Matthew Trueblood

Few ballplayers are more universally well-liked in clubhouses than Ty France. A tenacious competitor who also has one of the game's funniest, most varied, least safe-for-work repertoires of barbs for dugout jockey work, he keeps every team of which he becomes a part accountable, but he also keeps them loose. He'll have a job in the game for as long as he wants one, be it in broadcasting, coaching or elsewhere. He even got a longer leash during long periods of being relatively unproductive. In 2024, he got 535 plate appearances, despite being a first baseman with a .670 OPS. In 2025, his OPS only climbed to .680, and many first basemen on the wrong side of 30 would have been swept into the dustpan of the game for the short ride to the trash can. Instead, he got another 490 plate appearances and was traded to the contending Blue Jays, where he was a beloved part of a pennant-winning team. It was only a mild surprise, then, that he found a job yet again in 2026, this time with his hometown Padres. France hadn't been a plus hitter since 2022, but he kept getting chances, because when the game likes you this much, you keep getting chances until there's no way anyone can justify it. Thanks to a 2025 American League Gold Glove Award for much-improved defense at the cold corner, France had at least some small foothold in the game, and the Padres had a glaring need for a complementary piece but not much money to spend on the spot. The reunion of the player with his first organization and the return to the place where he played his collegiate ball were kismet. France had the kind of season everyone had waited for since that 2022 campaign, batting an almost-out-of-nowhere .295/.363/.502. Availing himself of the smaller strike zone wrought by the implementation of ABS, he walked more than is his norm. He tapped into his power more consistently, too, by generating more bat speed with a slight mechanical tweak and by swinging with greater conviction. France was a bit more patient at the front ends of at-bats, but more aggressive in deep counts, avoiding some strikeouts by making better use of his natural bat-to-ball skills. Meanwhile, though he turned 32 in July, France also cemented himself as one of the best defensive first basemen in baseball. He put in exhaustive work on picking low throws and fielding short hops from teammates, allowing the 5-foot-10 endomorph to excel in that department despite his body type. He's rangy, experienced and great at communicating with his fellow infielders. Now, France is a free agent again. Already, a low-grade sweepstakes is brewing, as teams clamor for a player with elite makeup and a resurgent stick. There will be no nine-figure bonanza, but it's safe to bet that France is looking for a multi-year deal at a solid, middling price point. Nominally, the Cubs have an incumbent at first base and no need to pony up for an aging veteran like France, but Michael Busch slugged just .393 in 2026. In 210 more plate appearances than France had, he hit one fewer home run. In 2027, the Cubs need a better plan for (if nothing else) shielding him from left-handed pitching. Could France be the right mixture of insurance policy and complement? It would, seemingly, waste a little bit of value somewhere. Busch is an above-average first baseman, too, so if both France and Busch are on the roster, one leaks defensive value by finding some of their playing time at DH. France isn't a traditional lefty-masher, either. He has virtually no platoon split, for his career, though some of the adjustments that leavened his overall numbers in 2026 also led to more destruction against southpaws. That's ok, though. In the optimal version of the Cubs signing France, both he and Busch play at least 80% of the time; they needn't be in a standard platoon. Another team is likely to have a sharper need for France's skills, and the Cubs need to be careful not to overpay for him. If (for instance) the bidding stretches to three years, Chicago should bow out. If France signs a relatively affordable deal, though, the Cubs should be interested in having it be with him. He's smart, dedicated and a huge plus off the field. Few teams value those things more highly than the Cubs do, and France also fits the team's short-term needs nicely on the diamond. They don't need to sign him, but France is one of several options they should explore as they try to round out their lineup, even as more of their focus rests on their weak pitching staff. Image courtesy of Denis Poroy-Imagn Images View full article

