Matthew Trueblood

The Brewers are absolutely never stagnant. That's the greatest lesson the Cubs can learn from their chief rivals, as they attempt to recover from a decade-long stretch of domination by Milwaukee that culminated in a championship Wednesday. Jed Hoyer's greatest shortcoming as a team builder is an insufficient comfort with rapid change. His Milwaukee counterpart, Matt Arnold, never forgets to keep his roster moving. Every front office makes regrettable moves, whether because the process was faulty or simply because of bad luck. Not long after Isaac Collins finished fourth in National League Rookie of the Year voting last year, the Brewers shipped him and reliever Nick Mears to the Royals in exchange for lefty reliever Angel Zerpa. Though he was instrumental in Team Venezuela's win in the World Baseball Classic, Zerpa only made 12 appearances for the Brewers (lousy ones, too) before needing Tommy John surgery. There will be duds. Hoyer has always feared those duds; that fear has stopped him from making many moves. He would never have traded Collins when Arnold did, so he would have avoided a mistake—although, again, Arnold's process might have been right. However, Arnold also traded Caleb Durbin back in February. Durbin finished one rung above Collins in Rookie of the Year voting last year, but the Brewers sent him packing, even though they didn't have a clear plan to backfill third base. In exchange, they landed Kyle Harrison, Shane Drohan and David Hamilton. Harrison was the team's co-ace in the first half; Drohan was a vital fill-in for the rotation in the middle of the season; and Hamilton finished with nine hits (two of them home runs) and 0.042 Championship Win Probability Added in October. Hoyer also never would have made that trade. Those are just two examples. They're extreme cases, too, and not wholly fair to Hoyer. The Cubs have, to their credit, been more active lately, as they learn by watching the Brewers trounce them year after year. In 2025, Hoyer was conservative at the trade deadline. In 2026, he first agreed to a double-acquisition of Reid Detmers and Ryan Zeferjahn, then (when the initial deal fell apart) pivoted and added three other players in two other deals, in addition to grabbing Zeferjahn. He made the Michael Busch trade. He made the Kyle Tucker trade. He signed Alex Bregman. He's evolved over the course of his tenure as the top baseball decision-maker; he's better than he was. Still, though, the Cubs change slowly. They invest in veterans, but that means less investment in player development and less pressure on everyone to consistently excel at that essential task of every organization. Fewer resources are allocated to scouting. Fewer interesting possibilities even occur to them. Part of Hoyer's pivot toward greater aggressiveness has been locking up his own players on long-term deals. The Pete Crow-Armstrong deal is an all-timer—a huge win. The Nico Hoerner deal, however, looks lightly regrettable. Both deals locked a player into the team's long-term firmament and made it harder for them to rapidly change, which they need to do. The Brewers are far ahead of them, and there's every chance they'll get even further ahead. They're younger; they're deeper. The Cubs can't keep up by relying on Crow-Armstrong, Bregman, Hoerner and Dansby Swanson as much as they did this year. The good news, of course, is that change has come to Hoyer's doorstep. He doesn't have to search very far for impetus to do it. The whole starting rotation from the end of the season are now, officially, free agents. So are Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki. So will be Carson Kelly. The Cubs have no choice but to change. The challenge, for an executive who has always preferred stability, is to replace his horde of outgoing players with ones who are as good or better, but also younger and more loosely held. More aggressive short-term deals might make sense. Unexpected trades (for instance, sending Matt Shaw and Pedro Ramírez to interested suitors in exchange for players like Zerpa, Harrison, Drohan and Hamilton) might make sense. One way or another, Hoyer has to engage in high-risk, high-variability roster-building. He might fall off that tightrope, but if he never gets onto it, the Cubs won't be crossing the ravine between them and the Brwwers, anyway. Comfort and ease are luxuries afforded only to big-market teams. The Brewers have gotten so good at living without them, though, that they've now denied those luxuries to the Cubs. Chicago has to get uncomfortable. They have to make changes that come with more acknowledged risk. If they don't, the next half-decade is going to look exactly like the last one, in Milwaukee and on the North Side of Chicago. Image courtesy of Michael McLoone-Imagn Images View full article

