Top 5 Cubs Extension Candidates

[Guest]

It’s extension season, but so far, the Cubs have been quiet in terms of extensions again. I saw CubinNY’s thread on extensions for Happ and Hoerner, which in turn mentioned the spotlight The Athletic is shining on extensions this week, and thought I would weigh in with the five guys I think the Cubs might be best-positioned to try to extend right now. (The order here is definitely feasibility, rather than desirability.)

 

(First, though, a note: I like thinking about extensions. They’re exceptionally valuable tools for a team trying to create lasting success and continuity, a lesson we’ve all had hammered home in the breach, rather than the observance, over the last few years. That said, I don’t love the reasons why they’re so valuable, and I am especially aware of the unseemliness of some of the criteria that make a good extension candidate. I just wanted to acknowledge that before diving into this.)

 

1. Justin Steele: Five years from free agency, Steele just faces too much risk in too many vectors not to be open to an extension. He’ll turn 28 this July. He only got a $1-million signing bonus in the draft, and that was nine years ago. He’s not facing any level of desperation, but he’s in a position that allows the Cubs to gain the leverage Jed and ownership need to find a mutually agreeable price.

 

This is his final year before becoming arbitration-eligible, so we’d be looking at a contract more focused on cost control across four years of arb than on locking him up into his mid-30s, but the Cubs can get the best of both worlds by offering him a signing bonus to cover him during this final year of pitching for a six-figure nominal salary; guaranteeing him not only 2024-27 but his would-be free-agent year of 2028; and getting discounts on those early seasons in the exchange. They’d also secure a club option for 2029. I’m envisioning a total commitment of $49 million over six years, with the option taking it to $63 million if the Cubs want to keep him at the end. Even that is probably more generous than the Cubs would be willing to be, but Steele might sign for something smaller, too–more like $42 million, with $60 million as the high-end total.

2. Matt Mervis: The history of pre-debut extensions (especially for first basemen, like Jon Singleton and Evan White) is not pretty, and the discount on a Mervis deal would have to be very deep in order to entice the Cubs. I just think that level of discount is probably available, and that (as was noted on the earlier thread) this is a way the Cubs could better leverage their overall risk. I doubt they would even need to guarantee $25 million in order to lock up Mervis through at least 2030, and the upside they could capture if he pans out would be tremendous.

 

Mervis is the kind of player they need to produce more often, just to have more realistic and frequent opportunities to do extensions. Going undrafted and signing for a tiny bonus keeps a player in need of the payday an extension represents. The challenge is to have a good enough player-development system to turn that kind of player into someone worth extending. They did that once, here. They need to do it another handful of times over the next three years, so that somewhere, they can find someone whose talent and appetite for risk match up with their needs.

3. Hayden Wesneski: Even if he gets the fifth starter job and pitches all year in the rotation, Wesneski is six years from free agency. He turned 25 this winter, and he only got $217,500 as a bonus when he was drafted four years ago. Again, he’s not cornered, but there should be a pretty low price tag on him if the team wants cost certainty. There’s no urgency to this one, but if Wesneski pitches the way I think he can this year, it would look very smart to have locked him up for as much as eight years and no more than $50 million by this point in 2024.

4. Christopher Morel: He’s still young, but Morel signed nearly eight years ago, for $800,000. He has that strikeout problem that threatens his viability as a big-leaguer, even in the short term, but his athleticism and his power potential have to make you at least dream on having him on a cost-controlled basis for the rest of his 20s. I don’t think this one has much chance of coming to fruition, because if the team believed in him nearly enough to make even the minuscule long-term commitment we’d be talking about, we wouldn’t be hearing about the chances that he opens the season in Iowa. They probably also aren’t eager to run back the David Bote deal, which is how this one could feel. I think more of Morel as an athlete and versatile defender, though, and he’s much younger than was Bote when he broke in.

5. Nico Hoerner: I know he’s at the top of most people’s lists, but the reality is that Hoerner has the same edges on Hoyer and the Rickettses that the last wave of guys did–especially Javy Báez, Kris Bryant, Ian Happ, and Kyle Schwarber. Like all of those guys, he was a first-round pick, and got a healthy bonus for it. That was only five years ago, and as happened to Bryant, Happ, and Schwarber, circumstances conspired to push him to the big leagues quickly. Like Báez, Happ, and Schwarber, though, he took time to establish himself and show his real upside, such that by the time the team was able to confidently identify him as a long-term piece, he was already into arbitration, and an extension would need to involve a major commitment.

