No Hard Feelings’ Over Extension Blame Game – NBC Chicago

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Kris Bryant pushes back Hoyer expansion blame game that originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago

MILWAUKEE Perhaps Cubs president Jed Hoyer will make this latest rebuild work with an almost entirely new player cast than the group that produced the most successful six-year run in franchise history.

But until then, watching Kris Bryant wearing Giants practice clothes on Friday as he talks about the Cubs for about half an hour in the visitors’ dugout in Milwaukee looks like a mistake.

It doesn’t matter who you want to blame, whether you want to blame a family of owners who print money every year in biblical proportions or the broken baseball business model that sells franchises the best local player since Greg Maddux for a season. All-Star sounds like smart. guy stuff.

I have no regrets at all, said Bryant exactly one week after a flurry of trading wiped out the Cubs’ most successful core in history in the span of 24 hours and a day after delivering two huge late hits to help the best baseball team win another. Game.

I introduced myself. I haven’t changed who I was as a person or a player or what I believe in since the moment I stepped onto the pitch. And I’m really proud of it. I feel like I’ve always treated people with respect, I ran hard all along the line and was prepared for every game.

He also won an MVP award in what could be the most coveted tag team championship in American sports history, four All-Star appearances and started at six different positions for a team that desperately needed that. versatility to have the success she achieved the first half of this season.

This is what franchise players are made of.

And the fact that the team’s top hitter in his 6 and a half years in Chicago plays for another franchise while still in his 20s is part of what looked so bad on Friday in that dugout in Milwaukee.

Almost as bogus as Hoyer blaming major players for forcing last week’s deals by refusing to sign extensions over the years, a claim Hoyer came back a day later.

In his mind he will be right and maybe in ours he will be wrong, said Bryant. And it’s OK to disagree, and then you go from there.

I have not been approached at any time [after] the spring after the World Series. It was the only time.

That there has been a general conversation between Cubs and Bryants agent Scott Boras since then no offer has been made, he said, or anything substantive.

After that it was nothing. I was always open to hearing them, as I always said, but there was nothing left after that, said Bryant, who at times seemed visibly chapped in recent years by media claims he had refused. massive offers.

It’s hard, he said of Hoyers’ comments, because I’ve always wanted to take the high road and never wanted to call the people who have done special things for me in my career. . And no matter what the negatives or whatever surrounded me or the situation there, I will always look back on my time there and I will feel happy and have fond memories.

In fact, he said he praised Hoyer and his predecessor, Theo Epstein, despite some of the recent issues as well as the handling of duty time as a rookie that has kept him in check at the club. for this seventh additional season.

I know there are a lot of things that I went through and things that I didn’t necessarily agree with at the time, Bryant said. But they gave me the opportunity to wear the stripes and play for such a historic organization and win there. I’m always going to let this overshadow all the negative things out there.

Three days earlier, Bryzzo’s pal Anthony Rizzo, who was traded to the Yankees last week, also rebuffed Hoyers’ comments accusing the players of not signing an overtime.

Bryant also rebuffed the narrative that the White Sox did a better job signing their young players to extensions than the Cubs did in a narrative that leaves out the fact that the Cubs core won a World Series. as a group of rookies and sophomores and were already All-Stars (and in one case an MVP).

You can’t compare that, said Bryant, who like Javy Bez and Rizzo has said for years that he wants to stay with the Cubs for the long haul. There’s nothing to say it’s like they don’t want to sign here because they don’t like it, or this and that. I think we all liked it. I always said I liked it. I always had a good time there. It just didn’t work.

I think we were all on Cloud 9 after 2016 and rightly so, he added. But at the end of the day, as Jed said, he puts his head on the pillow every night. And I know I gave it my all, and I was always ready to listen to anything. And at the end of the day, we had conversations after 2016, and that’s it.

There is no hard feelings. I kept incredible memories there. I look back and this is one of the happiest times of my life. And nothing can change that.

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