It's an unfortunate reality, but an urgent one: the Cubs have more to do with this winter than they have with which to do it. They're a good team, but not a great one—not good enough, to be sure, to challenge the mighty Brewers without major upgrades. They have a bad farm system, so the solutions to their pressing problems aren't coming from within the organization. They'll have to make external additions, and while they have ample money to spend on those additions, their budget isn't unlimited. Nor is the free-agent class teeming with great options, if you're a team aiming higher than a Wild Card berth. That means doing some triage, and for Jed Hoyer, the decisions about how to allocate his scarce resources should be pretty easy. The Cubs need pitching help much more than they need position-player help, so they need to spend big money and bundle whatever prospects they can to bolster the pitching staff. However, they also have to either re-sign or replace each of Seiya Suzuki, Ian Happ and Carson Kelly; rebuild a lumpy bench; and consider an upgrade or a platoon improvement at first base. Since most of the resources will need to go toward pitching, the hitters will have to be picked up on the cheap. Happily, buy-low options are easier to find this winter than star-caliber solutions. Here are five guys who finished 2026 in a rut and might thus be available at a bargain price, about whom the Cubs should at least be making some calls between now and the presumed lockout at the beginning of December. Spencer Horwitz: A Poor Man's Michael Busch, in Case Yours is Broken The Pirates got hold of Spencer Horwitz in the offseason between 2024 and 205, as part of a double-move by the Guardians in which they acquired the lefty-batting first baseman from Toronto and flipped him to Pittsburgh. Since then, he's been a reasonably useful platoon guy at first for the Bucs. He hit .272/.353/.434 in his first year on the senior circuit, playing a very slightly expanded version of the role he took on when he arrived in the bigs in full the previous campaign. He didn't hit for as much power as you'd like, even from a platoon guy, but he hit for average and got on base. That was true for the first chunk of 2026, too. In fact, he got even better. At the All-Star break, he was batting .280/.386/.455 and looking like a breakout guy. Alas, thereafter, he was dreadful. In 156 plate appearances down the stretch, Horwitz hit .180/.263/.201. He only had three extra-base hits; they were all doubles. It was a nightmare. He cratered. As we'll discuss shortly, though, Horwitz wasn't the only Pirates batter who fell into the abyss. Nor is he some decrepit veteran circling the drain. He's almost exactly the same age as Michael Busch. Plainly, Busch has more upside, given the power he showed in 2025. Horwitz isn't big, and he's not a high-end defender even at first. He wouldn't be a projectable upgrade on Busch. Rather, he'd come in as an option at designated hitter and a bit of a dice-roll—but also as an insurance policy, in case Busch continues his own downward trend. The Pirates probably aren't ready to give up on Horwitz outright, but the asking price on him ought not to be terribly high. It's a conversation worth having. Brandon Marsh: Oh My God, What Happened? Marsh is an All-Star—not a former All-Star, mind you, but a 2026 All-Star outfielder. He had put together an encouraging finish to the 2025 campaign, and he carried that over gloriously into 2026. At the break, he was hitting a slashing .301 and tracking toward over 20 homers for the year. He's only 28 years old; it looked like he was finally making good on considerable promise. Like Horwitz, though, he collapsed after the break, with a .502 OPS the rest of the way. Marsh, too, is virtually identical to Busch in age, but unlike Busch and Horwitz, he's due to be a free agent at the end of next year. For a Phillies team in transition, that makes him an intriguing trade candidate. Moving Bryce Harper would save them more money and headaches, and actuarially, a team should strive to hold onto a 29-year-old like Marsh, rather than a 34-year-old like Harper. Practically speaking, though, there's much more friction involved in trying to move Harper, and trading Marsh might yield what the Phillies want to balance an organization that's misshapen but