Cubs BCB After Dark: Would you rather Michael King or Tatsuya Imai?

We’re so glad to see you here at BCB After Dark: the hippest afterparty for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in out of the cold. We can check your coat for you. Please tell us if you need anything. The hostess will seat you now. Bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

Last night, I asked you if the Cubs should bring back right-hander Michael Soroka, who didn’t get much of a chance to pitch for the Cubs last year because of an injury. I was surprised to find out that 47 percent of you thought Soroka was worth a one-year, $6 million offer. Of course, they say there are no bad one-year contracts. Twenty-four percent of you thought the Cubs should let him leave with the rest wanting to bring him back for less or in a few cases, more money

Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies. The BCB Winter Science Fiction Classic is underway, but it’s not too late to join. But you can skip that if you want. You won’t hurt my feelings.

We interrupt your Christmas jazz to memorialize the passing of the great R&B/blues guitarist Steve Cropper. Cropper was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Booker T. and M.G.‘s and he’s in a bunch of other Hall of Fames as well. He was a much in-demand session guitarist and songwriter.

One of the songs he co-wrote, and which is the one he is probably most associated with, is the big hit for Booker T. and the M.G.’s “Green Onions.” Since this is a jazz feature, here is Count Basie and his Orchestra covering “Green Onions.”

You voted in the BCB Winter Science Fiction Classic and we have a minor upset as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan came out on top of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I don’t have a problem with that at all, considering my long personal history with the Star Trek franchise. Also, while I admire Close Encounters more as a piece of filmmaking, if you ask me which one I’d rather sit down and re-watch, it’s Wrath of Khan everyday. So I don’t think you could have gone wrong with either choice.

Today we have our matchup of two films that merge the science fiction and horror genres. They are director Ridley Scott’s 1979 work Alien and director John Carpenter’s 1982 film, The Thing.

I intentionally wanted to match these two movies up because they share the same DNA. Both of them are about sticking a group of people in an enclosed space and letting a murderous monster loose amongst them. With the science fiction angle, they both draw on director Christian Nyby’s 1951 film, The Thing from Another World. Alien picks up the general aura of that film and The Thing is a direct re-make, although Carpenter insists, with some justification, that The Thing is more a retelling of the original novella rather than a remake of that earlier film. (He also insists that Nyby didn’t direct The Thing from Another World, but that’s a debate for another time.)

The other film they both have in common is Dark Star (1974), a sci-fi comedy about a group of space truckers which was Carpenter’s first film. Obviously the connection between Dark Star and The Thing is Carpenter, but Carpenter co-wrote Dark Star with Dan O’Bannon, who just happens to have written the screenplay for Alien and he re-used the idea of space truckers for it.

3. Alien(1979). Directed by Ridley Scott. Starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton, and Veronica Cartwright.

Anyone who has seen Alien (and honestly, most who haven’t) knows that Sigourney Weaver is the star of Alien, although she was a complete unknown at the time and thus, Skerritt got top billing. I just gave top billing where it belongs.

Alien is a film that has been copied so much that many of its innovations seem old hat today. We’ve all seen creatures hatching out of people’s stomachs in countless films and TV shows by now. But even watching it 45 years later, the film doesn’t seem dated. It helped that O’Bannon reused his “space truckers” idea, which puts the film in a dark, enclosed space. That creates the claustrophobia that makes the suspense more effective, to be sure, but the darkness also means that the audience doesn’t get many clean looks at the sets and the monster. Of course, the looks we do get of the monster don’t disappoint.

One of the innovative things about Alien is Weaver as Ripley. In every earlier film in this tournament, the main character, the protagonist if you will, is a man. Alien borrows from the horror genre and in particular, Carpenter’s Halloween, to create a “final girl” who is forced to confront the monster by herself. There’s a lot of connective tissue between Ripley and Halloween’s Laurie Stode, but whereas Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie is a scared teenage babysitter, Weaver’s Ripley is a hardened adult veteran for whom heroics come much more naturally. Ripley is no “scream queen.” She’s an action hero, and a female action hero was pretty unheard of in 1979.

