Sara Sanchez is a baseball analyst who divides her time between her love of the Cubs and fantasy baseball. She's powered by nitro cold brew, rosé, and the vibes in the left field bleachers at Wrigley Field.

Y'all it is Friday night at the late night indie coffee shop where we have every libation you can imagine and something tells me we're going to sell a lot of rounds tonight. Whatever your celebratory drink of choice, it's here. The champagne is flowing, the rounds of Jack Daniels are coming, it's shaping up to be quite the night at the old coffee house. Be sure to bus your tables and leave tips for the waitstaff so Josh invites us back next week.

There's a lot to celebrate in Cubslandia tonight after Jed Hoyer made a huge deal for Astros outfielder Kyle Tucker. Tucker is an elite bat as you can see in Al's piece above and I'll have more on that soon. He's put up 18.2 fWAR since 2021 and last season he put up 4.2 fWAR in just 339 plate appearances. I'll have a much deeper dive into the numbers behind the signing for Monday.

But for now, pull up a chair and order a round while we dream on an elite bat in Chicago with a bit of music.

As 2024 winds down the song that stopped me in my tracks like maybe none other this year was Shaboozey's Tipsy:

There is something about Shaboozey that blows my mind. In fact, I am embarrassed to admit that I've reached the point in my life where I almost missed the absolute gem that is Tipsy because most of the new music I hear is played for just a few seconds between innings at Cubs games.

It's country music like you've never heard it before:

My baby want a Birkin, she's been tellin' me all night long

Gasoline and groceries, the list goes on and on

This 9 to 5 ain't workin', why the hell do I work so hard?

I can't worry 'bout my problems, I can't take 'em when I'm gone, uh

One, here comes the two to the three to the four

Tell 'em bring another out, we need plenty more

Two steppin' on the table, she don't need a dancefloor

Oh my, good Lord

The rhythm is country. So are the themes -- hard working guy struggling to make ends meet, needs money and winds up buying rounds at the bar. But there are elements that stand out. I grew up in rural Utah and believe you me, I have listened to some country music in my day. To be clear, this is country. This is great, epic, country. But I've never heard a reference to a Birkin bag in a country song in my life.

Honestly, that's what makes it great.

This is country that my friends back home would appreciate and it's country that my friends in the city would sing. It has elements and even origin stories that are straight hip hop, for example, listen to Shaboozey talk about the song and how they flipped a song from the early 2000's:

I find this genre agnostic approach fascinating and I'm sure it contributed to the ubiquitous nature of Tipsy. Shaboozey is streaming on your socials, he's on Saturday Night Live. He's everywhere, as God intended.

I mean, just do the math -- if you only appeal to country music fans, you are limited to, well, country music fans. If you have elements of multiple forms of music in your arsenal you have now increased the number of fans (from each of those fan groups) who may find your music. This is innovation at its finest and I think I listened to Shaboozey for three straight hours when I heard him for the first time.

Everyone doesn't love the blurring of genre lines as much as I do. Take this example from a website called "Saving Country Music:"

First and most important to understand about "A Bar (Tipsy)" is that the song is not an original track. As Shaboozey says, they got the idea of "flipping" a 2000s song into a country song, and the song they chose to "flip" was the 2001 song "Tipsy" by hip-hop artist J-Kwon.

To put this in more lay terms, "A Bar (Tipsy)" is a direct derivative of a 23-year-old song, both in the approach, and in much of the lyricism. This is the reason the original "Tipsy" writers Jerrell Jones, Joe Kent, and Mark Williams are credited on the Shaboozey track as well.

Though this "song flipping" practice is very common in hip-hop -- in fact, flipping or sampling songs is sort of foundational to the genre -- this practice is extremely uncommon in country, and significantly frowned upon. It isn't unprecedented though. You can think about Dustin Lynch's recent reworking of "Drift Away" into his derivative and terrible "Chevrolet."

