Cubs Pick Up a Bizarre Nick Madrigal-Miles Mastrobuoni-Patrick Wisdom Megazord in 2024 MLB Rule 5 Draft

[Matthew Trueblood]

You can't just mash a bunch of bad players into one body and come up with a useful bench piece. What the Cubs' Rule 5 choice asks us is: what if you can?

Image courtesy of © GREG WOHLFORD/ERIE TIMES-NEWS / USA TODAY NETWORK

The Cubs found a market inefficiency, here. Ever since the players union got its butt kicked in the negotiation of a new collective bargaining agreement for the 2007 season and eligibility for the Rule 5 Draft was pushed back a year for all players, it's been virtually impossible to find honest-to-God toolsheds worth taking in that annual ritual. Anyone with major upside, especially on the positional side, gets added to their organization's 40-man roster before they become eligible. But the Cubs found a workaround, by being willing to pick a player who is an extremely unusual level of messy.

Gage Workman was the Tigers' fourth-round pick in the truncated 2020 MLB Draft, out of college. Like many players taken that year, his development was disrupted before it even really began. Unlike many players, that played a special kind of havoc for Worman, because he had fascinating tools but a whole lot of adjustments to make in order to become a viable high-level hitter. Unfortunately, he never found his way to those adjustments. Workman played third base in college but has mostly been a shortstop in pro ball, even though he stands 6-foot-4 and is solidly built. He's rangy and athletic, and there's some measure of raw power in his frame and his swing, especially from the left side. He entered the pros as a switch-hitter, but his right-handed swing was so hopeless that he now bats solely left-handed.

Workman's hit tool has never come together. Without it, his value is extremely limited, which is why he was available to the Cubs in this draft. He struck out a discouraging 27.5% of the time in Double A this season, and that was after a half-season at that level (with a truly calamitous 38.8% punchout percentage) in 2023. He did also accept his walks, though, and he showed burgeoning power. For the year, against right-handed pitchers, he batted .290/.380/.509. His approach is emerging, and with it comes some mitigation of his major swing-and-miss issues.

Still, Workman is a thoroughly weird prospect. He's a superb defender all around the infield, and a lefty bat, which makes him superficially appealing as a bench piece. In those ways, he's a bit like Nick Madrigal or Miles Mastrobuoni. Yet, he'll run a strikeout rate that looks like Patrick Wisdom's, and that's the size of the body here, too. Wisdom was a similarly scrapheap type of pickup for the Cubs, and he worked out gorgeously, really. Even he had demonstrated a much greater capacity to hit for power and attack high-level pitching than Workman has, though.

This feels like a roll of the dice on a player who found some developmental momentum in the second half of this season. He batted .317/.398/.550 after Jul. 1 this summer. When something like that happens, especially for a player with an acknowledged baseline of impressive athleticism, there's always a chance it's highly auspicious. If that turns out to have been a toolsy player turning a corner, the Cubs will look like geniuses. If (as sure feels more likely) it was just a good stretch for a flawed prospect going past 600 plate appearances at one level, they'll probably return Workman to the Tigers org in the middle of spring training. All it costs to find out, for now, is a spot on a 40-man roster that has plenty of chaff to cut away, so it's worth a shot. This is a high-ceiling shot in a low-ceiling market. For that very reason, though, it has only very remote chances of working out. 

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