MESA, ARIZ. – Some players prefer to leave extension talks to their agents, asking only to be looped in as negotiations are near the finish line. Cubs left fielder Ian Happ is not one of those players.

“All that stuff plays out behind closed doors, and different guys go about it different ways,” Happ said Thursday. “But I’ve always been involved in everything that I do. It’s something that I enjoy doing, and have an understanding, I think it’s important.”

Happ is heavily involved in the MLB Players Association, spending the last couple years as the Cubs’ union representative before being named to the MLBPA executive subcommittee as a pension rep. He’s also an alternate on the competition committee.

When Happ won his arbitration case against the Cubs in 2021, he was the first to do so in over three decades. Now, he’s in his final year of club control and in extension talks with the Cubs.

President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said Wednesday that he’d had “good dialogue” with both Happ and shortstop Nico Hoerner’s camps but did not disclose how far extension negotiations had progressed, per team policy.

“Being someone who’s only worn this jersey and has come up through the system,” Happ said, “I take a lot of pride in this place and all that stuff about being here and being a Cub and enjoying being a Cub for as long as it lasts.”

Happ earned his first All-Star selection last year, took home a Gold Glove, and then watched MLB owners set a record in free agent spending this past offseason.

Then there’s the depth of next year’s free agent market.

“It all factors in,” Happ said when asked about the potential for Rafael Devers’ extension with the Red Sox and reports of the Padres pursuing a long-term deal with Manny Machado to raise Happ’s standing within that class. “It’s all connected, and all those things definitely come into play. If you’re not looking at the whole picture, you’re probably not doing your job, right?”

Amaya progressing

Cubs catching prospect Miguel Amaya isn’t fully medically cleared, building up his workload behind the plate and progressing in a running program after suffering a Lisfranc fracture in his left foot in September. But he’s been catching bullpens, throwing to bases, and is fully cleared to hit.

“It’s always a blessing in here,” Amaya said of returning to spring training after being in camp but limited last year. “Everything is another opportunity to do what I love, my passion. Being around all these guys motivates me to do better every day and be the best version of myself.”

Amaya was working back from a November 2021 Tommy John surgery when he injured his foot and ankle trying to break up a double play last season.

We’ll do it live

Lefty Justin Steele and right-hander Adrian Sampson threw the first live batting practice sessions of Cubs camp on Thursday. Infielders Nico Hoerner and Nick Madrigal faced Steele. Right fielder Seiya Suzuki and catcher Dom Nu?ez faced Sampson.

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MESA, Ariz. — Right-hander Jameson Taillon had wanted to add a new slider for a couple years. But the past two offseasons, first coming off Tommy John surgery rehab into a pandemic-shortened spring training, then navigating the 2022 lockout, didn’t seem like the right time.

“It was hard to truly have an offseason to really lock that down and work on it,” Taillon said Thursday. “So, this year felt like a good time to try to add it. And so far, the results have been pretty promising. I’m excited to break it out in games and see how it fares, but metrically and stuff I’m pretty encouraged by it.”

Taillon’s new sweeper slider is still a work in progress as he enters his first spring training with the Cubs. He’s keeping his oldgyro slider in his back pocket for now, but his goal is to eventually have the new slider replace the old.

“I’ve had a few bullpens early on where it’s like, ‘I’ve already got this down, it feels great,’ and I’ve had a few bullpens where it’s taken a step back,” he said. “So it depends what day you catch me on right now. There’s some days where I’m like, ‘this is easy; this is going to be a weapon.’ And there’s other days where I’m like, ‘I’ve got to go fix this thing and figure it out.”

The process began in earnest after Taillon signed with the Cubs in December and had begun to build a rapport with the coaching staff. The team presented its vision for the new slider, showing Taillon the one-seam grip expected to work best for him.

A couple factors went into the Cubs recommending a sweeper slider. Taillon throws a curveball, an ability assistant pitching coach Daniel Moskos described as “usually a prerequisite” for throwing a sweeper slider.

“And his [strikeout] rate to right handed-batters is something where we saw an area to make an impact,” Moskos said in a conversation with the Sun-Times. “And we saw the sweepy slider as an option to help put those types of hitters away.”

Taillon knew he was interested even before that initial conversation.

“I know that my slider has underperformed for a little while,” he said.

It’s also become an important pitch in his arsenal. According to Statcast, Taillon threw his slider, which he debuted in 2018, more than any other secondary pitch last year (18.8% ).

The ghost of Taillon’s old slider will live on through his cutter, even after he retires the pitch. His old slider grip is similar to his cutter grip, so he has a feel for how to manipulate his cutter’s shape and speed.

All offseason, Taillon has been sending video and TrackMan data to the Cubs pitching coaches while working on his sweeper slider in bullpens.

“Fortunately enough, he took right to it,” Moskos said, “was able to accomplish the things we wanted to do in a very timely manner.”

Now that spring training has begun, the sweeper has already caught some of his teammates’ attention. Catcher Yan Gomes has caught one of Taillon’s bullpens since arriving in Arizona less than a week ago.

