Kris Bryant expresses surprising amount of regret for leaving Cubs in the dust

The Chicago Cubs traded Kris Bryant to the San Francisco Giants at the 2021 deadline, and KB hasn't looked back. However, Bryant's career is in a bit of a tailspin since he left San Francisco and a potential Chicago reunion in the dust that winter in favor of signing with the Colorado Rockies.

Bryant hasn't made an All-Star team since then, and played in just 122 games combined in 2022 and 2023. Last season, he appeared in just 80 games, and slashed .233/.313/.367 while hampered by injury. Whether it be a lower-back strain, plantar fasciitis, a fractured finger or worse, Bryant simply hasn't been able to stay on the field in Denver for a Rockies team that oversold him on their future prospects when he initially signed.

Bryant felt a rush to sign due to the 2021 lockout, which occurred in December of that year. At the time, Bryant was a good, proven player that Colorado's front office thought fit their competitive window given the young team they had built around him.

“It’s like, ‘Oh shoot, I need to get there,’” Bryant said via The Athletic. “There were other teams interested, but I didn’t want to wait around. … It was a completely different situation for a lot of free agents at the time. I guess I didn’t do as much research into the prospects as I could.”

Kris Bryant has regrets about time with the Cubs, signing with Rockies

As for his career in Chicago, Bryant has received nothing but standing ovations in every return to Wrigley Field. Once deemed a savior of the franchise, Bryant will always drink for free in the Windy City because he brought the franchise their first World Series in over a century. However, KB still has some regrets, namely a billboard that essentially painted a young kid as the organization's saving grace.

“Looking back on it — honestly I wish things went a little differently,” Bryant said, again per Sam Blum of The Athletic. “I didn’t know that (billboard) was going to be up there. But if I did, I probably would have been like, ‘Let’s not do that. Let me just go out there and play ball and let me be who I am.’”

To Bryant's credit, he still believes he can redeem a career that once looked like it was headed to Cooperstown, and perhaps the Cubs Hall of Fame as well. The first step in that process is staying healthy, and turning the page forward rather than looking back at what went wrong in Chicago.