes. 

• The 5th starter competition is in full swing, with Jordan Wicks seemingly jumping out in front on the back of his 2.25 ERA through eight innings. He hasn’t been striking anyone out (just three Ks so far), but he isn’t walking anyone (just one BB). 

• It looks like Wicks will get the first crack at being the fifth starter, but don’t be surprised if the Cubs let Javier Assad assume some of the workload after his terrific performance down the stretch in 2023. 

• If you missed it, Kris Bryant interviewed with The Athletic a few weeks ago. Bryant offers some pretty introspective insight into the pressures of being “The Chosen One” in Chicago and why he went to Colorado, even going so far as admitting that he misjudged the Rockies’ proximity to "contender" status. It’s a worthwhile read on a Cubs player's most jarring rise and fall in recent memory.

• It's time for some administrative fun (I can hear your cheers through the screen). As some of you know, this March marks the one-year anniversary of North Side Baseball’s relaunch. We’re now part of the same club as Brewer Fanatic and Twins Daily, which have grown tremendously in the last few years. 

• Because the new NSBB is so… new, it’s hard to accurately compare the site’s performance to previous years. That being said, as I’m sure most of you have realized, there have been a ton of new users joining us recently. It makes for a better and more lively community, and hopefully, that trend will continue throughout the 2024 season.

• If you frequent BF or TD, you’ve likely seen a lot of video content from various writers and creators. At NSBB, that video content has been infrequent at best. 

• With that in mind, I’m thrilled and excited to announce that I, in partnership with Maryland PBS Associate Producer Ethan Staple, will be taking over as the predominant video creator for North Side Baseball. 

• Ethan’s credentials are obvious from his previous work. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a writer, director, and producer in the film world when I’m not writing about sports. Here’s a teaser for my directorial debut, which is coming out later this year.

• None of that means Ethan and I will automatically be good at producing Cubs-related video content, but hopefully, it isn’t a total train wreck. We’ll post videos on the NSBB homepage sporadically throughout March before getting into a consistent schedule (i.e., two or three videos a week) when the regular season starts. 

• Lastly, if you happen to be perusing NSBB socials on the weekends, feel free to say hi… the admin and I are pretty tight. 

• I will keep this entertainment section short this week since there were numerous administrative bullet points, but I want to jam out this part of the column in the coming months. 

• By the time you’re reading this, NFL Free Agency has begun (at least the legal tampering period has). Many exciting things are happening in the football hemisphere, especially in the Bears’ world. That first overall pick will be the subject of A LOT of rumors over the next ~six weeks. 

• And as I’m typing this out, the Bears just signed safety Kevin Byard. He struggled last year after a midseason swap from the Titans to the Eagles, but he is a multi-time All-Pro who’s long been one of the best cover safeties in the league. 

• The NBA and NHL’s regular seasons are continuing in earnest. I have no idea how anyone will beat the Celtics in a seven-game series in the East, and I have zero clue how they will beat Nikola Jokic in a seven-game series in the NBA Finals. 

• I haven’t seen Dune 2 (2024) yet (no spoilers in the comments, please!), but I did get to see Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020) in 70mm IMAX, which was re-released in theaters after initially being dropped during the height of the pandemic in 2020. 

• My basic thoughts: what an insane movie. The rules and guidelines around the fragile, temporal loops in the movie’s universe are left purposefully ambiguous, and Nolan’s tergiversative attitude serves the plot well. However, the editing, performances, and writing are all as sloppy as any film in Nolan’s filmography. No wonder he cleaned up his act for Oppenheimer (2023).  

• The 2024 Oscars just wrapped up. It mainly went to chalk, though Emma Stone's beating out Lily Gladstone for Best Actress was a surprise. Also, Oppenheimer practically swept every category it was nominated for, following in the footsteps of last year’s tour de force, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022).

• If you want to discuss movies in greater detail, hang out with me on Letterboxd.

Alright, folks. I think that’s where we’ll call it a wrap for now. 

Like I said, this space's content and formatting will change as I get feedback. Hopefully, these first few attempts at a weekly column will tide us over until I can get it in a place we all are happy with. 

Have a great week, everyone! Go, Cubs, Go!