New York Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo made his return to Chicago this week in a series against the White Sox. His breakup with the Cubs wasn’t exactly clean.
Rizzo was traded to the Yankees at last year’s deadline, making for what at the time looked like a clean break from a former World Series contender.
The first baseman helped the Cubs win their first World Series in 108 years. While the end result of said short run might’ve been disappointment, Chicago will never forget 2016.
But thanks for comments from Cubs front office executive Jed Hoyer, Rizzo’s aforementioned ‘clean break’ wasn’t so clean after all.
Hoyer claimed he could ‘sleep well’ knowing he made the Core Four fair offers to try and stay in the Windy City. Rizzo disagreed with that sentiment.
“I’m kind of confused on why. Why say that?” Rizzo told WMVP-AM 1000 the next day. “Sounds like a bad breakup and the person saying they’re fine when they’re not fine. … I know it comes down to a business, and when you want your cake and you want to eat it, too, that’s kind of how it seemed.”
Anthony Rizzo comes clean about Cubs’ bad breakup
Despite some bad blood after those comments, Rizzo appears to be over it. This offseason, he signed a two-year, $32 million contract to stay with the Yankees. The Cubs, meanwhile, continue their rebuild.
“As a human being, was I (ticked) off? Of course. But as a baseball player who sees what happens and (knows) this is a business, that’s the way it is. As far as hashing it out, I don’t think there’s much to hash out. …I wish them well. I want Jed to have success being the president there. He was the GM and under Theo for a while. So for him to build the next great Cubs team would be great for him and (his wife) Merrill and his family,” Rizzo said.
While the breakup might not have been acrimonious, Rizzo and the Cubs have moved on from his tough exit.