“I missed one of them,” Gomes told the Sun-times when asked about Taillon’s slider. “… It’s going to be a phenomenal tool, for sure. One of them that he threw definitely took off – not that I couldn’t catch it; it was out of my reach. But you could definitely see a lot of the movement.”

Taillon will get a chance to test out the pitch against hitters on Friday, when he’s scheduled to throw live batting practice.

“That’ll be a good opportunity for it to make its debut,” Moskos said. “We’ll see what we’ve got. Because you still have to execute it, you still have to be able to take it from the lab or from the bullpen over to the game mound.”

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GLENDALE, Ariz. — White Sox reliever Reynaldo Lopez was at church when he heard the news about Liam Hendriks. It felt like the right place to be for Lopez, who said a prayer for his bullpen mate who has Non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

“It’s a scary thing,” Lopez said.

The Sox opened spring training with pitchers and catchers reporting Wednesday, and absent was Hendriks’ big presence, Australian accent and signature bellows of disgust with himself after a bad bullpen pitch. Teammates caring about his well being first will worry about the void at the back end of the bullpen later, reliever Kendall Graveman said.

The same goes for players around the league. Graveman had requests from players around baseball, including Anthony Rizzo, for Hendriks’ number. While a Red Sox prospect in 2008, Rizzo was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma and went through six months of chemotherapy.

“So during that moment I knew he was going to have a lot of people kind of saying ‘Hey, we’re thinking about you. If you need anything from us, from my family to yours, let us know,’ ” Graveman said. “And seeing him here and in good spirits … he’s going to continue to be Liam and put his work in. Our prayer from our family is that he has a speedy recovery and that he’s cancer free, first and foremost.”

Teammates are hopeful Hendriks pitches at some point this season.

“I talk to Liam a lot,” reliever Joe Kelly said. “We were playing catch multiple times [in the offseason] and when he came out and told the world what happened, he went to chemo and three days later we played catch again. He’s been grinding. He’s one of those guys that can do that kind of thing. He can switch what troubles he has off the field when he gets on the field and that’s very hard to do.”

Knowing Hendriks, who said he has pitched with a torn ACL during his career, Kelly said it won’t be long after treatment for the 33-year-old two-time American League Reliever of the Year to be pitching again.

“Since he’s been throwing it’s not going to be too far of a process for him to come back,” Kelly said.

Starter Dylan Cease said he was shocked and devastated when he heard about Hendriks’ illness on Jan. 8.

“But I’ve been surprised seeing him around the clubhouse,” Cease said Thursday. “He’s in a good mood. So, I definitely feel better about it now.”

In Hendriks’ absence, first-year manager Pedro Grifol figures to mix-and-match in the ninth inning. Graveman, Lopez, lefty Aaron Bummer and Kelly — who feels healthy for the first time in three spring camps — are possibilities.

“Regardless of whether Liam was available now or not, we’re going to need more than one,” Grifol said. “Once we get closer and we start setting up our gameplan for the day, we’re just going to leverage guys. And if a closer emerges and that’s what we do, then that’s what we do. But I’m a big leverage guy. That’s my mindset right now.”

In the meantime, a seat in the bullpen for Hendriks will be kept open. If it’s next to Kelly, it will feel like nothing has changed.

“My humor is kind of dark … I like mean comedy,” Kelly said. “So when Liam comes back it’s easy to talk crap a little bit, and he’s a guy who can take it and it picks him up a little bit. The way we can go about it is kind of making fun of it. It’s a serious thing and it’s a horrible thing, but for Liam and our relationship, it’s one of those things the minutes we have together in the locker room where I can do something like gets his mind off of that kind of thing.

“I think he seems great. He has his days where he will probably tell you he’s tired or that he doesn’t feel good, but he’s the same Liam to me.”

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The Chicago Blackhawks are gearing up for a very big trade deadline. How they handle the next few weeks is going to change the entire landscape of their rebuild. They could be bad enough to win the NHL’s lottery and they can also land some high-end assets for the future.

One team that they can model their rebuild after is the Toronto Maple Leafs. Obviously, the Leafs can’t get past the Tampa Bay Lightning or Boston Bruins in the first round but they at least have a chance in the playoffs pretty much every year.

They did that by building through the draft. William Nylander, Morgan Reilly, and Mitch Marner were all really high draft picks but things really started to change when they won the draft lottery in 2016. That gave them the right to select Auston Matthews with the first overall pick.

Since then, the Leafs have continued to build and build up to what they are right now. That is the team you saw destroy the Hawks on Wednesday night by a final score of 5-2. The Leafs got production from all of their big boys and were in a different league from this Hawks team.

The Chicago Blackhawks are nowhere near the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It took them nine seconds of the game clock to assert their dominance as William Nylander scored that quickly. The Hawks fought back to get it tied at one but there was no doubt that the Leafs were the tone-setters from that moment on. The Hawks have a long way to go before they are that good.

This loss is just another in a long list of them this season but it is one of those losses that show just how far away the Hawks are from being an elite team in this league. They need to play their cards right over the next few years in order to get back to that.

