The Cubs Should Make These Five Changes Today

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Chicago Cubs are in crisis. They have a deficient roster and need to pivot toward long-term planning, but might not have the right top decision-maker to engage in that task right now. Let's talk about the concrete, short-term steps they should take, anyway.

Image courtesy of © Jonathan Dyer-USA TODAY Sports

Here's the paradox of the 2024 Chicago Cubs: They have made it absolutely clear that the rebuild they didn't want to label that way is very much a rebuild, and that it's far from over. Yet, they have a roster theoretically pointed toward short-term contention; a long-term commitment to a new manager being paid more than anyone else has ever been paid for that job; and an executive who might not survive an admission of defeat and attempt at a reset. Messes don't come much uglier than that, because it means that even as the path forward becomes almost obvious, there are major obstacles to the embrace of that path for the organization.

The other big problem is that it's June 18. We're a bit over six weeks away from the trade deadline, and that's when the big moves will be made, in one direction or the other. For myriad reasons, this team both will not and should not take major action now, in terms of pulling the trigger on trades to either give up on this season or try to rescue it. For fans, that adds a layer of frustration, because everyone can see the things going wrong, and while some rational part of the brain might understand that it's not yet time for certain types of action, that's exactly what they crave. If Jed Hoyer and Craig Counsell aren't doing something concrete and significant, fans feel like they don't see or care about the problems at hand, even though that's obviously not the case.

Hoyer and Counsell can continue to be patient, overall, because they need to be. There are also a handful of things they should do right away, though. Here's a list.

Install Pete Crow-Armstrong as the everyday center fielder, batting sixth against right-handed pitchers and ninth against lefties. 
With rare exceptions for sheer physical workload maintenance, Crow-Armstrong should play every day for the Cubs the rest of this season. After Mike Tauchman suffered what sure looks like a strained groin Monday night against the Giants, the team has a gap in its outfield plan, anyway, but more importantly, the team needs to spend the balance of this campaign figuring out what it has in Crow-Armstrong. I'm on record: I think he's Corey Patterson in a slightly updated wrapper. I think he's valuable in the field and on the bases, but that his bat will be persistently unplayable, and that he'll ultimately settle in as a very nice fourth outfielder. He can have a long career, but I don't expect it to be a high-impact one.

I could very well be wrong, though. Either way, the Cubs need to get a firm handle on Crow-Armstrong's future this year, so they can make plans for the future with more confidence heading into the offseason. Without giving him plate appearances his bat doesn't merit, they need to maximize his playing time, in order to maximize the information available to them when they make their next set of big decisions. They can pull the plug on him if he still has a 54 OPS+ in two months, but if he's capable even of pushing that number up to 80, they need to find that out.

Use Michael Busch as the new leadoff man against right-handed pitchers; slide Christopher Morel down to fifth.
By no reasonable standard is Morel a solid second or fourth hitter right now. Yes, we're all aware of the narratives created by his approach improvements and his seemingly promising batted-ball data, but there's a much more important reality at hand. Seventy-three games into the Cubs' season, Morel is batting .196/.301/.373. His 13 homers obscure the fact that he's not even producing power on par with what he'd previously flashed, or with what the Cubs clearly expected from him: he only has four doubles and a triple to his name this year.

Meanwhile, Busch is hitting a tidy .255/.350/.450, with more extra-base hits than Morel has and plenty of walks. He's a well-rounded slugger, and with Tauchman down, he should assume the duty of getting the most at-bats on the team with righty pitchers on the mound. Again, this is a fact-finding mission. Maybe Busch can spark the team and save the season, but it's more likely that he'll go through another set of slumps and streaks over the second half and settle in with numbers slightly less impressive than the ones he has right now. That's ok. The Cubs should want every bit of good data they can grab on him as they sketch out the next good version of the team.

With Busch at the top, Seiya Suzuki should bat second, followed by Cody Bellinger and Ian Happ. Morel, unless and until he can actually start creating value with the bat, needs to be shoved down the lineup card.

Place Nico Hoerner on the injured list with his fractured hand, and use Morel at second base in his absence.
The experiment whereby the team tried to make a third baseman out of Morel has been an abject failure. It's not just errors; he's piling up plays not made, or made too imperfectly. He cost the Cubs at least two outs Monday night alone, without committing an error. The only spot on the diamond at which Morel has ever looked like a credible big-league defender is second base. He could probably be a playable corner outfielder, too, but those spots are spoken-for. Morel should be slotted back in at second for a while.

