Pete Crow-Armstrong is Back, Nick Madrigal is Still Here, and a Lot of Roles Just Changed

[Matthew Trueblood]

Abashed and sheepish, the reeling Chicago Cubs made a startling (if implicit) admission Thursday: They were wrong to send down their top prospect. In recalling him, they've pivoted in a significant way toward their future, with the hope that it'll also bolster them in the present.

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports

It made sense to send Pete Crow-Armstrong back to Triple-A Iowa when Dansby Swanson came off the injured list a week and a half ago. It was a debatable choice, perhaps, but there was a logical, consistent argument to be made in favor of it. The Cubs clearly felt it was necessary, but after Crow-Armstrong went to Iowa and attacked minor-league pitchers like he was furious about something, they realized they had made the wrong call. On Thursday, they attempted to remediate the mistake.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Crow-Armstrong returns to the big-league roster at the expense of Luis Vázquez, who got only extremely limited opportunities to demonstrate his ability to help the team during his cup of MLB coffee. Nick Madrigal survives yet again, like a cockroach ducking even a livid kitchen manager, though the stomping shoes and the snapped towels seem to come closer to their target every time. It's not at all surprising, however, that the swap is outfielder-for-infielder. We've just gotten some startling clarity on the plan for this roster over the coming weeks, and it's going to mean some major changes in roles throughout the team's positional corps.

Cody Bellinger has started 35 times in center field this year. He's made just five starts as the DH, one in right field, and one at first base. Looking ahead, those ratios will change dramatically. This time around, Crow-Armstrong has to be the everyday center fielder against right-handed pitchers. Bellinger might start sometimes out there when the Cubs face left-handed starters, but he's just become a semi-fixture at DH. He can spell Michael Busch against some lefties, too, but he's not going to be needed in the outfield much at all. For the next month, at least, expect him to start about half the time at DH, a quarter of the time at first, and once in every 10 games or so in center.

Busch will feel a slight squeeze on his playing time, then, unless and until he shows more consistency at the plate, but there's no reason for him to lose playing time against right-handed pitchers. Rather, he'll go to the bench against lefties, with Bellinger taking over his spot and Patrick Wisdom assuming DH duties. In all likelihood, we're seeing the simultaneous (though not necessarily permanent; much depends on how each hits and fields in the next few weeks) commitment to two young position players at individual spots, with Crow-Armstrong and Christopher Morel playing center and third base almost every day.

Madrigal's role shrinks by the day, with Bellinger needing to DH almost all the time and Morel's bat being deemed indispensable for the time being. Wisdom's role is compressed, too, but there's still room for him against almost any lefty, be it at first base or DH. What's most interesting is the set of ramifications this move creates for the corner outfield positions.

Mike Tauchman is leading off and playing right field Thursday. It's his 26th start at that position, but most of those came during Seiya Suzuki's stint on the injured list. He's made nine starts at DH, but with Crow-Armstrong coming back, Bellinger will make it harder to slot Tauchman in there. This is the 14th straight time that Tauchman has batted leadoff when the Cubs have faced right-handed starters, and before that, he'd batted second in 15 straight games against righties. The message is pretty clear: Craig Counsell (rightly, given the way things have gone so far) regards Tauchman as a vital part of the lineup.

That means trouble, if you're Suzuki or Happ. It means that one of the two will sit in favor of Tauchman on a semi-regular basis, until they demonstrate that they deserve to play more than he does. It's a radical reality, given that Tauchman is a career journeyman over 30 years old and that both Happ and Suzuki have eight-figure salary commitments for the rest of this year and each of the next two, but it's the most logical reading of the team's latest sequence of decisions. 

That playing their three most talented young hitters--Morel, Busch, and Crow-Armstrong--enough to let them develop optimally means putting some measure of playing-time pinch on three guys (Bellinger, Happ, and Suzuki) on whom they're spending nearly $70 million this year is a minor indictment of the team's roster construction. Their appetite for the complex balancing of egos, skill sets, and matchup opportunities, however, is an affirmation of the fact that they have a better, more trustworthy manager on the top step this year.

Counsell faces an unenviable task. Morel is far too inconsistent to be a cleanup hitter on a good team, but that's the role he's been pressed into, because the team lacks a superior alternative. Throttling the playing time of guys like Suzuki and Happ is difficult and frustrating, but it has to be done, because neither has performed like an adequate everyday corner outfielder whom the team needs to have in the heart of the batting order. Working around the offensive ineptitude and disappointingly average defense of Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner means making those other difficult decisions, and hoping one of the two comes out of their funk soon. If the Cubs didn't have unenviable tasks on their to-do list, they wouldn't have needed to hire the best and most expensive manager in baseball. He's about to earn his money, or not, in a crucial and fascinating stretch of the season.

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