The Next Few Weeks Should Be Cubs' Best (and Maybe Last) Chance to See What Kevin Alcántara Can Do

If you see Kevin Alcántara on the street today near Wrigley Field, be sure to congratulate him. Monday was his 50th day on an active big-league roster. After coming up at the tail end of 2024 and again for most of last September, Alcántara spent roughly a fortnight with the parent club in late May and early June. He was there to replace Matt Shaw, who had been placed on the injured list with a back strain. He was shuttled back to Triple-A Iowa, though, and it took another Shaw injury to get him back up for a fourth major-league stint.

It's probably hard for Alcántara to tell he's a big-leaguer, though. He's gotten no real chance to show anything—either the magnitude of his talent nor the depth of his flaws—in his previous times as part of the team. He's stuck on 32 career plate appearances, which is about what Pete Crow-Armstrong collects each week. He's only played a complete game—neither coming on as some sort of sub nor being replaced mid-game—three times in the majors:

• September 25, 2024, in his MLB debut
• September 27, 2024
• September 7, 2025

Neither the Cubs organization nor Craig Counsell has shown much faith in Alcántara. Yet, they do keep him around, and in a strange but real way, they need him. With Shaw shelved again and Michael Conforto circling the drain, they need a player who can play some corner outfield. With their offense running on Crow-Armstrong's increasingly well-rounded brilliance and a whole lot of luck and pluck around that, they need someone who can catch hold of a ball and hit it 425 feet now and then. Alcántara can be that guy.

In the long run, I'm skeptical of Alcántara. In the short term, he needs to get a chance to help the team this time. After the Cubs put him in the cooler by calling him up for 16 days and 10 plate appearances starting May 23, it would have been understandable if he'd gone back to Iowa and struggled. Instead, he hit the ground running, with a 21-for-59 showing that included nine extra-base hits. He's up to 826 career plate appearances for the I-Cubs, with an OPS just under .860, all as a young and athletic player. His swing is long and whiff-prone; he needs to be shielded from bad matchups to have success in the big leagues right now. But he does still have the upside of a big-league regular, and right now, the Cubs don't have a strong alternative to him, at least against lefty starters.

They'll see one of those Tuesday night, as the Padres send southpaw JP Sears to the mound. Alcántara needs to be in the lineup. One of Cubs fans' legitimate laments about David Ross was that he mistrusted young players too much and stunted their development, especially by leaving them to rot on the bench amid call-ups. Miguel Amaya and Crow-Armstrong felt that very pain in 2023. The hope was that Counsell would be better at bringing along homegrown guys, but while his tenure has seen Michael Busch and Crow-Armstrong establish themselves successfully (and he's done everything right with regard to Shaw), Owen Caissie, Moisés Ballesteros and Alcántara are each marks against him as a player development guy so far.

That has to change in the coming days. Alcántara could be a decent trade chip this summer. He could be retained with an eye toward replacing Ian Happ and/or Seiya Suzuki, who are each impending free agents. Either way, though, this is the last season in which he can be optioned to the minors, so the Cubs (and all other parties with interest in Alcántara) need some hard information about what he can do. This is the opportunity to obtain that information. The Cubs need another guy who can hit the ball hard enough to split a gap or clear a fence, anyway. They need to swing for the fences, metaphorically, to survive their slew of pitching injuries and catalyze a scrappy but aging lineup. They might as well go with a guy who can swing for the fences, literally, and see what doubling his career plate appearance figure in about 10 days tells them.