Cubs Designate Cody Poteet for Assignment, Leaving Some Big Questions

[Brian Kelder]

The Cubs cut bait at an early date on the swingman they acquired in exchange for the lefty bat who helped anchor their lineup the last two years. Did they botch that entire string of transactions?

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Are you old enough to remember the word "boof?" It was a baseball term when I played growing up, used in the context of messing up an easy play. If you "boofed" it, you let a grounder hit your glove, dropped an easy fly, or something similar. It's not a compliment.

Jed Hoyer and the Cubs might have boofed the Cody Bellinger salary dump. If they didn't care what the return for Bellinger was at all, that's a mistake. They should have gotten more than some sort of low-level flier. If Cody Poteet was at all part of their plans, they clearly didn't scout the Yankees system well at all. There's really no defending the return, even if a case can be made for the initial trade. 

"I feel like for us, we don’t have a lot of margin for error," Hoyer said in a recent interview with The Athletic. "We need guys to improve, we need to stay healthy, we need to play clean baseball. I think that the way this team is built—we have a really good defensive team, we should run the bases well—we need to do all those things really well. We don’t have the ability to sort of muddle through and just show up and make the postseason. We have to have a really good season to do that."

The Cubs have to have a good season on the margins, on the field. This quote, though, also applies to the front office. If they were forced to dump Bellinger, getting Poteet and designating him for assignment just three months later feels akin to a throwing error. It's possible that they're just trying to sneak him through waivers and keep him without the expenditure of a 40-man roster spot; there's no better time of year than now to try that. It's also possible that Poteet just didn't come as advertised, from either a stuff or a makeup perspective. Either way, though, there's at least a chance that the Cubs end up with nothing at all to show for trading Bellinger.

It's better to widen the lens and see the whole field, when it comes to that move. The Cubs, effectively, traded Bellinger, Cam Smith, Isaac Paredes, and Hayden Wesneski for Kyle Tucker and Poteet, plus considerable salary relief. Since they failed in their efforts to spend the savings they realized on the likes of Alex Bregman or Tanner Scott, though, that aspect of the bundled trades now feels a bit wasted—and so might Poteet be. It all puts more pressure on Tucker to be great, and the fact that the Cubs' chances of signing him to a long-term deal are slim further sharpens the point.

Hoyer has done his best to give us a solid product on the field, but he is correct in saying they have to play well on the fundamental aspects of the game in order to have success. He needs to hold himself to that same standard, and the evidence that he can do so is mixed.

The Cubs' front office, much like the players, cannot muddle around and make October. The Poteet move does not engender confidence in the process.

View full article