2024 Chicago Cubs Positional Preview: First Base

Jed has built-in redundancies all over the field, but this is one relatively thin area. They can mix in Wisdom, Bellinger, and perhaps Mervis although this spring he has not shown much so far. If Bush fails mightily this may be a warming spot for Pete Alonso at the trade deadline if the Mets fall out of contention and they can't work out an extension for him. 

12 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

Jed has built-in redundancies all over the field, but this is one relatively thin area. They can mix in Wisdom, Bellinger, and perhaps Mervis although this spring he has not shown much so far. If Bush fails mightily this may be a warming spot for Pete Alonso at the trade deadline if the Mets fall out of contention and they can't work out an extension for him. 

I'm not sure I agree with that. The Cubs have Busch, with Bellinger as a fall back once Pete Crow-Armstrong is ready. There's good reason why Busch has been ranked top-50 by a few industry rankings, and it'd be hard pressed to find better coverage than Bellinger. There's options as well internally like Matt Mervis, Garrett Cooper, Patrick Wisdom and even Dom Smith has a smear of appeal if the Cubs can find/change something. I'd say most teams don't have as promising as a 1/2 as Busch/Bellinger. Once you get to third in any depth chart, for any position, you start finding questionable options...mostly because if they weren't questionable, they wouldn't be third, ya know?

I feel very comfortable that the team is not going to have a debacle at 1B like they did last year.  That said I think it is, by a pretty wide margin, the position the Cubs are least likely to get star caliber production out of.

I'd expect a roughly 110 wRC+ out of each of Busch, Wisdom, Morel, and Bellinger if tasked with full time play.  That is adequate production at 1B, and by playing matchups I think you can get the aggregate closer to 120.  It feels very difficult to map out a path to 130+.  Busch is a strong prospect, but that's built much more on floor than ceiling.  Wisdom and Morel would need substantial cut downs in their swing and miss to get there.  And I don't think Cody's going to tank at the plate but he's not going to do what he did last year again (and even if he does he probably spends 70+% of his time in the OF?).

The wildcard to potentially make the above look foolish is Owen Caissie.  Short of like a Kris Bryant/Vladito situation you should rarely expect star caliber offense from a prospect at the jump.  But I do think Caissie coming up in June and hitting the horsefeathers put of the ball is more likely than Busch/Morel/etc. putting up All Star production.

2 minutes ago, Bertz said:

I'd expect a roughly 110 wRC+ out of each of Busch, Wisdom, Morel, and Bellinger if tasked with full time play.  That is adequate production at 1B, and by playing matchups I think you can get the aggregate closer to 120.  It feels very difficult to map out a path to 130+.  

As a reference point last year:

1. Rays (172) - just complete and utter Rays black magic, my god
2. Braves (159) - Olson 
3. Dodgers (159) - Freeman

(gigantic gap)

And then there's 8 teams between 127 (Cardinals) and 120 (Oakland, somehow). 19 teams were above average, Cubs were 24th at 92. Just getting up to somewhere around 110 gives us about 1.5 wins over last year. 

20 minutes ago, Bertz said:

I feel very comfortable that the team is not going to have a debacle at 1B like they did last year.  That said I think it is, by a pretty wide margin, the position the Cubs are least likely to get star caliber production out of.

I'd expect a roughly 110 wRC+ out of each of Busch, Wisdom, Morel, and Bellinger if tasked with full time play.  That is adequate production at 1B, and by playing matchups I think you can get the aggregate closer to 120.  It feels very difficult to map out a path to 130+.  Busch is a strong prospect, but that's built much more on floor than ceiling.  Wisdom and Morel would need substantial cut downs in their swing and miss to get there.  And I don't think Cody's going to tank at the plate but he's not going to do what he did last year again (and even if he does he probably spends 70+% of his time in the OF?).

The wildcard to potentially make the above look foolish is Owen Caissie.  Short of like a Kris Bryant/Vladito situation you should rarely expect star caliber offense from a prospect at the jump.  But I do think Caissie coming up in June and hitting the horsefeathers put of the ball is more likely than Busch/Morel/etc. putting up All Star production.

I think most of this is fair. Not sure I think Wisdom is capable of getting near 110 wRC+ in full time (I think in very curated PA's he can get there but given more run, Wisdom tends to fall off, from what I can tell). Morel/Busch feel capable of getting somewhere between 110-120 wRC+ if things go well, though I can see situations where both struggle.

I love some Owen Caissie but still think he's going to be developing come June. His last three levels (Low-A, High-A and Double-A) he's started similarly in all: struggling for the first ~45 days or so, then finding his footing, starting to really take off around July-ish. Excpect Triple-A will really work on hitting him up and in and think we will see a similar pattern. I think he's the best bat in the system up and down, and has the biggest upside, but even I'd be shocked to see him come up in June and tear it up; as much as I don't think Morel or Busch would be All-Stars in 2024, I think that's still a shade more likely.