That's a viable option right now, because Hoerner needs a break, anyway. Since the hamstring injury that lingered with him for a week in mid-May, Hoerner has 85 plate appearances. He's hitting .195/.271/.221, with two extra-base hits (both doubles). He never has consistently generated power, and he probably never will, but Hoerner has been bad in a broad-spectrum way for a month now. It won't help anything for him to try to play through this hand thing uninterrupted, because it's been a very long time since he helped anything even before it happened.

Since May 21, 201 batters have at least 70 plate appearances. By weighted sweet-spot exit velocity (wSSEV), a metric I developed to identify the skill of both hitting the ball within a valuable launch-angle band with consistency and hitting it hard when one does, Hoerner ranks 200th, ahead of only struggling Brewers outfielder Sal Frelick. Hoerner needs to be away for a while.

David Bote and Patrick Wisdom can man the hot corner for a few weeks, while Morel gets a chance to play a position at which he's more likely to be viable. If either gets hot, they could be trade candidates next month. If not, at least the team will find out whether Morel can cut it as a fifth-hitting second baseman, and maybe Hoerner can be a more representative version of himself after an extended rest and recovery period.

Install Tyson Miller as the closer, and keep Héctor Neris far from the end of games.
What a dreadful mess this bullpen is. Given the injuries they've suffered, it's not quite a surprise, but it's hard to remember a worse relief corps in Cubs history. It's not just the overall struggle, but the lack of even one pitcher who makes you feel really good when they trot in to take the game mound. Mark Leiter Jr. pitches like a relief ace, right up until it actually matters. Neris is more in the range of congestive failure than of an ordinary heart attack, at this point.

Miller is the best of an almost unimaginably weak set of options to work as the relief ace, but this move isn't even really about winning games. It's purely about stopping Neris from reaching 60 appearances and/or 45 games finished. If either of those happen, and if he's healthy at the end of the season, the $9-million club option for 2025 on his contract becomes a player option instead. That would be especially self-defeating, and as slimy as it might feel, the Cubs need to be actively working to avoid it. If nothing else, they can release him later in the season, but giving Miller the high-leverage work that has been going to Neris would be another way to forestall him hitting his thresholds.

Sign Tomas Nido, and designate Yan Gomes for assignment.
Contending teams hate making changes to their catching corps once the season begins. Luckily for the Cubs, they don't belong to that class right now, and can afford--in fact, are required--to experiment. Nido, 30, was released by the Mets Monday, so he will only make the league-minimum salary with whichever team scoops him up. He's not a good hitter, by any standard other than the one Cubs catchers have set this year, but he's downright dangerous on that scale. He's also a better thrower behind the plate than either Gomes or Miguel Amaya, against whom the league has run so much and with such impunity all year.

Cutting Gomes would be a blow to team morale, given his role in the clubhouse and value as a supporter of the pitching preparation system, but the losses piling up on this team are a greater and more important blow to that morale. Nido is a small-time addition, but he's exactly what the Cubs need and lack behind the plate.

None of these things will save the Cubs' season. They'll either do that themselves (by playing much better), or not at all. The moves would make clear the standard the team needs to have for acceptable play, though, and they would give the team important edges as they plan for a better, more legitimate winner in 2025 and beyond.

 

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[mul21]

The only one of these things I sort of disagree with is PCA every day and that's only because I think getting Canario up to replace Tauchman, assuming he goes to the IL, is probably a more likely to be productive move than PCA hitting 9th against lefties.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I like this prompt, I had considered a similar thread though I'm not sure I have 5 moves I would make.  I have a different list, in some ways the opposite of yours.  In general I'm less interested in the batting order or even the bullpen hierarchy, these things are fairly fluid and I don't think sequencing hitters or pitchers differently makes much difference.  Case in point, the bullpen needed to get 12 outs last night, with Smyly definitely down and possibly Miller and/or Keegan too.  Someone's gotta get the outs and blowing a lead in the 6th counts the same as blowing it in the 9th.  I'm also less down on Neris, albeit in the way that I don't see a whole lot of clearly superior options in the current pen.