Tarik Skubal will be the hotness, for however long his free agency lasts. Wherever he eventually signs, he'll break the record for total guaranteed dollars and annual average value for a starting pitcher, because he brings all the things teams look for in their aces. His raw stuff is at the top of the scale. So are his results. Skubal is even more durable than most modern starters, although he did finally miss some time in 2026. He's the complete package. The Chicago Cubs, of course, don't typically pay for the complete package. Complete packages are wildly expensive, and sometimes, they turn out to be defective or unduly fragile, even though they weren't advertised as such. Better to shop on Temu. If you buy the high-end stuff there, it'll still be a knockoff, but it might be a high-quality knockoff, and you'll have more to spend on a second thing from Temu, or on fast-casual dining (instead of a steakhouse), or on a middle-shelf shot of whiskey. It's not a popular approach, and it's not clear whether it's the right one, but the smart money is always on Jed Hoyer spending smart money, rather than big money. This winter, Skubal won't be the smart money option. It'll be Trevor Rogers, the Orioles southpaw who hits free agency with far fewer bona fides and no chance of cracking $200 million in earnings (let alone $300 million), but who's also a year younger than Skubal—and maybe not as much worse as he looks, at first glance. Why Trevor Rogers is the Stealth Ace of This Winter's Class Rogers hits free agency after pitching for the Orioles for parts of the last three seasons, but he entered pro baseball as a first-round pick by the Miami Marlins, in 2017. With the Fish, he became a top prospect, prized for the deceptiveness of his low-slot delivery and the way his fastball seems to jump on hitters. Injuries and other health problems have always been his bugaboo. Since reaching the majors in 2020, he's dealt with COVID (the actual illness, not just the logistical nightmares); back trouble; a lat strain; a biceps strain; a hyperextended knee; and, in 2026, a severe case of the flu that knocked him out of the rotation for three weeks and left him weakened for his first few starts even after returning. When he's been on the mound, however, Rogers has flashed some marvelous things. In 2025, once he returned from a prolonged absence due to that knee injury, he mowed down opponents ruthlessly, with a 1.81 ERA and a 24.6% strikeout rate in 18 starts. After a rocky start in 2026 (and that prolonged period of struggle as he regained weight and strength throughout the late spring), he posted a 2.90 ERA in 20 starts beginning June 1, averaging more than six innings per outing. Always a nightmarish at-bat for fellow lefties, Rogers succeeds or fails based on his ability to get out opposite-handed batters. On that score, there's some bad news: his changeup took heavy damage in 2026. Opponents hit .336 against it. However, the pitch has a good movement profile, tumbling nicely off the plane of his flat, running four-seamer, and it reliably induces ground balls. Meanwhile, Rogers can miss bats with his fastball, which is more essential than ever in the age of ABS, and he's showing growing facility with his sinker, cutter and sweeper, with the former two forcing some weak contact and the latter racking up whiffs in left-on-left matchups. How Joining the Cubs Could Take Rogers's Game to the Next Level The best way for a Cubs fan to conceptualize Rogers might be as a better version of Matthew Boyd. The younger lefty has just a bit more funk on his fastball, but he also has better control than Boyd—or almost anyone, for that matter. Rogers walked 6.9% of opposing batters in 2025, and that figure fell to 5.6% in 2026. Focus on those 20 starts in which he was fit and firing, and it falls all the way to 4.4%. That he can fill up the zone that way without giving up home runs at an alarming rate sets him apart from Boyd and Shota Imanaga, and it makes clear why he'll be in high demand this offseason, even after the Orioles attached draft-pick compensation to him by extending the qualifying offer to him at the beginning of the month. As good as his numbers looked, though, Rogers could have been even better—and might be, with a defense as good as the Cubs' behind him. According to Statcast, a leaky Orioles defense directly cost Rogers 6 runs last season. In a lighter workload (520 batters faced, compared to Rogers's 699), Boyd got an 8-run boost from working in front of the Cubs' defenders, who won the Team Fielding Bible Award for the second year in a row. Rogers isn't as defense-dependent as Boyd and his ilk, because he strikes out more batters than they do. Put him in front of an elite team defense for a full season, though, and Rogers might well be a Cy Young Award contender. Indeed, he was one (in a down-ballot way) even in 2025, when he didn't pitch enough innings to make a