This is the musical equivalent of the unwritten rules in baseball. Who cares if an artist brings a practice from one musical genre to another? Especially when the result is one of the most popular songs of 2024? In case you were wondering, as of this writing Tipsy has been viewed more than 165 million times on YouTube. I am responsible for at least 400 of these views.

The Grio makes this point perfectly in their must-read piece on the Shaboozey:

But the more I started to pay attention and listen to his music (this is all before his appearances on Beyoncé's "Cowboy Carter"), the more I saw that heavy lean into what I guess is country/Americana/folks music. His singing voice is insane. But I wasn't entirely sure what to make of him. And then I heard "Let It Burn" and I was like, "Oh, buddy has figured it out!" It's like if Future did country, backwood jams with banjos and violins and wore Carhartt and big buckles in a non-ironic way. Again, Shaboozey's voice is crazy, his songwriting is amazing. Package-wise, he's primed to hop into that country music lane, take up space and bring a lot of folks with him. The production value of his music and music videos is all top-notch.

A line from later in that piece sums it up even more succinctly: "You can't hear his voice...and not want to hear more."

Don't believe me -- watch a YouTube channel that reacts to new music live and his take on Shaboozey:

Someone pour me up a double shot of whiskey (double shot of whiskey)

They know me and Jack Daniels got a history (we go way back)

There's a party downtown near Fifth Street (okay, let's go)

Everybody at the bar gettin' tipsy (at the bar gettin' tipsy)

Everybody at the bar gettin' tipsy (at the bar gettin' tipsy)

Everybody at the bar gettin' tipsy

Meanwhile, a bunch of people on the North Side of Chicago are getting tipsy with lord knows how many double shots of whiskey celebrating a huge move by the Chicago Cubs.

I want to pause here because it's been a hot minute since the Cubs were the headline movers as the Winter Meetings wrapped up. They even overshadowed the Yankees dealing for Brewers closer Devin Williams.

But the devil in these details is the years involved in the trade. Kyle Tucker is far and away the best player in the deal. There is one year of Tucker guaranteed by this deal. For that single guaranteed year in 2025 the Cubs traded three years of Isaac Paredes, four years of Hayden Wesneski and every team-controlled year their 2024 first round draft pick, Cam Smith will ever have (given the new rules in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, that number could fluctuate based on awards and the timing of Smith's possible call-up to the big league roster).

It's a steep price. It's the type of deal you do when you feel like you are one player away from making a big difference. But to be clear, this isn't a Cubs team that is one elite guy away from a World Series (yet). This is more a Cubs team who's been one elite guy away from the postseason since their last appearance in the pandemic shortened 2021.

But Kyle Tucker is the type of player you build a franchise around. He's going to command a huge contract if he hits free agency at the end of 2025 -- the type of contract that starts with a three or four and has eight other numbers following it.

So the big question is are the Cubs hoping they can show off their crown jewel of a ballpark for a year and convince Kyle Tucker to sign an extension to stay on the North Side of Chicago?

To be clear, it would be an unprecedented deal for the Cubs if they are able to extend Tucker. As I have lamented a time or two or twenty here at Bleed Cubbie Blue, the largest deal in franchise history is Jason Heyward's 8-year $184 million deal in 2015. The largest extension in franchise history is Carlos Zambrano's 5-year $91 million deal in 2007.

I'll just take a second to remind you that Juan Soto just signed a 15-year $765 million deal.

But it isn't just that the Cubs are checks notes seven years and approximately $561 million short of the Soto standard. The Cubs are getting lapped by mid-market teams. The Kansas City Royals extended Bobby Witt Jr. for 11-years and $288 million in February. The Detroit Tigers signed Prince Fielder to a 9-year $214 million deal...in 2012.

So, as we all get a little tipsy soaking up the vibes of a blockbuster trade I ask you, BCB After Dark: Should the Cubs extend Kyle Tucker?