The Chicago Cubs designated catcher Miguel Montero for assignment on Wednesday, and if they hadn’t, he’d have apparently returned to a very frustrated and annoyed clubhouse.
A day after publicly criticizing Jake Arrieta and the rest of his pitching staff for making him look bad on stolen base attempts, Montero was cut by the team and blasted publicly by team leader Anthony Rizzo for his comments.
Rizzo, the de facto captain of the Cubs, appeared on ESPN Radio Wednesday and labeled Montero’s comments “selfish,” pointed out that fellow catcher Willson Contreras has much better defensive numbers than Montero, and criticized the catcher for going public with his rmarks.
Rizzo on Miggy's comments:
"When you point fingers you're a selfish player. We have another catcher that throws everyone out."— ESPN 1000 (@ESPN1000) June 28, 2017
Rizzo:
"This is all over TV last night. Now I gotta talk about it today. We win as 25 lose as 25. To call teammates out? What’s the point?"— ESPN 1000 (@ESPN1000) June 28, 2017
Rizzo also expressed disappointment that Montero had, for the second time, gone to the media to complain instead of addressing issues with his teammates behind closed doors.
On one hand, Montero had a point. On the other hand, Contreras has thrown out 34 percent of opposing baserunners, so he hasn’t had the same problems Montero has. Plus, he’s basically calling out teammates by name with the Cubs already struggling and facing a lot of external pressure over their underwhelming season. The comments came off as Montero obsessing over his own bad statistics and trying to deflect blame for them instead of worrying about how he and his pitching staff can work together to address the issue. As Rizzo noted, Montero has done this before. Clearly he didn’t learn his lesson, and enough was enough from the organization’s point of view.
