Chicago Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant ruffled the feathers of their division rival Cardinals with negative comments about the city of St. Louis Friday night.
The Cubs are currently hosting their yearly Cubs Convention and Kris Bryant was a featured guest on former Cub turned front office aid Ryan Dempster’s late night talk show for the fans.
Dempster was asking Bryant casual questions about his off-season when he started to explain how St. Louis is one of the cities that he does not like playing in, calling it ‘boring’.
As you can imagine, Cardinals Twitter didn’t appreciate these comments and began to voice their opinions on the former NL MVP’s lack of respect for the city that’s home to the “best fans in baseball” (Give me a freaking break).
Eventually, the comments reached the internet and the Cardinals players themselves began to respond, starting with St. Louis reliever John Brebbia who said, “Cry me a river, loser.” But then Yadier Molina chimed in with his thoughts on the comments, implying Bryant was stupid for saying what he did about St. Louis.
Let’s take a step back and look at this for what it is.
Bryant is at a massive fan convention, being asked stupid questions on a fake talk show, hosted by a former player who’s more well known for his Harry Caray impression than his pitching accolades. Bryant was obviously trying to get some easy laughs from the fan base, who by the way loves to hate the Cardinals, and now Cardinals fans and players are salty?
It’s just a dumb narrative that would not have even come close to becoming the story it has had the off-season had even been just incrementally more interesting. But, it’s been another slow market and Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Craig Kimbrel, and other top free agents are still available. So, Kris Bryant “roasting” St. Louis is now a story.
What we really should talking about is how for the first time in about three seasons the Cubs are not the unquestioned favorites to win the NL Central division, as the Brewers obviously won the NL Central crown last season. While the Cardinals have made some impressive moves, acquiring Gold Glove 1st baseman an All-Star Paul Goldschmidt from Arizona as well as sign dominate lefty reliever Andrew Miller to a two-year deal.
And the Cubs are coming off a three-game losing streak to end the 2018 season where they scored a collective one run in those three games, costing them the division and lead to an earlier than expected exit last season – much of which was caused by Bryant’s ailing shoulder that limited him to 102 games in 2018.
The NL Central, which was already one of the most competitive divisions last season, is already throwing some jabs at one and other in mid-January and I’m very much here for it in another lame off-season. Only two months and 10 days away from Opening Day.