Forbidden Love is a Cubs DNA series where our staff waxes poetic about a player on a team other than the Cubs. Maybe even one you think they should hate. In this installment, Staci offers pure adoration for free agent second baseman Scooter Gennett.
"Nuh uh, blogger," you might be thinking to yourself. "You lulled us into a false sense of security with that fluffy Pete Alonso piece to give us THIS?!?" That's right, folks. I am here to extol the virtues of one Ryan "Scooter" Gennett. A man so loathed in Cubs fandom that you probably didn't even know he had an actual first name. A man so reviled that hisses of "ARRRGH GRR UGGGGHHH GROWN MAN NAMED SCOOTER GAHHHHH!" regularly echoed throughout the interwebs whenever he got a clutch hit against the Cubs.
Hey, I get it. In 2017 and 2018, the entire National League was routinely owned by Gennett. He posted a 123 and 125 wRC+, respectively, in those seasons, and was an All Star in 2018 when he was worth 4.5 fWAR. As annoying as you might remember him being against the Cubs, he actually only posted a 107 and 48 wRC+ against the Cubs in those two years, even if it felt like he was Mike Trout out there. So maybe we can cut him some slack now, eh?
Unfortunately, poor Scooter is still jobless. WHY IS SCOOTER STILL JOBLESS?!? *ahem* In spring training last year, he strained his grooooooiiiiiin severely and never could recover from the injury. The heartless Reds mercilessly traded him to the equally heartless Giants, who eventually DFA'd him because his bat never did quite come around.
Surely some team will take a chance on a 29 year old player who once hit 4 home runs in a single game! The Cubs were toying with the idea (and my emotions), and should've done it simply because the Scooter Dingerfest came against the Cardinals. I mean, COME ON.
If that's not enough, Scooter is seemingly always doing things to give back to the community. Whether it's doing pottery for the hungry...
...or visiting schools to spread positive messages to young minds...
...Scooter's the kind of guy you want hanging around on your favorite baseball team. Plus, if you've got a little rebellious streak in you, you'll be happy to know he got his nickname by lying to a police officer when he was a kid because he didn't want him to know his real name.
So come on, MLB teams... let's do this already. Give my man Scooter a job so I can stop being surly about this! The rest of the Cubs DNA staff are surely tired of hearing me whine about this, and Scooter deserves a chance.