Is Connor Bedard going to be as good as Auston Matthews? That is really hard to say but he is the first “generational talent” to come out since Matthews and Connor McDavid went in back-to-back drafts.

If he is and the Hawks get him, however, things will start to improve quickly. If you are skeptical about the rebuilding process, you don’t have to look much farther than the Leafs to understand why teams do it.

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I have seen the future of sports viewing, and it is immersive.

It will be delivered through a direct-to-consumer streaming service. It will be geared toward fans who are accustomed to busy screens and sensory overload. And it will be a one-stop shop for everything a viewer could want, from placing a bet to ordering a jersey.

“When I talk about direct-to-consumer in sports, that industry has done a fairly good job of turning the internet into cable, but that is not the point,” said Julie Souza, head of sports global professional services at Amazon Web Services. “You’ve got a platform that has so much interactivity and engagement, personalization capability, and it’s not being tapped.”

Why is AWS interested in tapping into that platform? Because it can play a significant role in enhancing it. AWS already works with teams, leagues and broadcasters worldwide. Think of Amazon Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football.” Fans can watch with a Next Gen Stats overlay or listen to different commentators, but AWS could take that broadcast, and others, to another level.

“Bringing AWS artificial-intelligence and machine-learning expertise to content viewing helps us service content that’s going to be more relevant for people, personalized recommendations, things like that,” said Souza, who has held similar roles leading business development at ESPN, Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports Network.

Games broadcast on linear TV don’t allow for such specialization. It’s a one-to-many pipe with production that appeals to the masses. Streaming provides the opportunity for viewers to choose what they want to see.

Think about what might interest you during a game. If you’re into sports betting, the broadcast could prompt you to make a prop bet. If you play fantasy sports, the broadcast could follow your players. You could choose your audio feed and camera angle, buy tickets to a game and order a pizza for halftime.

AWS has made demos of “shoppable” video, which viewers can click to make a purchase. If you’re watching soccer and a goal is scored, that player’s jersey could pop up for a viewer to buy. Video-solutions provider Accedo, one of more than 100,000 AWS partners, is behind that technology.

Some of this already is available. AWS powers the Clippers’ CourtVision, which augments live video with play diagrams, shows real-time shot probability and tracks stats. There’s even a Mascot Mode geared toward kids with animations and special effects, such as the ball turning into Thor’s hammer on a dunk. Sports-tracking provider Second Spectrum built it and operates it on AWS infrastructure.

“When we were growing up, the raw data of sport was a box score,” Souza said. “Now the raw data is X, Y, Z coordinates, degrees of latitude and longitude, because we’re tracking either through cameras or sensors. Nobody can look at it at face value. That’s where machine learning and artificial intelligence come into play, to take that data and turn it into insights that are valuable to the sports ecosystem.”

All that data is housed in the cloud, which is efficient and malleable. AWS is working with content creators to move their production to the cloud, thus reducing the crew and equipment needed at sites.

“The secret sauce is the optimization,” Souza said. “If you’ve got a rack of servers in your data center, you’re limited to that. Whereas with AWS, we’ve got people who say, these workloads need to be running now, these I don’t care when they run. There’s that optimization of resources. I’m not saying it’s easy; it’s a complicated thing. But that’s what we do.”

Fans are more concerned with what they see, and by the sound of it, they could see a lot more during broadcasts in the not-too-distant future.

“We can use cloud-enabled technologies, AI, ML, to bring those sorts of experiences and capabilities to the broadcasters, distributors, streamers and ultimately the fans,” Souza said. “I love the thought of being able to produce your own live-game viewing experience with whatever interactivity you want. I think that’s the future of streaming sports.”

Remote patrol

Live sports will return to WGN TV next weekend, but perhaps not in the way you’d expect. “Chicago’s Very Own” will carry all 14 LIV Golf events this year, beginning with the season opener in Mexico.

The Saudi-backed league has an agreement with Nexstar’s The CW Network to air its events, but they conflict with weekend programming commitments on the Chicago affiliate, CW26 (WCIU), which include IHSA basketball. That moves LIV to Nexstar’s WGN, which will air coverage from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday for every event.

The CW app will carry the first round of events on Fridays and simulcast the weekend rounds. LIV returns its announcing team of Arlo White and analysts David Feherty and Jerry Foltz in the booth.

The Blackhawks have two exclusive, national appearances coming up. Their home game at 5 p.m. Sunday against the Maple Leafs will air on ESPN+ and Hulu. Mike Monaco, Kevin Weekes and Emily Kaplan have the call. The game at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday in Dallas will air on TNT. Former Hawks goalie Darren Pang will be in studio, and Kenny Albert, Eddie Olczyk and Keith Jones will call the action.

Former Sun-Timesman Gordon Wittenmyer and ESPN 1000’s David Kaplan are launching the “Cubs REKAP Podcast.” The first show is expected to drop next week. It will be available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

Good news for Fire fans: MLS Season Pass will be available at bars and restaurants that are part of the DirecTV for Business network.

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