Roger Ebert made the point that what makes Alien so effective is its pacing. The film takes a long time setting up the action and then it gives each “jump scare” the proper buildup. It’s Hitchcock’s definition of suspense: when we, the audience know that the alien is lurking but the characters don’t, that’s what build suspense. The action is the bomb going off. As Ebert noted, we don’t enjoy the action, we enjoy the anticipation of the action. We don’t want to see the characters get killed—and Alien isn’t really all that graphic in that sense—we enjoy them being hunted.

You can’t mention Alien without the brilliance of the H.R. Giger-designed xenomorph, the monster alien of the film. The xenomorph, constructed by Carlo Rambaldi (who later created E.T.) makes that unforgettable entrance bursting out of the gut of Kane (John Hurt). But the genius of Alien is the way the creature goes from egg to fully-formed adult in just a few hours, changing it’s appearance repeatedly along the way. That’s another way the film creates suspense, as the audience is left wondering what the xenomorph will look like the next time it appears.

Here’s the original trailer for Alien.

6. The Thing (1982). Directed by John Carpenter. Starring Kurt Russell.

The original The Thing from Another World (1951) dispensed with the main concept of the source material, the novella Who Goes There?, because of the visual difficulties of creating a shape-shifting alien with the technology of the time. Instead, we got James Arness dressed up as a giant, plant-like alien who feeds on blood. The theme of that film fit in with Cold War fears of danger from abroad, and the famous last words of that film “Keep Watching the skies!” fit right in with the idea of nuclear war.

Carpenter didn’t have the same limitations as Christian Nyby (or Howard Hawks, whom Carpenter insists was the real director) did thirty years earlier, and his “Thing” changes the threat from one from the outside to one on the inside. You can never know who to trust because you don’t know which of your comrades has been killed and replaced with an exact copy by The Thing.

Both films are set in the polar regions, but The Thing uses an isolated Antarctic research station instead of an Alaskan military base. Some of the shot inside the base in the two movies are quite similar. The Thing starts out with a group of Norwegians from a different research station trying to kill a dog from a helicopter. After the helicopter blows up, MacReady (Russell) and Dr. Copper (Richard Dysart) go to investigate the Norwegian base. There they find everybody dead.

The dog, of course, has been assimilated by The Thing, and while the actual original Thing-dog gets burnt to death by a flamethrower, by that time he’s already spread to other dogs and soon the other members of the research station. This is when the paranoia breaks out at the station, as no one knows who to trust because any of them could be The Thing. They make protocols to avoid anyone ever being alone, but the film keeps finding ways that someone breaks quarantine. So one by one, they get knocked off and MacReady is constantly forced into the dilemma of whether or not he should burn one of his colleagues to death, unsure whether or not they’ve been assimilated yet.

Thematically, The Thing has more in common with the paranoia thrillers of the seventies (like next week’s film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers) than the Cold War metaphors of the 1950s. Plot-wise, it’s much more like Alien or Halloween with a killer on the loose in an enclosed space. The difference between The Thing and a typical horror/slasher film is that there are no women in The Thing. Issues of masculinity and terror are thus emphasized. Do men face fear differently than women? They’re certainly bigger jerks about it, in Carpenter’s telling.

The great Ennio Morricone wrote a synthesizer-based score that Carpenter used sparingly but effectively. It’s no The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but it works well in the small doses it gets here.

The Thing was a critical and box office flop when it came out in 1982 and only became a hit on home video later. Many critics have reassessed the film over the years and it now regularly ranks among the top science fiction and horror films of the 1980s. Some have argued that it was just slightly ahead of its time. The Thing can certainly be seen as a metaphor for the AIDS epidemic, which was only just starting to make news when it was released in June of 1982. Obviously Carpenter didn’t intend that, but it works. It’s possible that’s why the film had more resonance on home video a few years later, where death could come from a friend who had been taken over by an unseen organism.

Here’s the trailer for The Thing.

So now it’s time to vote.

You have until Monday to vote. Alien is on Hulu and FXNow. The Thing is available for rent.

Up next, Star Wars (1977) enters the field. You can call it A New Hope if you want. I won’t. It takes on the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is on Amazon Prime and Kanopy, which I hope you’ve discovered by now. Go get your library card. Star Wars is on Disney Plus and AMC Plus.

Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.

I know that some of you aren’t going to believe this, but the Cubs are reportedly trying to add some big-name arms this winter. Sahadev Sharma reported that the Cubs were in on Dylan Cease, only backing off when the bidding went over $200 million. (The Athletic sub. req.) I know that report reeks of the “we tried” excuses that many teams throw out to the media when a player whom the fans wanted signed elsewhere, so you can believe it or not. But I don’t think the Cubs would be putting out so many “we’re in the market for a starter” stories if they weren’t true, even if they details may have gone through a game of Telephone before we find out.

The two pitchers, other than Cease, who have been most connected to the Cubs are Padres starter Michael King and Japanese import Tatsuya Imai. So today’s question is, which would you rather have?

Much of your opinion of the 30-year-old King is going to depend on how much injury risk you’re willing to take on. In 2024, King threw 173.2 innings in 31 games (30 starts) and went 13-9 with a 2.95 ERA. He was a number-two starter with a terrific sinker and changeup and solid velocity on his fastball of 93.7 mph. His deceptive three-quarters arm angle made all of his stuff look better. After 2024, you might not blink at giving King a $160 million deal.

But last year, King was hurt and made just 15 starts. He was very good before he got hurt (a 2.59 ERA over ten starts) but the five he made after returning from injury were poor (ERA of 6.11). King’s velocity was as good as it was before he was hurt, but he wasn’t getting the same movement on his pitches and wasn’t missing as many bats.

If you think that his post-injury struggles were just a result of rust and the injury, then King presents a chance to get a number-two starting pitcher at the price of a three or a four. The estimates I’ve seen for King have put him in the three-or-four year deal for around $20 to $25 million. However, King does come with a qualifying offer, so the Cubs would lose a draft pick by signing him.

I wrote about Imai last month and I don’t really feel like repeating myself. For those of you who don’t remember what kind of a pitcher Imai is (or clicking on the link), here’s a bit of what I wrote before.

Imai has a four-pitch arsenal, with what Fangraphs describes as a “weird pitch mix – splitter/changeup combos don’t grow on trees – but he might have four plus offerings.” Imai is not just a soft tosser, his fastball ranges from 93 to 97 miles per hour, although Keith Law calls it “flat.” (The Athletic sub. req.) But Law is also intrigued by what Imai calls his slider, which he thinks breaks more like a screwball.

Some scouts also think that Imai’s three-quarters pitching motion could be cleaned up a bit and that there is the possibility that his stuff could improve when he comes over to MLB.

Imai, 28, also comes with risk. He’s been healthy the past three years and his injury in 2022 was a ankle and not an arm injury, we all know that Japanese pitchers have been known to come over to the US and suffer injuries for whatever reason—the innings in Japan catching up, the different-sized ball, the five-man rotation instead of six or just dumb bad luck. Imai is also a bit small by MLB standards at 5’11”, so that’s a concern as well. There’s also the risk of Imai having to adjust to better quality hitters in MLB.

Imai doesn’t come with a qualifying offer, of course, but he does come with a posting fee. That will add more money on to whatever contract Imai agrees to. I’ve seen estimates on Imai giving him anywhere from an $80 million to a $160 million deal. I think something closer to four years and $120 might be more what he signs for. That may be more than he’s worth, as MLB teams seem to be infatuated with finding the next ace from Japan. However, it’s impossible to say. Some have compared him to Kodai Senga who has been very effective in MLB, but also missed all but one game of the 2024 season with two injuries. Still, I don’t think the Mets regret having signed him.

When I look at the various “free agent rankings” on the national baseball sites, most of them have King and Imai pretty close. Some rank King higher. A few more rank Imai a bit higher. I think had King not been hurt in 2025, he’d clearly rank higher. But he was hurt, and you can’t just ignore that. But one would assume that if King signs for less than Imai, that would leave more money in the Cubs budget for another signing. Perhaps not a major free agent, but someone who could help the club.

Thank you for stopping by. We hope you had a good week. Please get home safely. We can get your coat for you. Stay warm. Tell your friends about us. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more BCB After Dark.