still dedicated to winning. Marsh's underlying data suggests he shouldn't have gone quite as bad as he did, so maybe some positive regression is in store. Ryan O'Hearn: For When You're Shopping in the Horwitz Aisle But Prefer to Go Cheaper After a strong 2025 season with the Orioles and Padres, Ryan O'Hearn signed a two-year deal with the Pirates last winter. Early on, it looked like a win; he hit .288/.351/.487 with 16 home runs before the break. The wheels then came off. Amid a second half marred by six weeks on the injured list, O'Hearn batted .198/.268/.297 in 112 plate appearances to close out the year. He's owed $14.5 million for 2027. The Pirates are almost certain to move one of him and Horwitz, particularly given the bitter taste left in their mouths after the way their season ended. Horwitz, who's under long-term team control and might have upside, will be a more expensive acquisition. O'Hearn has the stronger overall track record, though, so as a short-term investment, he might be preferable. Again, he'd be a platoon DH, with the chance to take playing time from Busch as and when needed. Bryan Reynolds: The Three-Rivers Trifecta? No injury excuses, here. Reynolds played 162 games, batted 699 times and led the majors with 40 doubles. He batted .261/.365/.424 at age 31, in the third expensive year of seven on the extension he signed with Pittsburgh long ago. Unlike Happ, he's a true switch-hitter, capable of handling lefties and righties with virtually equal aplomb. His splits between season halves were not nearly as even, though. He batted only .229/.312/.347 after the All-Star break. His strikeout rate ticked up; his walk rate ticked down. He's expensive, and he's locked into a deal that ensures he'll be expensive for quite a while. There's enough meat on the bone, contractually, to limit what the Pirates could demand in trade for him, but he would be a meaningful upgrade over Happ as a left fielder. Taylor Ward: The One Who's Available for Nothing But Cash The four players above are all trade targets, but the downside of that avenue of roster upgrade is that the Cubs would be parting with the scarce resource of solid prospects. They can't afford guys with very high trade values; they don't have enough young talent. Ideally, then, they would bolster their lineup via free agency, not just trades. In a thin class for bats, though, they need to find a way to do that without putting more of their dollars in the hitter basket than they can afford. Taylor Ward is an interesting option in that vein. He had a great season for the Angels in 2025, prompting the Orioles to make an ambitious trade for him over the winter. His time in Baltimore was unhappy, though, as he went from patient to passive and gave back virtually all the power that made him so good with Anaheim in his last year there. He's a free agent at the end of the World Series, so the O's dealt him to Seattle at the trade deadline, where he only continued to spiral. Ward batted .125/.238/.148 in 101 plate appearances for the Mariners. Woof. I mean... woof. Ward tried to leverage the implementation of ABS by becoming more patient than ever, but ended up getting abused, instead. He has to figure out how to get back to getting off his 'A' swing more consistently, without losing that plate discipline. Fortunately, the fact that he was unable to do so for most of 2026 will keep him cheap in free agency. He's a right-handed bat who can handle DH duties or play left field. He's a good fit for the Cubs, albeit as a complementary piece, rather than a middle-of-the-order solution. Again, the Cubs should spend a lot of money this winter. None of the moves above should be thought of as alternatives to (say) re-signing Suzuki, which they should still explore. Eventually, though, they'll need to divert money or trade chips from the lineup toward the pitching staff. To fill the remaining gaps, they need to spot a few places where talented hitters' stock has fallen more than it ought to have. These are just a few of the possibilities along those lines. 