serious push for the award and only had a fair-to-middling Baltimore defense behind him. The Price Tag on a Trevor Rogers Deal Because the Cubs spent past the first competitive-balance tax threshold in 2026, signing any free agent with a qualifying offer attached to them comes at a relatively heavy cost. Chicago would give up its second- and fifth-highest picks in the 2027 MLB Draft in the process of signing Rogers and lose some spending power in the all-important international free agent market. The hurler is also likely to command a four- or five-year deal worth somewhere north of $23 million per year. That's a hefty investment. Comparing Rogers to Joe Musgrove (who signed a five-year deal with his hometown Padres for $100 million that began in 2023) from 2022 illustrates that the price tag includes a premium based on the rarity of frontline lefty starters being available in free agency, even if they're relatively unaccomplished. In this case, though, it might make sense to roll the dice. The injuries that have made Rogers's progress toward stardom so start-stop haven't been major arm maladies. He's young enough to be viable even at the end of a six-year deal, if adding that would get a deal over the line and spare the team something in the annual average value department. Few pitchers on this (or any) market offer the ability to rack up strikeouts, minimize walks and keep the ball in the park; Rogers checks all those boxes. The slew of hurlers available without draft picks attached to them make spending that capital on this guy a big bet, but Rogers's profile suits the Cubs nicely. They can make him better, and he would do the same for them. He might be Temu Tarik Skubal, but when you put it that way, isn't he a bargain? Image courtesy of John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images View full article

When the Cubs and Pete Crow-Armstrong agreed on a lucrative six-year contract extension this spring, Crow-Armstrong received a $5-million signing bonus. The deal technically begins in 2027, though, so rather than having his salary boosted significantly this year, he played his MVP-caliber breakout season on a salary of $894,000. The injustice of that number will be ameliorated somewhat later this month, when Crow-Armstrong officially receives what will certainly be the largest payout in the brief history of the league's pre-arbitration bonus pool. Next Thursday, Crow-Armstrong will be named the 2026 National League Most Valuable Player. That will trigger a $2.5-million bonus for him, as part of the $50-million league-wide bonus distribution that goes to players who have yet to qualify for arbitration. The pool was created as part of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, to correct some of the imbalance in earning power between veterans and young players who are still under team control. Awards bonuses are just one part of the bonus pool. Whatever money is left from the $50 million in initial funds is distributed proportionally, based on the wins above replacement (according to a joint WAR formula that uses both FanGraphs's and Baseball Reference's versions of the stat) accumulated by the top 100 pre-arbitration players. Crow-Armstrong's historic season saw him compile 10.2 jWAR, which is a whopping 3.2% of the total jWAR generated by those 100 leaders. Therefore, even though this year will see a record number of awards bonuses doled out and more of the fund taken up by those payments than is typical, Crow-Armstrong will get more than $1 million for his WAR totals, in addition to the bonus for winning the MVP. That will edge him past Paul Skenes for the honor of having earned the most money via this system in one season, since the system was created ahead of the 2022 campaign. Skenes earned $3.43 million last year, when he was the Cy Young Award winner in the NL. Crow-Armstrong is likely to earn around $3.56 million, according to a North Side Baseball review of the relevant WAR totals and projections of awards balloting. That's a nice head start on the earning that will begin in earnest for Crow-Armstrong next season. His 2027 salary will be $10 million. Adding his 2026 salary, his pre-arbitration bonus payday, his signing bonus for the long-term deal and a (small) playoff share, he'll make nearly that much this year, too. Since he'll no longer be in the pre-arbitration service time bracket, Crow-Armstrong can't earn bonuses via the same system again next fall, but he'll still be in position to boost his earnings if he earns MVP votes again. Crow-Armstrong's contract contains escalators based on his finishes in MVP voting over the first five of the six-year term of the deal. His 2031 and 2032 salaries each rise by $2 million for each MVP award