 

Finally, like Bryant, he has had some health issues that make committing to him past age 30 a slightly dubious proposition. You have to believe Nico will avoid nagging injuries, in order to foresee a good aging curve for him. That’s especially true here, because he’s more dependent on speed and defense than was Bryant. I think it’s possible he’d balk at any deal that didn’t reach nine figures in total value, and I don’t think the Cubs would or should be prepared to go that high before seeing another full season of production. (Of course, if they don’t take the risk now and Nico has the season for which we all hope, the price tag will only rise sharply next winter.)

 

I think a fully functional organization this far into a rebuild–even one done on the fly, with an emphasis on a quicker turnaround than the previous one–would have more or better candidates for extensions than these. That said, it’s encouraging that the list can even be stretched this far. Last March, the only serious extension candidate about whom anyone was talking was Willson Contreras, and I thought even that was a tenuous option. Last year was a long and frustrating one, but the franchise made forward progress.

[Tim]

Nope. Not this year when extending these guys would remove flexibility to add players at the deadline and stay under the cap. Not worth it.

 

1) extending Steele would be stupid considering his age, injury history, pitcher-ness, and non-elite underlying metrics.

2) Mervis would have to hit like Goldschmidt to cost anything as an FA in six years. You have to *really* buy into the breakout to even think about it.

3) Wesneski is somewhat interesting, but he wouldn't be a FA until his 30's, does not have elite velocity, is a pitcher, and will be at min cost for the next couple years

4) I love Morel. But there's a good chance he's athletic Bote.

5) Hoerner won't even be that expensive as an FA. How many defense-first 2B can you think of that make more than $10M? Why raise your cap hit when there's no need?

[jersey cubs fan]

Pass

[Tim]

Also, on the last set of core players...the only mistake was not moving on from some of them sooner to get more value in return. I'm quite content to not have those contracts on the books. I miss the players as a fan. But the core already wasn't working from 2019-2021.

[jersey cubs fan]

Also, on the last set of core players...the only mistake was not moving on from some of them sooner to get more value in return. I'm quite content to not have those contracts on the books. I miss the players as a fan. But the core already wasn't working from 2019-2021.

That was hardly the only mistake. Losing Schwarber for nothing was dumb.

[Bertz]

Yeah I'm mostly a no on these. We already have Wesneski through age 30 and Steele and Mervis through age 31. The odds that we would A) want to keep them past that and B) the cost would be prohibitive are pretty low.

 

Morel's interesting, and I'd be pretty open to it depending on what internal evaluations look like. There's a lot of risk there but the path to him being a star isn't very complicated (which isn't to say it's easy). Him still having so much swing and miss this spring makes me nervous though, I was hoping to see more of a step forward immediately here in year 2.

 

Hoerner's the most obvious case, and I'd like to see it, but I'm not overly concerned if they come up short. Really depends on the money. Defense is the first thing to age, so unless he continues to add power he's not going to be especially hard to replace in three years.

 

Overall I'm just not especially concerned about the extension thing. We don't yet have a Julio Rodriguez or Ronald Acuna running around, so don't force it. I mentioned in a thread a few days ago but I'd probably be talking to some of the kids down in AA, and get on the same page as them now so you can do the concurrent callup/extension move in like August. Maybe Davis too depending on how his medicals look.

[Tim]

Also, on the last set of core players...the only mistake was not moving on from some of them sooner to get more value in return. I'm quite content to not have those contracts on the books. I miss the players as a fan. But the core already wasn't working from 2019-2021.

That was hardly the only mistake. Losing Schwarber for nothing was dumb.

I was specifically thinking of Bryant, Rizzo, Baez & Contreras. But essentially swapping Schwarber for Joc was indeed dumb.

[David]

Also, on the last set of core players...the only mistake was not moving on from some of them sooner to get more value in return. I'm quite content to not have those contracts on the books. I miss the players as a fan. But the core already wasn't working from 2019-2021.

