Chicago Cubs insider Tweet to coach stirs concerns and controversy

The Chicago Cubs need to be aggressive buyers at this year’s August 3 MLB trade deadline. There’s just no other realistic way the team does anything in the postseason without filling the massive holes they have in an injury-ravaged starting rotation and bullpen.

More News: Chicago Cubs: 3 (not so obvious) Cubs to watch after the All-Star break

They also needed to be aggressive buyers at last season’s trade deadline.

Instead of the frontline starter they needed, though, they would end up with Michael Soroka (who got injured in his first outing with the Cubs), Andrew Kittredge, Taylor Rogers, and Willi Castro.

And, subsequently, they would be eliminated in the second round of the playoffs, in great part due to their dearth of high-leverage starting pitching.

This year, the fear is that the Cubs front office will again fiddle around the edges of the strike zone rather than throw a heater right down the middle by going after fringe arms over more costly impact pitchers at the deadline.

MLB insider and Cubs beat writer Bruce Levine, apparently, shares those concerns.

Insider Tweet stirs controversy

More News: Chicago Cubs: Huge gamble explored in proposed Cubs-Mariners trade

Monday night, the veteran scribe apparently sent out a Tweet that was intended to be a private message to an unnamed Cubs coach, clearly referring to Cubs president Jed Hoyer and general manager Carter Hawkins as “twinkle dee” and “twinkle dum:”

“You and the other coaches have been the stars of the team being 12 games over 500. Let’s hope twinkle dee and twinkle dum don’t sell you guys out like the 2025. Enjoy the family time pal.”

Levine later deleted the post, but as we all know, someone is always saving receipts on social media.

One question left behind from this mishap centers around who Levine was talking to. Some have theorized that it was Craig Counsell, himself. Nobody outside of Levine and his contact will ever know for certain.

Whatever the case, Levine seemed to be supremely confident in dissing Hoyer and Hawkins to this person, almost as if the derision was a regular part of their dialogue. That could make for issues inside the Cubs bubble.

The road to disappointment?

The biggest question is whether Levine, who has access to info not known to the general public, actually has reason to believe that the Cubs front office will again disappoint at the trade deadline.

Last season, the post-deadline criticism was brutal. This season, in the face of such dire pitching need, it would probably be even more savage.

Hawkins’ post-deadline comments last year on having the discipline to refrain from making a major trade and his responsibility to the 2032 Cubs went over like a lead balloon with angry Cubs fans who were sensing something special in that 2025 squad.

The media was also absolutely brutal to the front office.

“I thought today, for the Chicago Cubs, was a disaster…an absolute disaster,” analyst David Kaplan commented on his Rekap podcast immediately after the deadline came and went last year. “I cannot be more disappointed that a team that has the second best record in the National League, a team that is one game out of the division lead…did not look and go ‘Wow, we get in, anything can happen. Let’s get this group a real chance in October.”

“To not get a frontline starter here and, to be honest, to not even get a legitimate back-end reliever,” Sam Olbur of the Locked on Cubs podcast exclaimed at the time. “I mean, this is one word and one word only—unserious.”

Fans are hoping that Levine’s Tweet wasn’t a slip that history may be repeating itself.

The post Chicago Cubs insider Tweet to coach stirs concerns and controversy appeared first on ChiCitySports.