he wins, beginning in 2027. For each time he finishes second or third, those years' salaries rise by $1 million. For each time he finishes fourth or fifth, it's an extra $750,000 in those last two seasons, and for each time he finishes sixth through 10th, it's $500,000. If (for instance) Crow-Armstrong wins a second MVP award, finishes third once more and lands in the top 10 another time between now and 2030, he'd make $7 million more in 2031 and 2032 than his guaranteed $60 million across those two campaigns. How he finishes in 2031 can also boost his 2032 salary, so he has a lot of chances to increase his earnings by a wide margin over the next half-decade. The pre-arbitration pool is meant to mirror contract clauses like the one in Crow-Armstrong's new deal. Although it mostly serves to shift leverage from teams to players in contract negotiations like the ones between the Cubs and their center fielder early this year, it also facilitates those negotiations in some team-friendly ways. Absent the pool and its promise of boosting Crow-Armstrong's 2026 earnings if he had just this kind of season, the player and his agent might have been more reluctant to have a long-term deal start next season, rather than this one. Getting deals like this done is easier when a team doesn't have to rejigger its budget for the season just weeks ahead to do it, and the pool therefore made it easier for the sides to get together on the Crow-Armstrong contract—one of the chief achievements of Jed Hoyer's tenure as the Cubs' top baseball decision-maker. The only bad news, for the Cubs, is that Crow-Armstrong was almost alone in earning a chunk of the pool this year. Ben Brown will get somewhere around $220,000 for his strong (though injury-disrupted) season, but in March, the team surely hoped that players like Matt Shaw, Daniel Palencia and Moisés Ballesteros would qualify for payouts via this system. Ranking by jWAR is hardly a perfect way to capture players' real value, but in short, the Cubs had only one of the top 80 pre-arbitration players in 2026, and only two of the top 100. Every other NL Central club had at least two of the top 50. In the top 100, the Brewers had five players; the Pirates and Cardinals had four each; and the Reds had two. With a veteran core and far more spending power than their rivals, the Cubs don't need to lead the league in bonus pool payouts or players who qualify for it. Getting players over the line and into that group of payees reflects a real ability to find and create value with cost-controlled players, though, and the Cubs need to do it better, going forward. In so many ways, the 2026 season was a story of Crow-Armstrong carrying an organization that otherwise failed on most markers. This is one last way to throw that state of affairs into sharp relief, but it's also another chance to marvel at how far ahead of the field Crow-Armstrong's season stood, in so many ways—and how much the team will benefit from having locked him up through 2032 before he busted out. Image courtesy of Katie Stratman-Imagn Images View full article

Jazz Chisholm Jr. had a tough final season with the New York Yankees. The svelte second baseman stole 41 bases, but his strikeout rate climbed, his OPS dropped by over .100, and when the campaign ended, the Yankees elected not to extend him a qualifying offer. A year or two ago, he looked like one of the marquee prospective free agents of the 2026-27 class. Now, he's unlikely to get a big payday this winter. For the Chicago Cubs, though, that might all be good news. Both Seiya Suzuki and Ian Happ are free agents, and neither is particularly likely to return. The Cubs therefore need to make some major investments in the corner outfield market, but they can't afford to sign such a player to a long-term, high-dollar deal. Chisholm might just be the perfect fit for the team, on what would be a short-term deal with upside both ways. In November 2022, the Los Angeles Dodgers non-tendered Cody Bellinger. The former National League MVP had fallen a long way in a short time, after separate injuries to his knee and shoulder hampered him and resulted in ugly offensive stat lines in 2021 and 2022. Bellinger's talent was still evident, but given his two-year slump and the big payday that would have avaited him in a final trip through arbitration, it was no big surprise that the Dodgers cut him loose. The Cubs swooped in not long afterward, though, signing Bellinger to a one-year, $17-million contract that would turn out to be a boon for the player and a bargain for the team. On the North Side, Bellinger rediscovered his form and became a key cog in the team's resurgent lineup. When he hit free agency again the next winter, the sides got together