Ruthless Roster Pruning Will Have to Be Phase One of Cubs' Pivotal Offseason

There will be money to spend this winter, and a few players are sloughing naturally off the Cubs' books and roster roll. To get from where they are to where they really want to be, though, the team doesn't need a few more capable contributors; they need over a dozen. The Brewers are not a bad analog for the Cubs, and they're about to cruise to an NL Central title. The massive difference in the standings between the two this year hasn't come from Milwaukee having a superior set of core contributors, per se, but from the fact that of the 50 or so players around whom a team must plan a modern season, the Crew have a clear edge over the Cubs at 15 or 20 spots--most of them in the middle and lower parts of the respective roster hierarchies.

Fixing that means getting aggressive, as soon as this season ends. The Cubs can't afford to be affectionate, patient, or indulgent. They need to be ruthless this fall. There are a small handful of players who will become free agents at the end of this campaign, including Kyle Hendricks, Jorge López and Drew Smyly, but there are also a whole lot of players with team control remaining whom they need to jettison.

Let's take a tour.

Marginal Veterans with Role Player Ceilings

• Patrick Wisdom has been a good Cub, all things considered. He's a pleasant clubhouse presence, and when he's in position to get regular playing time, he can get hot and run off barrages of home runs that give him real value. Durability and defensive utility have eluded him the last two seasons, though, and as the Cubs have shrunk his role, they've also found that he can't thrive as an occasional pinch-hitter. He has to be non-tendered in November.
• The same goes for Mike Tauchman, who has much more value in a part-time role but is older than Wisdom and starting to show his limitations. With only passable defense even in the outfield corners and no power left in his bat, Tauchman needs to be non-tendered, to open some roster room for a needed upgrade in the position-player mix.
• Of Julian Merryweather and Yency Almonte, the team probably needs to keep just one, and send out the other. Each can be dominant at their best, but each has a long track record of getting hurt or proving inconsistent, sometimes because of nagging physical issues not quite bad enough to shelve them. Letting both take up roster room all winter would be negligent, given the magnitude of change needed.
• Christian Bethancourt is a fine catch-and-throw backup backstop, but keeping him and offering him arbitration this winter would be malpractice. The Cubs need to be planning an attempt to acquire a higher-end catcher, pushing Miguel Amaya toward the role Bethancourt currently plays for the team.

Young Players Who Are Never Going to Be Anything for the Cubs

• Much though it chagrins so many Cubs fans that he never got sustained playing time in the big leagues, Alexander Canario was denied that opportunity for a simple reason: he can't hit big-league pitching. The swing is too long, too grooved, and too inflexible. He's in the way.
• It's sad that it's come to this, but the Cubs can't wait around any longer to see if Brennen Davis magically stays healthy and demonstrates MLB-caliber skills over a prolonged sample next year--two things he's never really done before. Hopefully, there's still a chance out there somewhere for Davis. The Cubs shouldn't be in the business of trying to make it be with them.
• Matt Mervis was a great story for a bit, and with a bit better luck and some better adjustments, he might have blossomed into a credible big-leaguer--even if stardom was never on the cards. Instead, he's simply out of the picture for the Cubs. With Michael Busch in place and Cody Bellinger overwhelmingly likely to opt in at the end of the year and come back, there's no need for a third left-hitting first baseman on the 40-man roster. There could still be room for Mervis if he were ever likely to figure out big-league pitching, but he isn't.
• For a long, long time, the names Keegan Thompson, Ethan Roberts, and Caleb Kilian have carried varying levels of cachet with Cubs fans. There was some reason to believe in each of them, at certain times, but now is the time to stop believing in any of them. The team needs to produce better options than each from within, and they need to move on from each, to maximize their potential pitching depth.

Obvious Jetsam

• Presumably, only the injury he suffered while in Iowa has even kept Nick Madrigal in the organization this long. He should be cut this fall, sad though it is that that experiment didn't work.
• You can sort of make the case that the Miles Mastrobuoni experiment did work, in that he cost virtually nothing to acquire; gave them inconsistent but nonzero value with his defense and speed; and was alaways flexible. Now, it's time to refresh that roster spot and try to do much, much better for the same role.
• Picked up for various flavors of free in recent months, Trey WIngenter, Shawn Armstrong and Colten Brewer all could theoretically be kept this winter. In practice, the team should probably spend the final few weeks evaluating each as best they can (If Brewer suffers a disadvantage because he's hurt, so be it; remember, he broke his hand in a tantrum) and then waive two of them at the first opportunity.

Nico Hoerner

• Only one player gets his own category, and it's Nico Hoerner. He's not a bad player, but he is not currently a good one, either. Unlike some of the other players tethered to big contracts on the team, he's not tied down by a no-trade clause, and he's not producing at a level that makes you wary of losing him. The Cubs need to bring a lot of good players to camp in 2025, including putting some into uncomfortable spring competitions. Getting Hoerner out of the way would open up second base as one potential fallback position for one or more losers in those battles. His trade value might be limited, but it's not zero.

None of these players need to be designated for assignment on the spot, or anything. Some are tradable, and others only need to go when certain offseason deadlines come. This winter needs to find the Cubs aggressively rearranging their roster, though, and that means cutting hard--to make room for free agents, and for trade arrivals stemming from the consolidation of their farm depth into MLB value, and for additions from within the organization both during the winter and entering next season. Nearly half their 40-man needs to change.

Can Jed Hoyer do that?