Mike Tauchman and the 2025 Chicago Cubs

Ice has run through Mike Tauchman's veins every time he's gotten a chance to come up with a big play for the Chicago Cubs over the last year and a half. He hit a walkoff home run against the White Sox in June, and he walked off the Cardinals on a double Thursday night, but those aren't the only examples. He hit a now-forgotten three-run homer to tie the game in Boston on Sunday Night Baseball back in April, lost to memory because the team went on to lose that game and spiral downward in the standings.

Last year, Tauchman had a game-tying double against Devin Williams in Milwaukee in early July, the famous walkoff catch against the Cards in St. Louis at the end of that month, and a game-winning eighth-inning homer in Queens in August. He's a machine in big moments, reserving his power for them but not getting antsy and swinging so big as to give away an at-bat because of the stakes. It's impossible not to respect Tauchman, and difficult not to love him. He's gone through a lot to find this moment of stability and success in the game, and he's making the most of it, for his hometown team.

That said, of course, he's also soon to turn 34 years old, and though he has two more years of team control, the Cubs have to decide this winter whether to tender him a contract to retain him. It's a tough call, because they hope to have an even stronger roster next year, and there was already a squeeze for playing time in the outfield. All of those reasons explain why many were surprised when Jed Hoyer didn't just trade Tauchman at the deadline Tuesday.

He didn't, though, so now the team has two more months to rehearse fitting him correctly in with Pete Crow-Armstrong (for whom he was pinch-hitting when he played hero Thursday night), Cody Bellinger, Seiya Suzuki, and Ian Happ. There's pressure from below, because Owen Caissie and Kevin Alcántara are informally scheduled to be contributors next season, if they're ever to become such for the Cubs. There's also a need to keep playing and assessing Crow-Armstrong.

Still, keeping Tauchman feels a little bit like a statement by Hoyer, especially in light of Thursday. If he's your fourth or fifth outfielder, your roster is in awfully good shape. The Cubs need to make sure not to close out and commit to too many roles for next season, because they're still one really good hitter short of a full-fledged contender's lineup, but the one carved out for Tauchman right now isn't going to be the role for that player anyway. 

The risk of carrying Tauchman forward, beyond the few million dollars that would be required to keep him via arbitration, lies in his age. This season showed the Cubs the danger of committing too much to a grizzled veteran, when Yan Gomes's game fell out from under him almost overnight. That could happen to Tauchman, too. The team likes Tauchman a lot, though. So does its manager. It might well be worth keeping him, not only past the deadline but this winter, and planning to have a clutch, OBP-focused player penned into a bench spot to begin the year. Someone just needs to ensure that the team doesn't grow too attached to him to cut bait, should he come out next spring looking too old to be helpful.