again, on a more lucrative (but still short-term) deal that included an opt-out after 2025. It might be the best signing of the Jed Hoyer Era, on a strict value basis. You can see where I'm going with all this. It's possible that Chisholm, who will turn 29 years old next February, will push for a long-term deal this month, while he's unencumbered by the qualifying offer. If, however, he's open to a flexible short-term deal whereby he would move to left field and try to establish a much better platform for a second run at free agency, the Cubs should be all over the opportunity. Of course, that would represent a position switch for the Bahamian star, and it'd be a big move down the defensive spectrum. He came up as a second baseman, then moved to center field for a spell, and he's been back on the infield since the Yankees acquired him two and a half years ago. He rated very well at second base in 2026, too, according to Outs Above Average. In fact, his glovework at second is the only thing that kept him near star level this season, going by those numbers. But those numbers are liars. Chisholm's defense was solidly below average, according to Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) from Sports Info Solutions. He posted -6 DRS at the keystone this year, with poor range (especially to his right). When you watch him on tape, it's easy to tell which stat is right. Chisholm is not a plus defensive infielder. He also wasn't a good defender in center field, but that was a while ago, and the Cubs don't need him to be a center fielder. In left field, Chisholm profiles quite well. Some of the best plays he made at second in 2026 even came on balls hit in the air, over his head. He might not be eager to make the change, but a move to an outfield corner would be good for his defensive value. It would also give him a chance to focus on fixing what went wrong at the plate in 2026. In a nutshell, what went wrong at the plate was that the lefty swinger got pull-happy. After hitting 31 home runs in his first full season with the Yankees, Chisholm tried to produce even more power in 2026, and he ended up rolling over far too often. A whopping 27.7% of his batted balls were pulled on the ground, which was not only the highest share of his career, but the sixth-highest among the 274 batters who had at least 200 total batted balls in 2026. It was a waste of Chisholm's speed, and it also led to his increased strikeout rate. On balance, he's still a dynamic offensive player. He stole 41 bases in 50 tries and hit 19 home runs. He drew 56 walks. To get back to the level of production of which everyone agrees he's capable, though, Chisholm will have to retreat a bit from his all-or-nothing approach. He's exactly the kind of hitter with whom John Mallee routinely does good work; he would thrive in the Cubs' hitting system. A true one-year deal is unlikely, but there might be common ground on a structure whereby the Cubs guarantee Chisholm up to $60 million, but give him the chance to opt out of most of that and return to free agency after 2027 or 2028. If Chisholm is open to that, the Cubs should give it a whirl. The final question would be about the player's makeup, and it's a legitimate one. Chisholm's play is stylish, but it often looks flippant, and he's rubbed multiple sets of teammates and coaches the wrong way. It's somewhat telling that the Yankees didn't extend him the QO, letting him leave for nothing. There's no question that Chisholm is a different kind of person than Alex Bregman, Dansby Swanson or Nico Hoerner. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. The Cubs need a bit more varied a set of personalities in the clubhouse. They need some looseness and swagger to balance what is a tightly wound, very intense team. Chisholm might benefit, too, not only from interacting with the serious professionalism of Swanson and Bregman but from Pete Crow-Armstrong's combination of cocksure and intense. Chisholm is the player whose talent outstrips his likely cost by the most this winter. There are reasons for that, but the Cubs need to be open to the idea that those reasons are market inefficiencies, rather than ironclad condemnations of Chisholm. He might be the player who can galvanize their team and leave room for all the rest of the work they need to do this offseason. Image courtesy of Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images View full article

Yeah.... but sometimes, man, a few numbers like that just don't tell a meaningful story. Michael King is a frontline starter. Javier Assad is a swingman. I'm a huge believer in Assad, relatively speaking! But any attempt to draw an equivalency between these two is just taking us down the wrong road, imo.

Not wrong!

