Column: As summer heats up, Chicago's sports teams buckle down — and the NASCAR course just buckles

Chicago Tribune

9 hours ago

It was a hot start to summer in Chicago for our legacy sports teams. Up was down, down was up and our downtown streets buckled just in time for the Chicago Street Race.
The first half of the Chicago Cubs season was like a good book you couldn't put down.
Amazing comebacks, plenty of runs and the daily Pete Crow-Armstrong Show. Wrigley Field was packed, and for the first time since the Theo Epstein rebuild, there was reason to believe in the team's future.
Whether the second half can match the start depends largely on whether Epstein's replacement as president of baseball operations, Jed Hoyer, can fill some rotation holes and shore up the bench. Hoyer fixed a shaky bullpen early in the season with low-key, underrated moves and now faces another obstacle.
When Marquee Sports Network analyst Cliff Floyd pulled out a tiny red flag recently to signal the Cubs had starting pitching concerns, it signaled two things:
The Cubs do have starting pitching concerns, and Floyd has a guaranteed contract.
Through the fog of a team-owned network that often serves as a marketing tool for all things Cubs, Floyd's flag stood out. It's obvious to everyone that Hoyer needs to do something. But when Marquee joins in, you know it's serious.
The return of Shota Imanaga on Thursday in St. Louis after seven weeks rehabbing a hamstring injury was a shot in the arm for the Cubs, who were 12-12 in June entering Saturday's game against the Houston Astros, slowing to a light jog after sprinting for the first two months.
But it doesn't bail out the rest of the rotation, which is in a state of flux with Ben Brown back at Triple-A Iowa. Only Matthew Boyd and Jameson Taillon are assured of keeping their spots behind Imanaga, and Taillon has allowed an MLB-worst 2.08 home runs per nine innings. Rookie Cade Horton was roughed up Friday night in Houston, bluntly saying, 'I got my ass kicked.'
Saturday night's starter, Colin Rea, allowed seven runs on 11 hits against the Seattle Mariners last week, serving up four home runs. True, the wind was blowing out at Wrigley, but it has blown in plenty of times for Rea, whom left-handed hitters are salivating over with a .952 OPS against the right-hander.
If someone told you in March the White Sox would have a better rotation than the Cubs at the midway point, you would've laughed or cried, depending on your anxiety level.
Justin Steele's season-ending elbow surgery and Imanaga's hamstring injury obviously have factored into the Cubs' rotation problems, but they were supposed to have starting depth. Instead, their starters ranked 23rd entering Saturday with a 4.31 ERA. Sox starters, meanwhile, were 18th at 4.20.
Thanks in no small part to the offense, Cubs starters were a combined 30-21, while Sox starters, with no run support to speak of, were a combined 13-30. Would you swap rotations if you were a Cubs fan?
The Sox likely will deal starter Adrian Houser before the trade deadline, in case Hoyer hasn't heard lately from his Winnetka Starbucks buddy, Sox general manager Chris Getz.
Houser has a 1.90 ERA in seven starts for the Sox after throwing seven shutout innings in Saturday's 1-0 victory over the San Francisco Giants. He's affordable and shouldn't cost the Cubs more than a prospect.
Lonzo Ball is out, and this time it's for good.
The Cleveland Cavaliers accepted the challenge of trying to get Ball healthy enough to play in the NBA, acquiring him from the Chicago Bulls for Isaac Okoro, a disappointing top-five pick in the 2020 draft.
When healthy, Ball can be a premier player. He was that player for only 35 games in the 2021-22 season before the knee injury that would sideline him for 2½ seasons. He came back with a new knee in 2024-25, only to be limited to 35 games by a wrist injury and other ailments.
What if Ball had remained healthy? Would the Bulls have been competitive enough to be an annual playoff team the last four years?
Probably not, but it doesn't matter anyway. Executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas, who reportedly is getting a contract extension for reasons that never will be publicly explained, wouldn't have made the necessary trade-deadline decisions even if Ball had been healthy on a winning team.
Hopefully Ball can overcome his injuries and become the player many thought he'd be and not the Bulls version of former Cubs pitcher Mark Prior.
Luis Robert Jr. has a 0.0 WAR, which seems almost impossible for a player with his talent. Getz said Monday it's still possible Robert could remain with the Sox after the trade deadline, which would be a shocking twist for a player who has been on trade-rumor watch for more than a year.
'We've never been out there making phone calls about Luis Robert,' Getz said. 'It's teams calling us and we have conversations. And (we've stuck) to the plan that we've been working (on) so far in which, if we feel like we can help the long-term health of the organization, so be it.
'We like having Luis Robert and I enjoy having him in the lineup on a nightly basis.'
Three days later, Robert was out with hamstring tightness. The wait goes on … and on.
Anton Frondell, the No. 3 pick in the NHL draft by the Chicago Blackhawks, could provide the organization with a much-needed personality boost, along with what he can do on the ice. His draft-day story of starting out as a 5-year-old wearing pink figure skates showed his sense of humor.
Frondell compared himself to Florida Panthers star Aleksander Barkov, another 6-foot-3, 215-pound forward who can score goals and doesn't get pushed around. When the Hawks asked him whether he'd prefer to be a center or winger, Frondell replied, 'Whatever Connor (Bedard) doesn't play, I'll play.'
Look for the Hawks marketing machine to put these two on billboards soon. It's what they do best.
Our pick to click in next week's Chicago Street Race is Katherine Legge, the eighth woman in modern history to compete in NASCAR and the first since Danica Patrick in 2018 to race in the Cup Series. In its third year, Chicago's NASCAR race could use a nice storyline like a woman outdueling a field of men — and less rain.
Buckling pavement on the pop-up course from the recent heat wave provided a realistic, Chicago-style driving obstacle. But crews quickly repaired the pavement, which of course never would happen to a normal Chicago street.