That was hardly the only mistake. Losing Schwarber for nothing was dumb.

I was specifically thinking of Bryant, Rizzo, Baez & Contreras. But essentially swapping Schwarber for Joc was indeed dumb.

 

Meh. Schwarber was a career 113 OPS+ guy with no defensive value when the Cubs let him go. What the hell were they going to get for him?

 

He has hit better the past two seasons, but still has yet to exceed 3 WAR in his career. Not sweating him or that decision whatsoever. The hindsight angst some people have over it is overblown.

 

Hell, Joc was a better hitter last year.

[jersey cubs fan]

That was hardly the only mistake. Losing Schwarber for nothing was dumb.

I was specifically thinking of Bryant, Rizzo, Baez & Contreras. But essentially swapping Schwarber for Joc was indeed dumb.

 

Meh. Schwarber was a career 113 OPS+ guy with no defensive value when the Cubs let him go. What the hell were they going to get for him?

 

He has hit better the past two seasons, but still has yet to exceed 3 WAR in his career. Not sweating him or that decision whatsoever. The hindsight angst some people have over it is overblown.

 

Hell, Joc was a better hitter last year.

it’s not hindsight angst. It was strictly a cost cutting measure and not a baseball decision.

 

They also could have approached Rizzo in the middle of his under market extension and negotiated a reasonable extension to end his career as a Cub. That one is a little hindsight because I didn’t realize how incompetent they would be finding a first baseman. If I did then I would have been begging for this move rather than just thinking it was a nice idea at the time.

[David]

I was specifically thinking of Bryant, Rizzo, Baez & Contreras. But essentially swapping Schwarber for Joc was indeed dumb.

 

Meh. Schwarber was a career 113 OPS+ guy with no defensive value when the Cubs let him go. What the hell were they going to get for him?

 

He has hit better the past two seasons, but still has yet to exceed 3 WAR in his career. Not sweating him or that decision whatsoever. The hindsight angst some people have over it is overblown.

 

Hell, Joc was a better hitter last year.

it’s not hindsight angst. It was strictly a cost cutting measure and not a baseball decision.

 

They also could have approached Rizzo in the middle of his under market extension and negotiated a reasonable extension to end his career as a Cub. That one is a little hindsight because I didn’t realize how incompetent they would be finding a first baseman. If I did then I would have been begging for this move rather than just thinking it was a nice idea at the time.

 

Meh. I considered Pederson an upgrade at the time. Schwarber has been better since, but Pederson was better last year. Again, meh.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

You have to extend Hoerner. Yes there's risk and he's not a 22 year old, but he's important to their current approach that emphasizes defense, he creates roster flexibility by not needing a backup SS, and there were only 9 position players his age or younger who were better last year. You start talking yourself out of Hoerner and that logic applies to almost every player except the ones that never come available.

 

The other two I would consider would be Wesneski and Davis. Wesneski I think you can wait for him to prove last year was not a complete fluke, and yes you aren't locking up a pre-prime star, but you also don't need to be terrified of keeping a good pitcher for his age 32 season either. I'm fairly high on Wesneski though and at levels of belief even a little bit lower I think the case gets pretty weak pretty quick.

 

Davis is the one I think is the strongest parallel to Rizzo. Top 50 prospect that hit some struggles at a high level and had a health scare. You don't do this if you're paying a Hoerner-esque deal that's essentially market rate for a positive outcome, but this is the one where you take a risk and could get some serious reward. That said, Davis' health scare is more concerning than Rizzo's and OF is not a place where the Cubs have to take risks to get a floor of production given the current org depth. You've got to be convicted of Davis having 4+ win upside.

 

Of the others mentioned, I don't think there's as much upside with Steele given his stuff and past performance. Morel I'd be happy to give a modern day Bote deal too but there's too many things he's not currently good at to sprint to lock him up, and Mervis's empty positional value means the bar to getting benefit from an extension is so high and he'll be in the danger zone for 1B aging curves at FA anyway.

[Guest]

Also, on the last set of core players...the only mistake was not moving on from some of them sooner to get more value in return. I'm quite content to not have those contracts on the books. I miss the players as a fan. But the core already wasn't working from 2019-2021.