(And those two evaluations, taken together, are why the value proposition is about right on each. 😄 )

I've become a broken record on this: the Cubs are a big-market team with big-market dreams, and they should be held to a standard befitting that status. That means they should spend big money each offseason to make their club better, and as they head into an offseason chock-full of big decisions, it means they should be extremely aggressive—not just financially, but in their embrace of some risk and the restructuring of a roster that has not kept up with the Brewers for the last decade. To sketch out such a busy winter, I turned to our Offseason Blueprint tool, wherein you can build your ideal Cubs roster for 2027 one piece at a time. Check it out and build your own blueprint, but in the meantime, here's mine. A Trio of Reunions: Re-Signing Players on Whom the Cubs Can't Improve One of the harsh realities of this particular offseason is that the free-agent class is not rich with great choices, particularly on the position-player side. I therefore started my blueprint by forecasting re-ups between the Cubs and three role players who were important to the 2026 team, to set a solid floor for their roster-building. I slotted in Carson Kelly, whom the tool prices at $11 million per year. (I think that's a little high, but it's close enough.) This is not, in my opinion, an especially likely reunion. Nor is it an ideal solution at catcher. I've written about this already. I think the Cubs should be looking for the next version of Kelly, on whom they got a great deal two winters ago, rather than either re-signing Kelly or turning the position over to overhyped prospect Owen Ayers. An updated version of Kelly from two years ago really isn't out there, though, and the Cubs seem to believe much more than I do in Ayers, so I expect them to sign a lower-level backstop and go into the season with Miguel Amaya and Ayers as Plan A behind the plate. On balance, I think they'd be better off sticking with Kelly for a bit longer, at least as a failsafe. It would be relatively easy, should Ayers work out the way the team believes he will, to jettison Amaya, so there's little risk of a real (or certainly a problematic) surplus. I also advocate for the team bringing back two players they acquired from the Mets this summer: outfielder Tyrone Taylor and left-handed pitcher David Peterson. Taylor is a great fit for a roster that features a lefty-batting primary center fielder, in Pete Crow-Armstrong. He can also fill in admirably in the corners; he's just good enough to trust as an injury fill-in regular. For reasons that will become clear later, filling an outfield slot with a trustworthy right-handed bat was important. Peterson, meanwhile, made tangible improvements after joining the Cubs and should have drawn a playoff start. He should fit solidly into the fourth spot in the team's rotation, if things go well. The First Big Splash: A Big Bid on a Posted Slugger It's unlikely that Teruaki Sato will break the bank. He seems positioned for a deal similar to the one signed by Seiya Suzuki five winters ago, when the Cubs nabbed Suzuki on a five-year deal worth $85 million. (They also paid Suzuki's NPB team, the Hiroshima Carp, over $14 million as a posting fee, so their total investment in Suzuki was approximately $100 million.) Sato ranks ninth on our DiamondCentric free agent list. MLB Trade Rumors projects that he'll sign for $80 million over five years; FanGraphs projects $100 million over the same term. Suzuki was a slightly safer candidate to bring his productive bat to the American majors. He turned 28 in August of his first year Stateside; Sato will turn 28 next March. Suzuki put up a better OPS and (crucially) better strikeout and walk figures in his final seasons in Japan than Sato did. Sato has been compared more often to Munetaka Murakami, the biggest name among Japanese hitters who came over last winter, whose swing-and-miss issues limited his market. For many outsiders, what's buoying Sato's market is merely the fact that Murakami outperformed the modest two-year deal he signed with the White Sox last offseason. I know our Jason Ross is not a big believer in Sato, but I am. Though he's more aggressive than Murakami (or Suzuki), Sato has much better feel for contact than Murakami did in his final years in Japan. Watching him, I see a more flexible swing and a quieter operation, and that was reflected in his in-zone contact rates in NPB. Sato also handles breaking stuff well. He might have to make some difficult adjustments to handle the velocity common in MLB, but I believe he'll hit almost as well as Suzuki did over his first five big-league seasons. Sato is a lefty batter, like Murakami, and like Murakami, he played third base more than any other position during his time in NPB. Evaluators expect him to play more first base in the States, but I think the Cubs should make a big bid and reel him in to become their starting right fielder. If he doesn't work out there but his bat is solid, he might also be able to take over for Michael Busch, should the latter continue to underperform at first. (A quick note on Busch, while we're here, because I keep hearing whispers along these lines: No, he can't play anywhere but first base. He's not a good enough athlete or a skilled enough