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What Alex Bregman can do on the field—the statistical contribution he can make when it's his turn to bat and when the ball is hit his way—is plenty valuable. By the end of the 2026 season, that was obvious. Bregman was one of the best hitters in baseball from mid-July onward, and he won the Fielding Bible Award at third base for his supernal defense. Multiple teams were willing to give him a fat five-year deal last offseason, and most of that money is for the way he hits and fields. However, Bregman also has enormous value as a facilitator, a leader, and an organization changer. That's what made the Cubs willing to outbid the Red Sox and others for his services; it was the extra cushion they needed to feel safe spashing so much money on a player who would turn 32 just days after playing his first regular-season game for them. In those areas, he was arguably an even greater success in 2026 than on the stat sheet. The partnership of Bregman and Pete Crow-Armstrong, offensively, was about more than the fact that they hit back-to-back at the top of the lineup 24 times. They made improvements that followed the same patterns. They communicated about what they were seeing from each opposing pitcher. Bregman thrived down the stretch, but his input also helped Crow-Armstrong break the game, even while the veteran was still mired in a long early funk. Defensively, his partnership would be with shortstop Dansby Swanson. Bregman replaced Swanson as the highest-paid player on the team and as the team's resident emblem of intention to win and dedication to whatever that takes. Swanson was the first overall pick in 2015; Bregman was the second. Swanson won the 2021 World Series with the team from near Atlanta. Bregman won the World Baseball Classic and the Series in 2017, then another Series in 2022. Swanson's championship came at Bregman's expense, too, as his club beat Houston in that Fall Classic. The two players' history was interwoven, and they would need to prove they could achieve as much together as they had (seemingly) working at odds, to top one another. It couldn't have worked out more beautifully, or in a fashion more quintessentially Bregman. Here's the gist: In 2025, Swanson's defensive numbers dipped. That wasn't surprising. He was 31 years old, which is already getting a bit old for a shortstop in the majors today. He doesn't have an elite arm (or even, in truth, an average one), and though he learned long ago to get rid of the ball exceptionally quickly when needed, that can't make up for everything. He suffered, in particular, on exactly the balls you would expect an aging non-premium athlete to suffer on: ones hit to his right, where he had to range into the hole and make the toughest plays asked of shortstops. According to Baseball Savant, Swanson dropped from 16 and 12 runs saved in 2023 and 2024, respectively, to just 2 in 2025. The biggest difference came on balls that forced him to move toward third base: 2023: 8 Outs Above Average 2024: 2 2025: -1 The Cubs didn't do what many teams might have done in such a situation, though. First of all, they didn't even briefly consider moving Swanson to second base and trading Nico Hoerner. That would have been a viable option; Hoerner was an impending free agent until he signed a six-year extension last spring. The Cubs believed Swanson could still be a great defensive shortstop, though, and that Hoerner's defensive work as his double-play partner was too valuable to lose. Even with the same personnel in place, though, they could have more aggressively shaded their infield alignments, putting Swanson a step or two closer to the hole when there was a chance he would be called upon to make a play there. Instead, they used fairly traditional setups. The 2025 Cubs were 17th in shading their infield, doing so 53% of the time against left-handed batters and 6% of the time against righties. That led to a lot of plays that looked like this. ZzY4TWVfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0JsY0NBbDBNVVZjQUNsc0NBd0FIQlE1UkFGZ01XZ1FBQ2xNRlZBSUhDUUpRVlFzQw==.mp4 Seeing the ball zip past Swanson like that makes him seem slow, but that's unfair. Alec Bohm hit that grounder at 104 miles per hour. To make the play, Swanson needed to be a step farther in the direction he had to go. Failing that, not even a younger, more explosive player would get there. But the even more telling plays, perhaps, were those that looked more like this. TDZXS09fWGw0TUFRPT1fQTFSV1hWMVhYd0lBQ0ZvQVZBQUhCRkpXQUFBTUFGUUFVVlZVQndBRlVnUURWRmRR.mp4 This ball isn't hit so hard, and Swanson has the quick feet to run it down. However, because he started at a neutral position, he had to run an extra step or two before snaring the bounce. That meant throwing off-balance, on the run, which robbed him of the ability to be accurate and powerful. This is where being 31 and a bit less strong-armed than most shortstops caught up to him, but much of the reason was his starting position. Early in 2026, the same thing was happening too often. Swanson would