The Cubs Should Make These Five Changes Today

Here's the paradox of the 2024 Chicago Cubs: They have made it absolutely clear that the rebuild they didn't want to label that way is very much a rebuild, and that it's far from over. Yet, they have a roster theoretically pointed toward short-term contention; a long-term commitment to a new manager being paid more than anyone else has ever been paid for that job; and an executive who might not survive an admission of defeat and attempt at a reset. Messes don't come much uglier than that, because it means that even as the path forward becomes almost obvious, there are major obstacles to the embrace of that path for the organization.

The other big problem is that it's June 18. We're a bit over six weeks away from the trade deadline, and that's when the big moves will be made, in one direction or the other. For myriad reasons, this team both will not and should not take major action now, in terms of pulling the trigger on trades to either give up on this season or try to rescue it. For fans, that adds a layer of frustration, because everyone can see the things going wrong, and while some rational part of the brain might understand that it's not yet time for certain types of action, that's exactly what they crave. If Jed Hoyer and Craig Counsell aren't doing something concrete and significant, fans feel like they don't see or care about the problems at hand, even though that's obviously not the case.

Hoyer and Counsell can continue to be patient, overall, because they need to be. There are also a handful of things they should do right away, though. Here's a list.

Install Pete Crow-Armstrong as the everyday center fielder, batting sixth against right-handed pitchers and ninth against lefties. 
With rare exceptions for sheer physical workload maintenance, Crow-Armstrong should play every day for the Cubs the rest of this season. After Mike Tauchman suffered what sure looks like a strained groin Monday night against the Giants, the team has a gap in its outfield plan, anyway, but more importantly, the team needs to spend the balance of this campaign figuring out what it has in Crow-Armstrong. I'm on record: I think he's Corey Patterson in a slightly updated wrapper. I think he's valuable in the field and on the bases, but that his bat will be persistently unplayable, and that he'll ultimately settle in as a very nice fourth outfielder. He can have a long career, but I don't expect it to be a high-impact one.

I could very well be wrong, though. Either way, the Cubs need to get a firm handle on Crow-Armstrong's future this year, so they can make plans for the future with more confidence heading into the offseason. Without giving him plate appearances his bat doesn't merit, they need to maximize his playing time, in order to maximize the information available to them when they make their next set of big decisions. They can pull the plug on him if he still has a 54 OPS+ in two months, but if he's capable even of pushing that number up to 80, they need to find that out.

Use Michael Busch as the new leadoff man against right-handed pitchers; slide Christopher Morel down to fifth.
By no reasonable standard is Morel a solid second or fourth hitter right now. Yes, we're all aware of the narratives created by his approach improvements and his seemingly promising batted-ball data, but there's a much more important reality at hand. Seventy-three games into the Cubs' season, Morel is batting .196/.301/.373. His 13 homers obscure the fact that he's not even producing power on par with what he'd previously flashed, or with what the Cubs clearly expected from him: he only has four doubles and a triple to his name this year.

Meanwhile, Busch is hitting a tidy .255/.350/.450, with more extra-base hits than Morel has and plenty of walks. He's a well-rounded slugger, and with Tauchman down, he should assume the duty of getting the most at-bats on the team with righty pitchers on the mound. Again, this is a fact-finding mission. Maybe Busch can spark the team and save the season, but it's more likely that he'll go through another set of slumps and streaks over the second half and settle in with numbers slightly less impressive than the ones he has right now. That's ok. The Cubs should want every bit of good data they can grab on him as they sketch out the next good version of the team.

With Busch at the top, Seiya Suzuki should bat second, followed by Cody Bellinger and Ian Happ. Morel, unless and until he can actually start creating value with the bat, needs to be shoved down the lineup card.

Place Nico Hoerner on the injured list with his fractured hand, and use Morel at second base in his absence.
The experiment whereby the team tried to make a third baseman out of Morel has been an abject failure. It's not just errors; he's piling up plays not made, or made too imperfectly. He cost the Cubs at least two outs Monday night alone, without committing an error. The only spot on the diamond at which Morel has ever looked like a credible big-league defender is second base. He could probably be a playable corner outfielder, too, but those spots are spoken-for. Morel should be slotted back in at second for a while.

That's a viable option right now, because Hoerner needs a break, anyway. Since the hamstring injury that lingered with him for a week in mid-May, Hoerner has 85 plate appearances. He's hitting .195/.271/.221, with two extra-base hits (both doubles). He never has consistently generated power, and he probably never will, but Hoerner has been bad in a broad-spectrum way for a month now. It won't help anything for him to try to play through this hand thing uninterrupted, because it's been a very long time since he helped anything even before it happened.

Since May 21, 201 batters have at least 70 plate appearances. By weighted sweet-spot exit velocity (wSSEV), a metric I developed to identify the skill of both hitting the ball within a valuable launch-angle band with consistency and hitting it hard when one does, Hoerner ranks 200th, ahead of only struggling Brewers outfielder Sal Frelick. Hoerner needs to be away for a while.

David Bote and Patrick Wisdom can man the hot corner for a few weeks, while Morel gets a chance to play a position at which he's more likely to be viable. If either gets hot, they could be trade candidates next month. If not, at least the team will find out whether Morel can cut it as a fifth-hitting second baseman, and maybe Hoerner can be a more representative version of himself after an extended rest and recovery period.

Install Tyson Miller as the closer, and keep Héctor Neris far from the end of games.
What a dreadful mess this bullpen is. Given the injuries they've suffered, it's not quite a surprise, but it's hard to remember a worse relief corps in Cubs history. It's not just the overall struggle, but the lack of even one pitcher who makes you feel really good when they trot in to take the game mound. Mark Leiter Jr. pitches like a relief ace, right up until it actually matters. Neris is more in the range of congestive failure than of an ordinary heart attack, at this point.

Miller is the best of an almost unimaginably weak set of options to work as the relief ace, but this move isn't even really about winning games. It's purely about stopping Neris from reaching 60 appearances and/or 45 games finished. If either of those happen, and if he's healthy at the end of the season, the $9-million club option for 2025 on his contract becomes a player option instead. That would be especially self-defeating, and as slimy as it might feel, the Cubs need to be actively working to avoid it. If nothing else, they can release him later in the season, but giving Miller the high-leverage work that has been going to Neris would be another way to forestall him hitting his thresholds.

Sign Tomas Nido, and designate Yan Gomes for assignment.
Contending teams hate making changes to their catching corps once the season begins. Luckily for the Cubs, they don't belong to that class right now, and can afford--in fact, are required--to experiment. Nido, 30, was released by the Mets Monday, so he will only make the league-minimum salary with whichever team scoops him up. He's not a good hitter, by any standard other than the one Cubs catchers have set this year, but he's downright dangerous on that scale. He's also a better thrower behind the plate than either Gomes or Miguel Amaya, against whom the league has run so much and with such impunity all year.

Cutting Gomes would be a blow to team morale, given his role in the clubhouse and value as a supporter of the pitching preparation system, but the losses piling up on this team are a greater and more important blow to that morale. Nido is a small-time addition, but he's exactly what the Cubs need and lack behind the plate.

None of these things will save the Cubs' season. They'll either do that themselves (by playing much better), or not at all. The moves would make clear the standard the team needs to have for acceptable play, though, and they would give the team important edges as they plan for a better, more legitimate winner in 2025 and beyond.