Fools blindly following their so-called god have spent thousands of years blasphemously labeling our sweet lord Satan as a liar, but the splitted tongue of deception lives is in June baseball. It is the Snake of June that tempts starving baseball front offices with the sweet fruits of success. Take the apple, and perhaps its sugars will extend your pathetic existence into October, perhaps it will poison you with a great shame your descendants must wear for generations to come, and perhaps your cowardice inspires you to deliver a fruit basket to the market in the futile hope that thou shall receive a Top 100 prospect in return.

Such is the tale of the 2021 Chicago Cubs. With Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, and Anthony Rizzo all set to control their own destines in Free Agency at the end of the season and Willson Contreras bearing but one more year of servitude shackled upon him, the frame of time in which Jed Hoyer must determine the fate of this year's ballclub is soon to die. While the offseason surrender of Yu Darvish signaled that the price of victory at all costs is too high for Tom Ricketts, Cubs hitters — specifically, the four men whose contracts soon expire — have lead the team directly into a pennant race in a beautiful sure spite for the team's pitching void. The Cubs cannot win without the complete quartet of doom; to surrender any one of them to opposition forces would be to surrender the entire season.

The Cubs must buy dominant hurlers of flame with the limited souls they hold as currency, and they will try, but lone attempt on the market is insufficient. Hoyer must drop to his knees like the rodent he is and beg Ricketts to commit to the future by chastising his lust for coin in return for the souls of the North Side's soon-to-be wanderers. Kris Bryant should not be written off as asleep until the winter if the price is high enough; likewise, Anthony Rizzo cannot continue to be written off as an eternal slave to wind and ivy. Baez and Contreras are in theory the most likely to sign an extension while the season is still in progress, but their souls also raise the greatest queries about the future. If the Cubs are to ever be blessed by our lord Satan, Hoyer and Ricketts must squirm in discomfort and make the fateful decisions they so fear.