flag down a ball that seemed ticketed for left field, but because he did so at the very edge of his range, he still couldn't record an out. R0JyUVlfWGw0TUFRPT1fQVFCWFZGTlFWVkVBQVFZTEJ3QUhCZzhIQUZnRkFGWUFWMTBBQTFWVUJ3TlJVMVpS.mp4 Over time, though, a (literal) shift took place. Bregman, who played with one of the game's most aggressive shifting teams in Houston before the league outlawed the true shift, advocated for a bit more proactive shading with his new club. They didn't become an extreme team, but they did become one of the league leaders in that area. In 2026, the Cubs shaded their infield 67% of the time against lefties and 14% of the time against righties, moving them into the top seven in shading, overall. Swanson started making plays that he couldn't make the previous year. YVlkam5fV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0JRa0ZVVkZXVmxRQUQxRUdBd0FIVlZkVEFBQUNVMVFBVXdFRENBRURWQXRUVWdkUw==.mp4 There were balls, like the one above, that would have been clean singles to left field in 2025 but became great plays in 2026. There were also plenty that might have become infield hits in 2025, but which ended up looking routine this year. YkJMUUJfVjBZQUhRPT1fQlFWU0JWWUFWd0FBRGx0VVZBQUhBdzlTQUZnQVZRQUFBMVlHQ0ZFTUJsZFZDUVJX.mp4 Swanson's numbers rebounded, especially on those balls that took him toward third base: he got back to 8 OAA on them. The way OAA tabulates value, that actually took a bite out of Bregman. He rated worse (-6 OAA) on balls to his left than he ever has before. But Bregman didn't care. By playing closer to the line against right-handed batters, he was better able to set himself for long throws when he made a play along the foul line, and he got better coming in on slowly hit balls. He was the best he's ever been at third, precisely because he ceded a bit of range to his superb partner on the left side of the infield. Communication between those two players is more important than many who watch the game from home might realize. They don't call each other off in quite the same way outfielders do, but there has to be an understanding between the shortstop and the third baseman: when to take a ball and when to let it go; whether your partner will break to cover a base, and how to back them up if they go for the ball instead; where your teammate should throw the ball, if fielding it took him in a direction that makes it hard for him to see the whole diamond. Bregman and Swanson worked gloriously together in their first year as a tandem, which helped the Cubs reach the postseason and provided hope for the short-term aging profile of each. That doesn't mean it won't get harder. As each moves into his mid-30s, they'll have to continue communicating, adapting and adjusting. Working together is important, but it can't entirely make up for the fact that each individual is getting a bit older, a bit slower and a bit less able to react in the blink of an eye. Next year, the Cubs' infield defense will probably be worse. That's the nature of investing so much in players who would ordinarily move off their positions, and slotting them into a roster that doesn't permit them to do so. What we saw in the first year of Bregman and Swanson, though, is that they're likely to weather those degradations better than most, because of their savvy and their shared commitment to doing whatever it takes to win. Image courtesy of William Liang-Imagn Images View full article

Image courtesy of Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images As I remind you every year, you shouldn't care at all about Gold Gloves. The process by which those awards are handed out makes them as meaningless as they often are maddening. They don't accurately reflect and reward the talent of big-leaguers, because they're voted on by managers and coaches who don't pay the right kind of attention to be good at evaluating defensive performance throughout the league. There's now a statistical element involved, to address some of the especially glaring errors made by that disinterested electorate in the past, but the process is still lousy and the results are often wrong. They also manufacture needless, vapid news cycles each fall by announcing "finalists" for the awards. In reality, the voting has already been done at that point, and no final round takes place pitting top vote-getters against each other. It's just a way to force people to talk about something an extra time or two—a cheap outrage machine. No, instead, you should care about the Fielding Bible Awards. No longer are they a mere piece of internet stuntwork by a