 

• Send down PCA, call up Mastrobuoni or Canario.  PCA's bat is not ready to face major league pitching, and the position player group's primary concern is scoring runs consistently.  If you want a PR/LHH on the bench bring up Mastro, if you want an OF you can spot start or catch some thunder then bring up Canario.  Let PCA show his readiness with the bat in Iowa, which he really has not done for more than a couple games at a time.
• Send down Little, call up Roberts.  Little is outside Counsell's circle of trust, is walking a disqualifying number of hitters for the run environment, and isn't getting the Ks he has in the minor leagues that might make that temporary trade off worthwhile.  With Leiter and Smyly the replacement doesn't need to be LH, I'm open to arguments for others but Roberts has the greatest potential to be a pop up success that pitches important innings through the summer.
• Let Amaya catch tonight, then bench him through the weekend.  I'm not going to weep if they dump Gomes for Nido, but this is a position that carries more risk than the average bench player shuffling, so I'd rather they make a decisive move like a trade for Diaz rather than grabbing whatever guy *maybe* can wRC+ 75 for a bit.  Amaya I have more belief in but I think he's getting worn down by his struggles and the demands of the position.  Play him tonight and Gomes tomorrow like you would normally, then let Gomes catch the full weekend slate.  There's an off-day Thursday and a day/day/night weekend series so Gomes won't turn to dust.  Hopefully that gives Amaya a boost so he can start building confidence with the bat, which may outweigh the benefits of replacing Gomes with a coinflip waiver claim(which you can still do afterwards)

Another I feel less strongly about would be giving Bote a handful of starts to see if you catch fire and give Morel a mental reset, and if Bote forces the issue consider using Morel over Tauchman in a couple matchups(this can also be Canario independent of Morel/Bote).

[Billy62]

     A lot to digest here Matt. This isn't 1984 and we don't have a deadly 1-2 punch at the top of the lineup like we did with Dernier and Sandberg. Even so I don't really know if I'm on board with Michael Busch at the top of the line-up. Seems to be a lot of strikeout potential for a lead-off man. But now with Tauchman pulling up lame last night, I am not really sure of our alternatives. If it was my call (and it most certainly is not), I might want to try PCA as my leadoff man. I know he also has a lot of swing and miss as well, but he does have speed and he can utilize the bunt successfully. Hoerner would hit #2 for my team, but I know his health is in question because of his hand. Truthfully only he knows if he is really game ready. Hitting Suzuki and Bellinger #3 and #4 seems to make sense although I would like to see them both as Emeril would say "kick it up a notch", Totally fine with Morel hitting #5. I think I would hit Busch and Wisdom #6 and #7 or vice versa. If Hoerner isn't game ready, Bote would be my #2 man or he might DH at #8. So here comes the hard decision. I think in the lineup the team needs to replace both catchers. I think the DFA of Gomes makes sense if you could pick up another veteran catcher to replace him. At the same time I think I would send Amaya down, and start looking at some of the catchers we have in the minors. To my recollection there were a couple of guys swinging pretty decent bats this past spring. I agree that Neris has no business being at the back end of the bullpen right now. I even called out the disaster that was going to happen last night before he even threw one pitch. He has been getting hit around pretty good, and has to be close to the top of the league in blown saves. Miller deserves a look, but I don't think I would commit myself to that one closer yet. Maybe a small committee right now, using who is currently hot. If Hoerner is hurt, I think the time would be right to call up Canario to at least see if he is a viable bat for a team desperate for some offense. I am not going to mess with the starting pitching, because that part of our game is solid. It looks like Hoyer and the Ricketts clan missed the boat good this spring by not adding much depth to this team. Counsell is going to have to push some buttons and pull some levers here to hopefully salvage the season. But, this team needs some help.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I agree that POBOs need to show a steady hand but exactly one month ago, the Cubs were five games over .500. Today, they stand five games under .500, a ten game swing.

The NL wild card situation is wide open right now but a month from now, I suspect we see more clarity as one or two teams start to heat up and create separation. And if the Cubs continue to flounder, it's not a stretch to imagine them ten games under .500 in a month, which is an obvious "sell" situation.

Except Hoyer likely isn't in a comfortable enough situation to sell. Which puts the long-term health of the franchise under unnecessary strain, forcing acquisitions that are either ill-advised for refusing to sell when it's obvious that's the correct path to take.

[squally1313]

3 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

or refusing to sell when it's obvious that's the correct path to take.

citation needed