The Corner Lockers: Cubs' Team Leadership Structure Creates Unique Constraints, Opportunities

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images

If you want to know who anchors a team—who the truly revered and relied-upon leaders are—you can do a lot worse than simply walking into their clubhouse when they're on the road and looking around. Teams tend to organize themselves in particular ways, and clubhouse attendants assign lockers in ways that reflect very specific hierarchies.

At Target Field, in Minneapolis, there's a standard set of stalls where the most respected or vital players on a visiting team go. In fact, it's a lot like that humorous image that gets passed around the internet every so often, stereotyping the criteria Little League coaches use to assign positions. You know this one?

It's tongue-in-cheek, of course, but that meme captures a lot of truth. I can offer a similar key, if one wants to understand a big-league team's social dynamic, just by glancing around their clubhouse when they visit Minnesota.

(Please forgive the roughness of the sketch; graphic design is not my passion.)

As you enter the clubhouse, if you want to find the two players to whom the rest of the roster (and/or the organization, via the coaching staff and support staffers) shows deference and utmost respect, just look to your left and your right. For the 2015 Cubs, the two corner stalls to the right when one entered the clubhouse belonged to Jon Lester and David Ross. For the 2018 Rays, it was Charlie Morton and Sergio Romo. For the 2025 Brewers, it was Christian Yelich and Jose Quintana. These are guys the team wants the media to see and speak to, and who have (either written into their contract, or granted almost automatically because of how everyone feels about them) extra stalls and priority space in the room.

To the left of the entrance, typically, is a player slightly less accomplished but equally tenured and respected. This was Todd Frazier, with the 2019 Mets. It's Rhys Hoskins on the 2025 Brewers. It was Wilson Ramos for those 2018 Rays. These are guys the team wants teammates to see, and not to be able to sneak past.

For the 2025 Cubs, those highest-priority lockers in the corner by the entryway belonged to Justin Turner and Ryan Pressly, and the one to the left belonged to Drew Pomeranz. This is an unusually non-hierarchical clubhouse, in a way—or, perhaps more accurately, Turner, Pressly and Pomeranz are unusually commanding presences for relatively low-wattage on-field contributors.

The near left corner, as you go in, is where you reliably find the guys who have earned pride of place and can take up multiple stalls, but whom the team relies on slightly less for vocal leadership. For the 2016 Mariners, that space belonged to Robinson Canó. For the 2019 Mets, it was Jacob deGrom and company. The 2025 Cubs put Dansby Swanson and Ian Happ there. That shouldn't lead you to think the team doesn't ask those guys to be leaders—indeed, usually that whole row if you turn left from the entrance is a set of trusted veterans, and this year's Cubs team went Pomeranz, Matthew Boyd, (a rehabbing) Jameson Taillon, Swanson and Happ down and around the corner. All of those guys have important roles to play, but the farther you get into that corner, the more the leadership is by example. Interestingly, this is where some teams slot in younger players they hope will grow into and embrace leadership roles, but the Cubs seem not to have felt any need to do so.

Circling back to the spot just across from the big dogs' lockers in the corner, with the entrance to the players' lunch room between them, you find the guy everyone loves talking to. This was Tommy La Stella with the 2019 Angels and Chris Coghlan on the 2015 Cubs. It's often the backup catcher, including being Eric Haase for this year's Brewers. It's a place to put a communicator who naturally forms close friendships and is willing to reach across the subtle, sometimes troublesome positional (pitchers and hitters), racial, or linguistic divides that form in the room. For the 2025 Cubs, that locker belonged to Nico Hoerner.

In that row next to Hoerner were Seiya Suzuki, Kyle Tucker, Jon Berti, Reese McGuire, Vidal Bruján and Carson Kelly. Starting next to Happ and extending to the back corner of the room up the left side were relievers Ethan Roberts, Brad Keller, Ryan Brasier, Caleb Thielbar, Daniel Palencia and Chris Flexen; starters Colin Rea, Shota Imanaga and Cade Horton; and then the younger position players on the roster, Michael Busch, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Matt Shaw. As you can see, if you compare all those names I rattled off and their positions to the sketch above, this team largely hewed to the same schematic all teams use when they come to Minnesota. They're not organized differently; they're built differently, with a rare mix of personalities and veteran statuses.

I tell you all of that, because I think it does matter. When the Cubs talk about being creative this month, and when we envision the moves they might make, they face different things to consider. It might be harder for this team to upgrade on the bench or the bullpen, because they have vested considerable power and influence in Turner, Pressly and Pomeranz. On the other hand, they don't have to worry as much about offending or displacing players like Happ or Suzuki as other teams might, because they're not treating them as vital pieces. Expect them to think of replacing Berti or Bruján, but not Turner. Expect them to be more ready to drop Brasier or Roberts than to cut bait on Pressly or Pomeranz.

The most important underlying truth of a clubhouse like theirs is that it doesn't have just a few power centers. Leadership and baseball integrity are spread diffusely through the room, especially with Crow-Armstrong creating his own center of gravity in that regard in his back corner. You'd normally expect to find a player of Tucker's stature in one of those prime real estate areas, and the fact that they're not leaning on him for that kind of leadership says a lot about how deep they are in that regard. They can be as nimble as any club over the next eight days. It's just that they might be better-positioned to trade an apparently key contributor than most teams, while also being less willing to bump an apparently ancillary piece off the roster.

 

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