startup. For 20 years, now, Sports Info Solutions has been seeking the votes of actual experts who agree to pay close attention to what's happening on the field, then giving out an award (just one at each position for the whole majors, rather than hewing to the obsolete notion that the American and National Leagues are truly distinct) for the best work at each spot. These are the awards that actually tell you who stands out among big-league defenders; these are the ones worth your time. This season, the Cubs took home three Fielding Bible Awards, for the first time ever. In fairness, the awards have expanded a bit over the years, making that more possible. SIS created a Multi-Position category in 2014; the Defensive Player of the Year in 2023; and the Defensive Team of the Year in 2025. Still, the three wins affirmed the brilliance that characterized the team's whole season, defensively. Alex Bregman won at third base. Pete Crow-Armstrong lost out on the center field award (more on that shortly), but won Defensive POY, and the team won Defensive Team of the Year, defending their crown after taking the inaugural version of that award in 2025. It's hard to convey how impressive Bregman's win is. To be crowned the best defensive third baseman in baseball at age 32 is extremely hard, in this day and age. The only player in the history of this award to win it at a more advanced age was Adrián Beltré, in 2012; he was 33. Pedro Feliz also won at age 32, in 2007. The league is getting younger at key defensive positions almost all the time, beginning to nudge even third basemen down the defensive spectrum by the time they hit their mid-30s. That looks unlikely to happen with Bregman—and with Dansby Swanson, who's the same age but played a plus defensive shortstop again in 2026. The left side of the Chicago infield was impressively ageless this year. Swanson and Nico Hoerner each finished sixth in the balloting at their own positions, which marks a noticeable decline. Swanson won the award at shortstop in 2023; Hoerner won it last year. They're both plus defenders, but that each slipped a bit on the leaderboard this year is fair. It's one good reminder that the team might not be quite as dominant with the gloves next year, as Bregman and Swanson turn 33 and Hoerner heads into his 30s. Another is that both Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki finished third in the voting at their outfield corners—another well-measured result, in each case, but not great news, since both will be free agents at the end of the World Series (and are past 30, making it unlikely that they age well defensively even if the Cubs re-sign them). If any one person should receive the Cubs' Team of the Year trophy, it might be Quintin Berry. The third-base coach and outfield instructor turned Suzuki's career around with the help he gave him on reading swings and getting good jumps in the outfield. He was also good at positioning the Cubs' outfielders, and it's under his tutelage that Crow-Armstrong has blossomed into the Defensive Player of the Year. Crow-Armstrong and Boston's Ceddanne Rafaela finished in such a dead heat for the center field award that not even looking at 1st-5th vote distributions separated them. The award went to Rafaela on a statistical tiebreaker, and that was a reasonable result. He applied his arm better than Crow-Armstrong did in 2026, and as the year went on, Crow-Armstrong slipped ever-so-slightly in the field, from an all-time jaw-dropper of a player to merely excellent. However, in the DPOY voting, he came out on top. Voters for that award probably weren't any less attuned to Rafaela's brilliance, but having players from other positions to consider tilted the dynamic just enough for Crow-Armstrong to win a much-deserved honor. While their pitching staff was atrocious and their offense came up short when they needed it most, the Cubs' defense was the best in baseball. They did everything well. Shota Imanaga even finished second in Fielding Bible Award balloting at pitcher, thanks in large part to his mastery in stopping opponents from running against him. With Bregman, Swanson and Hoerner hitting age-related inflection points; Happ, Suzuki, Imanaga, Carson Kelly and Matthew Boyd all headed for the open market; and much more being asked of Crow-Armstrong on offense, don't count on Chicago winning a third straight Defensive Team of the Year Award in 2027. In fact, they could slip back significantly on that front. That underscores the stakes of the offseason ahead, but this trio of trophies—for the impeccably professional Bregman, the sensational Crow-Armstrong and the well-oiled machine that was this team defense, for a second year in a row—is a well-deserved reward for an important achievement. It's a good reminder that while this season ended in deeply disappointing fashion, it was far from an unmitigated failure. View full article

