How Playing with Playing Time Changes the 2024 Chicago Cubs' Projections

It seems like projection season always leaves fans of the Chicago Cubs in varying states of dismay. Even in past winters wherein the team has been far more active or seems to feature more upside, systems like PECOTA and ZiPS don’t tend to love them—at least not as much as fans want them to. That’s a bit of anecdotal evidence for you, but certainly speaks to where fans are once again, as a collective emotional unit.

The projections emerging out of Baseball Prospectus in the past week—and FanGraphs before them—see the Cubs in an almost identical light: roughly 81 wins, about a 35-percent shot at the postseason, and eerily similar runs for and against. It’s a far cry from what we might have expected to feel at this point, given the pleasant shock of the Craig Counsell hire at the onset of the offseason. The good news is that, unlike previous years in which they reached this point in underwhelming shape, the Cubs still have a chance to shake the projection systems up a bit. With a handful of impact free agents still available, the club can hand over some cash to enhance their chances in an otherwise weak division. 

But regardless of that additional context and whether or not the team will, in fact, add, there are internal factors that could impact whether the Cubs outperform their projections—or underperform them. Either way, there’s plenty of variance waiting to occur underneath the prospective statline presented by said projections.

Most notable among them is the catcher position. From a personnel standpoint, this is a spot that looks to be sewn up coming out of Arizona. It’ll be Yan Gomes and Miguel Amaya representing the 1-2 punch behind the plate. At present, PECOTA projects Gomes for 414 plate appearances and a 0.3 WARP. (In fact, when I say PECOTA, I kind of mean me. I’m the Depth Charts analyst for the NL Central at BP, so the playing time projections are partially fueled by my input.) Behind him, Amaya’s projected at 249 plate appearances and a 1.0 WARP. Similarly, ZiPS has Gomes at 0.7 WAR across 378 PAs and Amaya at 1.0 in 237.

At first glance, it appears that both PECOTA and ZiPS favor Amaya’s production more in a smaller sample than Gomes’s. What if, in that case, we flipped them? We give Amaya the 414 plate appearances and Gomes the 249? Rough math puts Amaya up to 1.7 WARP, with Gomes slipping slightly back to 0.2. If we go the same route with ZiPS, Amaya gets boosted up to 1.6 WAR, with Gomes coming back to 0.4. 

Now, there isn’t a whole lot we can glean from just that small bit of information. The main takeaway, however, is that Amaya gets a sizable boost with increased playing time, while what Gomes loses is only marginal. That just makes sense, since on a rate basis, the systems each think Amaya is a better player. From an offensive standpoint, it could behoove the Cubs to give their younger backstop more time behind the plate. Of course, the defensive context matters too, and there’s a reason that the team decided to pick up Gomes’s option in the first place. The upside that Amaya presents with the bat, though, makes it a situation worth monitoring, especially in considering how it could impact their projected win total. 

Flipping the view over to first base, PECOTA currently has Michael Busch at 0.9 WARP across 444 plate appearances. Matt Mervis is at 0.1 in only 99. ZiPS is just slightly more bullish on Busch, going 0.7 in 308 PAs. Mervis is at 0.3 in 112 through that lens. If we applied the same exercise in reversing their roles, Busch ends up with 0.2 WARP and 0.3 WAR, while Mervis sits 0.5 and 0.3, respectively.

The difference there is less than marginal. Regardless of who mans first base, it seems that the overall production could be similar between the two, which doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable when you consider the limited big league experience of either option. Now, were the Cubs to sign one of the remaining free agents—like, say Cody Bellinger—who would log pretty notable time at the spot, then you’d see more of a WARP/WAR increase than merely shuffling pieces around the roster as currently constructed. 

If we wanted to throw third base into the conversation, we’d look at Nick Madrigal vs. Patrick Wisdom. BP has Madrigal at 1.7 WARP in 363 PAs and Wisdom at 1.1 in 427. (Madrigal is the projected starter, but Wisdom’s versatility gets him more plate appearances overall.) ZiPS is at 1.3 in 357 and 0.3 in 126, respectively, but exclusively at third base. Since the latter bears more positional focus, we’ll stick only with that one. If we swapped their projected roles, you’d get 0.5 WAR from Madrigal and 0.9 WAR from Wisdom.

Each of these three positions represents the least “sure” of the things for the Cubs’ Opening Day lineup come Mar. 28, at least if you’re acting under the assumption that Cody Bellinger will be manning center field by then. We know, of course, the likeliest outcome for the configuration of each by that point. But projecting what will happen at that trio of spots beyond then is anything but a certainty.

What we can opine on, at the very least, is that the Cubs running out Amaya more often than Gomes could have a larger impact on the offensive side of the ball. For a team that is set to live on the margins yet again, that could have some rather significant bearing on their projected win total. The same cannot be said, however, of the corners. First base doesn’t feature a lot of variance in either case of a post-hype prospect holding it down. Madrigal appears to be the guy at third, and if you flipped them, you’re ending up with less production over 350-ish plate appearances. Behind the plate, though, absolutely holds some intrigue when we measure the outcomes against these preseason projections.

Obviously, we’re dealing in hypotheticals and rough math quite a bit here. Nothing is without context, either. It’s easy to say that the Cubs could outperform their projected win total with more of Amaya because they’d score more runs, but would they also surrender more? The projection systems say Amaya is also a better defender than the aging Gomes, who no longer frames pitches as well as he once did, but we know that pitchers love working with Gomes in a way that can’t easily be ignored.

In any case, a team like the Cubs presents a fascinating case study for the projection systems from this point until October. They’re an average team. The projections say so, and our collective eyeballs likely feel the same. But the Craig Counsell of it all will likely have a lot to say about how much they outperform or underperform that standing in the middle tier. Purely within the context of the projections themselves, it’s going to be very interesting to watch how much variance occurs as the season progresses and how much that variance is dependent on distribution of playing time.