 

I think you’re right about that, on at least one level. The biggest failing of the last few years is not being good enough at player development at the big-league level to have made any of those guys clear, unmitigated cases of “lock this guy down”. The biggest challenge of this time around is making sure they actually develop these guys into consistent players with better aging curves.

[squally1313]

That was hardly the only mistake. Losing Schwarber for nothing was dumb.

I was specifically thinking of Bryant, Rizzo, Baez & Contreras. But essentially swapping Schwarber for Joc was indeed dumb.

 

Meh. Schwarber was a career 113 OPS+ guy with no defensive value when the Cubs let him go. What the hell were they going to get for him?

 

He has hit better the past two seasons, but still has yet to exceed 3 WAR in his career. Not sweating him or that decision whatsoever. The hindsight angst some people have over it is overblown.

 

Hell, Joc was a better hitter last year.

 

Is this really the baseline now? We have all of two hitters projected to give us more than 3 WAR and one of them we had to pay $160m for. Go pay for dudes that can hit, bonus points if they're exceedingly easy to cheer for. Basically just be the 2022 Phillies (one hitter over 3 WAR, incidentally).

[David]

I was specifically thinking of Bryant, Rizzo, Baez & Contreras. But essentially swapping Schwarber for Joc was indeed dumb.

 

Meh. Schwarber was a career 113 OPS+ guy with no defensive value when the Cubs let him go. What the hell were they going to get for him?

 

He has hit better the past two seasons, but still has yet to exceed 3 WAR in his career. Not sweating him or that decision whatsoever. The hindsight angst some people have over it is overblown.

 

Hell, Joc was a better hitter last year.

 

Is this really the baseline now? We have all of two hitters projected to give us more than 3 WAR and one of them we had to pay $160m for. Go pay for dudes that can hit, bonus points if they're exceedingly easy to cheer for. Basically just be the 2022 Phillies (one hitter over 3 WAR, incidentally).

 

Baseline of what?

 

I'm just saying he's not worth sweating, even in hindsight.

 

And, incidentally, the only reason Harper wasn't over 3 WAR last year was because he only played 99 games.

[squally1313]

 

Meh. Schwarber was a career 113 OPS+ guy with no defensive value when the Cubs let him go. What the hell were they going to get for him?

 

He has hit better the past two seasons, but still has yet to exceed 3 WAR in his career. Not sweating him or that decision whatsoever. The hindsight angst some people have over it is overblown.

 

Hell, Joc was a better hitter last year.

 

Is this really the baseline now? We have all of two hitters projected to give us more than 3 WAR and one of them we had to pay $160m for. Go pay for dudes that can hit, bonus points if they're exceedingly easy to cheer for. Basically just be the 2022 Phillies (one hitter over 3 WAR, incidentally).

 

Baseline of what?

 

I'm just saying he's not worth sweating, even in hindsight.

 

And, incidentally, the only reason Harper wasn't over 3 WAR last year was because he only played 99 games.

 

And I'm saying it would have been much more enjoyable to have him on our team than to not have him on our team, even if he's never going to be some sort of cost efficiency star. Given that we're paying basically no one, we ended up with the most boring shortstop available, and next years FA class is Shohei and the Infinite Sadness, give me dudes who hit dongs.

 

(I'm aware that this is a semi dumb take, but man I'm already tired of the Mancini/Hosmer/Rioses of the world. The whole 'why pay $15m for 2.5 WAR when you can pay $5m for 1.5 WAR. Who cares)

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I was specifically thinking of Bryant, Rizzo, Baez & Contreras. But essentially swapping Schwarber for Joc was indeed dumb.

 

Meh. Schwarber was a career 113 OPS+ guy with no defensive value when the Cubs let him go. What the hell were they going to get for him?

 

He has hit better the past two seasons, but still has yet to exceed 3 WAR in his career. Not sweating him or that decision whatsoever. The hindsight angst some people have over it is overblown.

 

Hell, Joc was a better hitter last year.