Image courtesy of Chris Jones-Imagn Images The smaller the strike zone gets, the tougher the job of pitching becomes. That's self-evident. At first, though, one might be tempted to think that was solely because throwing strikes is harder (and walks are, therefore, more plentiful) when pitching to a smaller zone. It's not so. There's another layer of danger for a pitcher who has to throw to a smaller zone, consisting of the fact that the hitter also has a smaller zone to cover. That can produce more confident takes and more aggressive swings. It makes it harder to hunt whiffs and harder to limit hard contact. Every lost inch at the edges of the zone increases the importance of raw stuff. To succeed when the zone is small, you have to be able to dominate the batter. Infamously, the 2026 Cubs couldn't do that. Injuries and the shortcomings of their development infrastructure left them with a skeletal pitching staff for much of the season. According to StuffPro, from Baseball Prospectus, the Cubs were 21st in the majors. According to both Stuff+ and PitchingBot, which are published at FanGraphs, they were 24th. The team absolutely must be better in 2027, with specific regard to throwing hard, missing bats and overwhelming batters within that smaller zone. It's the only way they can get where they're trying to go. Here are five pitchers who could be available this winter, who have the stuff to be of help in this regard. Adrian Morejon, LHRP, Free Agent The Cubs have gotten lots of chances to see Morejon's dominance up close. Most recently, he mowed them down over two scoreless innings in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series. That must have been particularly painful for them, because they've long loved and prized Morejon. If the front office had had its druthers, he'd have been pitching for them, instead of against, in each of the last two Octobers. With the very definition of a power sinker (average velocity: 99.5 MPH), Morejon dominated this year. He racked up a career-best 30.4% strikeout rate, while keeping the ball on the ground exceptionally well. He wasn't available at the end of the Padres' loss to the Brewers in the NLDS, with what the team characterized as a "sticky" shoulder, so he heads into free agency with a slight cloud hanging over him, but if he's healthy, the Cubs need to be in on him. He's one of just six pitchers who posted a better StuffPro than Cubs righty Ryan Zeferjahn in 2026. Adding him would give them the scary back end of the bullpen they've lacked for several seasons now. Michael Petersen, RHRP, Marlins A tower of power, Petersen is 6-foot-7 and throws from an overhand slot, making him very different from Daniel Palencia and Zeferjahn. He would introduce a new element into the Cubs' bullpen, despite having a pretty similar arsenal to Palencia's and Zeferjahn's, on the surface. He leans heavily on a four-seam fastball, which hums in at 98 MPH with plus carry at the top of the zone. Off that, he spins a wicked, hard slider. He's a late bloomer, 32 years old but still under long-term team control, so the Marlins won't be motivated sellers. Players like this are always available, though, to a team who decides to buy into what they do well. Petersen fanned 30.1% of the batters he faced in 2026. The Cubs should try to be the team who buys into the raw stuff, at least gauging the asking price the perpetually rebuilding Marlins affix to him. Jacob deGrom, RHSP, Rangers Petersen is the quintessential under-the-radar guy. deGrom practically is the radar, he's so much on it. A trade for him would look about as different from a deal for Petersen as is possible, too. At the last moment, the Rangers tried to make deGrom available at the trade deadline, but he rejected a trade to the Atlanta suburbs. He might be just as stubborn this winter, but the Cubs should swoop in and make an inquiry. There's one guaranteed year left on deGrom's contract, which will pay him $37 million at age 38. That's a big cost, and deGrom has a long injury history to go with the hefty salary. Texas might therefore be ready and willing to move him again this winter, and though he wouldn't come free, his acquisition cost would (however surprising this might sound) be considerably