defender to play even a corner outfield spot. It's a flat, firm no. He's a first baseman, and if his bat isn't good enough to be a plus first baseman, he simply won't be an above-average player. Accept that. Acknowledge it. Your hope for him has to stay tightly focused on the recovery of his power in 2027 and beyond.) The Much-Needed Shakeup: Trades for Joe Ryan and Yandy Díaz This is not a pleasant thought, but the fact is that the Cubs' window is not wide-open. They're not starting a competitive cycle; they're nearing the end of one. It's time, therefore, for a big move whereby the team cashes in some long-term, low-intensity value for players who can help them make the most of the 2027 season. I suggest two separate deals in which the team recoups some of the talent it's losing via free agency this year, while moving players whose value will always be higher for other teams than for Chicago. That means trading Pedro Ramírez and Kevin Alcántara to the Twins for starting pitcher Joe Ryan. With a cadre of star infielders locked up on long-term deals, moving Ramírez on the heels of his strong rookie campaign could allow Chicago to pick up a two-time All-Star hurler with frontline starting upside. Ryan has a 3.79 career ERA and a 27.3% career strikeout rate. He's been much, much better before the All-Star break than after it, throughout his career, so the team needs to deal for him with a plan in mind. He should be lightly used early in the season, so he can be healthy and fresh come September and October. Do that, though, and Ryan is a perfectly strong playoff-caliber starter. Should he fail again down the stretch, the Cubs would (hopefully) be able to turn to the likes of Cade Horton and/or Ben Brown, whose injury issues make them impossible to count on for the first half but who could be brought along slowly to prepare them for high-value appearances next fall. It also means trading Matt Shaw (and, inevitably, something else) for Yandy Díaz of the Rays. Díaz is getting old. He's under contract for just one more year (like Ryan), and he'll cost $13 million. On the other hand, he's an on-base ace and a righty bat with above-average raw power. He would bring balance and reliability to the top half of the Cubs lineup. Tying up the designated hitter spot is suboptimal, perhaps, but too many teams let that stop them from fielding a hitter as solid as Díaz. Shaw is still under team control for five more seasons, but he's never going to be an above-average corner outfielder, and the Cubs are committed to Nico Hoerner and Alex Bregman at the only other positions Shaw might plausibly play. They should swap him for Díaz and accept the fact that they're all-in. The Big-Money Ace So far, we've reinforced the rotation and the lineup, but you've been waiting for the big name and the big dollars. Where can the team realistically try to turn the corner from Wild Card contenders to serious October threats? You've waited long enough. Let's talk about Michael King. The Cubs have been interested in King for a long time. I propose that they be the ones to land him this time, adding roughly $30 million in annual average value to their payroll on a three- or four-year deal. King opted out of his contract with the Padres this fall, after shutting down the Cubs in impressive fashion in late September and ending their season. He's not the household name or the reliable workhorse that Tarik Skubal is, but that's why he'll cost far, far less than Skubal will. Ideally, perhaps, the Cubs would be in on Skubal. Ideally, they'd also have much better depth already, so that Skubal could be the capstone on a championship-caliber roster. That's not where they stand as the offseason gets underway, Therefore, they need to turn their attention to King, instead. They can land him without being left hamstrung as they pursue other improvements. 3 More Important Insurance Policies In theory, you could almost call the above a complete offseason plan. Make the moves enumerated here, and the 2027 Cubs would go: Lineup Yandy Díaz - DH Pete Crow-Armstrong - CF Alex Bregman - 3B Teruaki Sato - RF Michael Busch - 1B Nico Hoerner - 2B Carson Kelly - C Tyrone Taylor - LF Dansby Swanson - SS Bench Miguel Amaya Gabriel Arias James Triantos Starting Rotation Michael King Joe Ryan David Peterson Justin Steele Edward Cabrera Bullpen Ryan Zeferjahn Daniel Palencia Ryan Rolison Jacob Webb Shelby Miller Eric Orze Phil Maton Riley Martin That's respectable. Whether it's better than 2026 is debatable, but this team is losing not only a slew of starting pitchers (Matthew Boyd, Shota Imanaga, Clay Holmes and Kevin Gausman, plus the fact that Horton and Brown now exist under a cloud of injury worry) but Suzuki and Ian Happ, which meant it was always going to be hard to get back even to last year's level. However, I see three major weak points that still need to be addressed. First, the outfield isn't robust enough. There's not even really a backup listed here, with Shaw and Alcántara shipped out of town and Taylor forced into the starting lineup. The Cubs need someone akin to 2026 Michael Conforto, pushing Taylor to the bench a majority of the time, but it shouldn't be Conforto himself; doubling down on veteran finds like that is a bad idea. The starting rotation also isn't deep enough. Steele and Cabrera are better as names