 

Is this really the baseline now? We have all of two hitters projected to give us more than 3 WAR and one of them we had to pay $160m for. Go pay for dudes that can hit, bonus points if they're exceedingly easy to cheer for. Basically just be the 2022 Phillies (one hitter over 3 WAR, incidentally).

 

At the time of his non-tender, Schwarber had a career 113 wRC+, was coming off a well below average short season, and hadn't hit a 120 wRC+ since his rookie year. There's virtue to the idea that you sometimes need offensive production even if positional value doesn't make it rack up WAR(I'm hopeful Mancini will be a good example of this in 2023), but it's also revisionist to paint Schwarber as a Nelson Cruz type which wasn't the case as of his release.

 

Also the Phillies won 87 games and were 10th in wRC+ last year.

[CubinNY]

Schwarber is a complementary guy who's going to make a good team better at scoring runs, but he's not a guy you want to pay big money to have on your team. This year he's going to make $20M. That's a lot of money for his level of production. If you have an owner who is fine with that, you have a good owner. The Cubs don't have that luxury. However, Swanson is making $25M and I'm not sure paying Swanson is all that smart either.

[squally1313]

Schwarber is a complementary guy who's going to make a good team better at scoring runs, but he's not a guy you want to pay big money to have on your team. This year he's going to make $20M. That's a lot of money for his level of production. If you have an owner who is fine with that, you have a good owner. The Cubs don't have that luxury. However, Swanson is making $25M and I'm not sure paying Swanson is all that smart either.

$20m is absolutely what you should be paying a guy who is going to give you 2.5ish wins on the year (what he gave last year and is projected to give you this year). Aren't we basically in a $10m/win environment?

[Derwood]

Kyle Schwarber was better than everyone on the Cubs. He's not a "complimentary player"

[David]

Kyle Schwarber was better than everyone on the Cubs. He's not a "complimentary player"

 

he's certainly not a star

 

and no he wasn't better than everyone on the cubs. huh?

 

positional value matters. a lot. especially in this extreme of a case.

[Derwood]

Kyle Schwarber was better than everyone on the Cubs. He's not a "complimentary player"

 

he's certainly not a star

 

and no he wasn't better than everyone on the cubs. huh?

 

positional value matters. a lot. especially in this extreme of a case.

 

Better in terms of raw numbers (OPS, OPS+, better than all but one Cub in wRC+, etc.)

 

But yes, positional value does matter, fair point.

[CubinNY]

Kyle Schwarber was better than everyone on the Cubs. He's not a "complimentary player"

Everything is relative. The Cubs don't have a lot of stars, or any for that matter now that Willson is gone. This year they have a lot of complementary players and a lot of hope for some breakout performances. I think they will be close to .500, maybe better if they get some breakouts and everyone stays relatively healthy.

[Irrelevant Dude]

No to all of these except Nico, and that doesn't seem likely (maybe next year if he puts together another solid season in 2023). The rest of the guys on your list are complete non-starters. There is no reason to consider extending any of them at this point.

[squally1313]

Kyle Schwarber was better than everyone on the Cubs. He's not a "complimentary player"

Everything is relative. The Cubs don't have a lot of stars, or any for that matter now that Willson is gone. This year they have a lot of complementary players and a lot of hope for some breakout performances. I think they will be close to .500, maybe better if they get some breakouts and everyone stays relatively healthy.

This whole approach is so self-fulfilling. Don't slightly overpay for good players unless you are rich and also in contention already. Probably won't be in contention because you don't have any of those good players. The idea that teams at or below the spending habits of the Cubs (15th, 10th, 6th, 2nd, 4th the last 5 years in opening day salary based on some sketchy website) shouldn't pay market value for the dude who hit 50 home runs last year is absurd. You're basically just hoping for some perfect storm of prospects arriving collectively at the same time and then hopefully having the right players available to supplement.

[Irrelevant Dude]

The other two I would consider would be Wesneski and Davis.

Davis is the guy I would be focused in on. He seems like the right combination of high ceiling and injury risk that would make a long term discount attractive to both sides. If he can at least prove that he is healthy right now and looks to be MLB-ready after a few months in AAA, then I don't think it's crazy to try to lock him up for a few extra years on a reasonable deal. Considering his injury history, I would have to think he would be open to a deal.