Matt Shaw Probably Isn't Going to Japan, So Cubs Have a Little More Time to Think

[Matthew Trueblood]

At some point, the calendar math just doesn't work. We're getting very near that point for the Cubs' top prospect—if we aren't already there.

Image courtesy of © Cody Scanlan/The Register / USA TODAY NETWORK

Matt Shaw continues his recovery process from a mild oblique strain that sidelined him before Cactus League games could even begin. He's hitting in the cage and doing "normal" defensive drills, the team shared Tuesday. By no means is his arrival in the team's lineup for live spring training games imminent, though, and with less than three weeks left until the club leaves for Japan and their season-opening two-game series with the Dodgers in Tokyo, the writing is on the wall: Shaw won't be the Cubs' Opening Day third baseman.

Bizarre, complicated roster rules govern international play at the front end of a season, so the Cubs could still plan for Shaw to be in the lineup when they play their first Stateside regular-season game, Mar. 27. Holding off on activating him will even come with multiple advantages. Shaw isn't on the 40-man roster yet, so he can be reassigned to minor-league camp without any real effect. Recalling him later (be that at the end of March, or in the middle of April) wouldn't cost them anything. In fact, because the team can still have 29 players in big-league camp when they start their season (not counting guys who begin the year on the major-league injured list, as Javier Assad is likely to do, for instance), not adding Shaw will buy them all the time they would otherwise have had to decide between Vidal Bruján and Gage Workman for the final spot on the bench.

A New Dilemma
At a certain point we certainly have not reached quite yet, the Cubs will have to consider just sending Shaw to Triple-A Iowa to begin the season—not to manipulate his service time, exactly, but because his untimely injury makes it so hard to tell how soon they could expect him to perform at full strength. There's still time for Shaw to avoid that fate, but the decision is more real now than it felt a few weeks ago.

Under the new collective bargaining agreement, the Cubs can get a compensatory draft pick if they allow Shaw to accrue a full year of service time in 2025, and then he proceeds to win the Rookie of the Year or place highly in the voting for that award or the MVP within three years. That rule is meant to dissuade teams from cravenly stashing top prospects for the first fortnight of a season to extend their team control over the player by a year, but it's a speculative sort of incentive, and the benefit of withholding the player's debut is still very concrete. Shaw's age-29 season in 2031 has plenty of value, and the team can secure it quite easily from here.

The possibility of an extra draft pick somewhere in the 2026-28 window is obviously preferable, if they believe it's coming, because that would both represent an earlier payoff for the decision and mean that Shaw had panned out nicely. Until we see him on the field and he demonstrates his restored health by handling some high-quality pitchers well, though, it's hard to feel confident that that payoff is forthcoming. Meanwhile, controlling Shaw through 2031 is guaranteed, if he's in Des Moines come Tax Day.

Again, the injury is almost a blessing in disguise. The Cubs don't have to decide on this until at least Mar. 27, and really, it could be when they open their home schedule, Apr. 4 against the Padres. If he's with them by then, he'll still qualify for a prospect promotion incentive (PPI) pick, and the Cubs will have bought a bunch of time to decide between Bruján and Workman. They just didn't want to have to grapple with this particular question.

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