than as actual pitchers right now. Behind them lurk Brown and Javier Assad, plus (around July, you hope) Horton, as well as some other underwhelming options, but the Cubs need more depth. More depth means people can step in when injuries happen. It also means they can stretch the rotation to six hurlers more often, which is important for keeping the guys who are healthy fresh and available come the end of the year. Finally, the bullpen needs another sturdy arm. Counting on anything from Maton (whatever his remaining upside if he comes back healthy after knee surgery) feels foolish. Therefore, I have the team making three more free-agent moves. Jake Fraley is no great shakes. If he's your starting outfielder, you're always looking for the chance to upgrade that spot. However, as a platoon partner for Taylor, the Cubs could do much worse. Fraley missed much of 2026 due to sports hernia surgery, which should keep his market very tame. He's a step better than Conforto was perceived to be last winter; the team would have to guarantee him a roster spot and a seven-figure salary. They should do it. He's the right kind of gamble, as a complement to bigger moves like signing Sato and trading for Díaz. Kris Bubic would increase the team's susceptibility to an injury crisis in the rotation. So be it. He's also one of the highest-upside non-premium arms on this year's free-agent market. The southpaw would be a perfect final ingredient along with Ryan, King and the return of Peterson. The team would have so much starting depth that they'd end up struggling to juggle it, if everyone got and stayed healthy for a prolonged period, but if the Cubs don't plan to do that difficult balancing act, they'll end up doing a tougher, worse one: scrambling to find help when they suddenly don't have enough arms to field a rotation. Finally, the team should scoop up semi-disgraced slider monster Kevin Ginkel. The surface-level numbers turned sour in Ginkel's walk year with Arizona, but his slider still misses bats at an exceptional rate. Add him to a mix that features Zeferjahn, Palencia and Rolison, and you have a sturdy back end of the bullpen, after all. This would be a phenomenally expensive team. The Cubs would be over the second luxury-tax threshold, unless some major changes come to the collective bargaining agreement. They would also be stuck hoping for a lot of success in a short period; their outlook beyond 2027 would be somewhat dimmed. But if the team wants to go from where they are to where they want to be, they have to accept those tradeoffs. It's time to go for it, if only because they have no real alternative—and because the way things are now should be unsatisfactory to almost all Cubs fans. Image courtesy of William Liang-Imagn Images View full article

Seiya Suzuki can't leave the Cubs for nothing. Though the team will only receive a low-level draft pick if Suzuki signs elsewhere as a free agent this winter, they will, at least, receive some compensation for the loss. They extended Suzuki a one-year, $23.15-million qualifying offer ahead of Monday afternoon's deadline (and the starting point for true free agency), attaching the loss of a draft pick by a signing team to him whenever and wherever he signs. This doesn't preclude Suzuki re-signing with Chicago, but it ensures that they get a last morsel of value from him if he departs. Interestingly, the team eschewed the chance to offer the same deal to both Ian Happ and Matthew Boyd. Neither player changed teams during the 2026 season, and neither had received a qualifying offer before, so they could have been tagged the same way, but the Cubs clearly felt that neither would be worth the hefty salary they'd receive if they accepted the deal—and that there was at least some chance they would do so. Happ and Boyd, too, could re-sign with the Cubs, but should either head for greener pastures, the team won't get anything in return. Suzuki, 32, was a no-brainer to receive this offer. He's one of the top bats on the free-agent market. He batted .270/.368/.473 in the final year of his five-year contract with the Cubs, and has been one of the most reliably productive right-handed hitters in the majors over that half-decade. As Cubs fans know very well, that year-to-year consistency masks major streaks and slumps within seasons, but still, Suzuki has been an indispensable slugger for the Cubs during their emergence from a brief rebuilding phase. His defense vastly improved in 2026, thanks in no small part to the tutelage of Cubs outfield coach Quintin Berry, and he should successfully market himself as a corner outfielder, rather than a designated hitter. He's a lock to reject the offer. If the Cubs want him back, they'll have to pony up at least $25 million per year on a deal covering at least three seasons. The pick the Cubs might get to compensate for the loss of Suzuki is not a premium one. Because they were competitive-balance tax payers this year, they'll receive a pick after the fourth round. It's better than nothing, but that might also be part of the reason why the team didn't extend offers to Hepp or Boyd. The reward for whatever risk one sees in making that offer is not as great as it has been in recent years when the Cubs stayed below the first tax threshold. Image courtesy of Denis Poroy-Imagn Images View full article