The Chris Gimenez Experiment Was A Failure And Now It's Over

The most optimistic fan saw Chris Gimenez being a solid backup catcher for the Chicago Cubs in 2018, hopefully giving some guidance to Willson Contreras, making Yu Darvish's transition to a new team smoother and hey maybe even hitting a few dingers. Instead, the signing of Gimenez will go mostly forgotten and after a month of being up, the Cubs have DFA'd the 35-year-old catcher. The hopes of a David Ross part 2 scenario happening with Gimenez quickly disappeared at the start of the season, when Victor Caratini made the 25-man roster instead of the veteran. Once Gimenez was called up at the end of May, his play didn't meet the lowest of expectations either. Gimenez appeared in 12 games for the Cubs, hit .143, and drove in one run in 28 at-bats. He wasn't very good behind the plate either. Basically, he brought no value to the team. It was pretty disappointing because you thought he had something left after putting up a .732 OPS in 77 games with the Minnesota Twins in 2017. It was just a flat out failure in 2018, and the Gimenez era with the Cubs came to an end Wednesday.

As much as Gimenez sucked on the field, which was obvious to anyone watching, the worst part of his time with the Cubs was the drama he created when he said the following about Yu Darvish and fans back in May. Via the Sun-Times.

“I think he thinks that Chicago hates him for going on the DL a couple of times,” Gimenez said. “I’ve tried to portray to him, ‘Listen, they’re going to love you when we get to October and we’re doing the things that we all want to do here, you’re the main reason we’re doing it and we’re riding you all the way through it. “So don’t worry about them getting mad at you on Twitter in May. Worry about when we get to September, October and they’re chanting your name.”

Way to throw your friend and teammate under the bus there, Chris. That made Yu Darvish look bad even if it wasn't true. Anyway, Theo Epstein was on 670 The Score earlier this week and he addressed Gimenez's comments.

Gimenez probably thought he was helping Yu, not sure how, but that was a big fuck up on his part. Anyway, the Cubs are moving on and although Gimenez was awful, Cubs fans going after him on social media are even worse. He may not be very good at baseball anymore, but at least Gimenez has a sense of humor. I mean, he was basically fired, fans attack him and this is how he responds.

Also, fuck this guy.