lower than that of Petersen, at least in terms of young players. Even as he hurtles toward 40, deGrom throws 97 and has that buzzsaw of a 91-MPH slider, and he fanned 30.1% of the hitters he saw in 2026. He's worth the risk and the expense. Dustin May, RHSP, Free Agent Anyone following the Brewers this month has seen the downside of May. The upside is there, too, but it's harder to see. He throws 97, with both a four-seamer and a sinker, and he adds three breaking pitches with swing-and-miss potential: hard cutter, sweeper, and curveball. It's a deep arsenal of plus stuff; that's why the Brewers traded for him in August. His command has been the big problem. He gave up some gut-punch homers down the stretch (and one in the NLCS) because of poor sequencing and/or location. He'll be less than a marquee free agent at the end of the World Series, but the raw stuff is still very good. With the right pitching coach, he might be able to put together a full season that looks more like his strong first half of this year, with the Cardinals. AJ Blubaugh, RHP, Astros This is one of those rare chances, in the modern game, to sneak in and take advantage of a club that's truly stupid. Almost every team is getting smarter by the day, but in Houston, they've chosen to turn away from the advances they made in the past. They're an organization in chaos, which might leave Blubaugh available to a smart executive. He was strictly a reliever for the team in 2026, but he racked up 96 innings by often working multiple frames. His sweeper and changeup are both plus-plus pitches, and when working in shortish bursts, he throws 96 MPH. He'd be a candidate for a move back to the starting rotation, but failing that, he'd also be extremely valuable in the role he filled for Houston this year. The Astros are in disarray; the Cubs could benefit from it. One way or another, the Cubs must bring in better arms this winter—not just better, overall, but livelier and more capable of beating hitters inside the zone, regardless of its size. There are plenty of pitchers who could help them do so, but these five stand out as opportunities they must explore. View full article

Image courtesy of Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images Catcher is a position fraught with uncertainty for the Cubs this offseason. Carson Kelly's contract contains a mutual option for 2027, but Kelly is in position to earn more than the $6 million in new money that triggering that option would give him, so he'll turn down his side thereof and become a free agent. The Cubs would be interested in having Kelly back at that price, but once they face the specter of paying market value for him (in all likelihood, a two-year deal worth at least $15 million), they're likely to quail a bit. However, they can't plunge forward without replacing Kelly, who's been a stalwart backstop for them over the last two seasons. Miguel Amaya's 2026 season was fine, but no more than that, and it's fairly clear that his body will never allow him to be a first-division regular at the most demanding position on the diamond. He played only about 40% of the time in 2026, and even then, he struggled to produce any meaningful pop. He's a solid defender, but he needs to be kept in the role he had this season; making him the true starter would mean accepting a downgrade at the spot. The natural alternative is close at hand, though. Top prospect Owen Ayers, who caught huge helium as he climbed from the bottom of the minor-league ladder to the top this year. After spending all of 2025 with Low-A Myrtle Beach, Ayers took just a fortnight to solve the Midwest League this spring, and was promoted that quickly to Double-A Knoxville. By late July, he'd forced the team's hand, and he got another bump, to Triple-A Iowa. For the year, he batted .289/.403/.526, with 25 home runs in 538 plate appearances. That produced lots of excitement among those who follow Cubs prospects closely. Ayers even broke into some national top-100 prospect lists. Count me as a skeptic. It was a distortionary season for hitter evaluation throughout the minors. Batters put up huge numbers at all levels below the majors. Ayers rode that wave, but that means that his numbers need some air taken out of them. He also saw a major degradation in his performance when he went from Knoxville to Des Moines, which doesn't feel like a coincidence: they use the big-league ball at Triple-A. High-A South Bend: 151 DRC+, 224 wRC+, 1.156 SLGCON Double-A Knoxville: 145 DRC+, 165 wRC+, .845 SLGCON Triple-A Iowa: 99 DRC+, 92 wRC+, .481 SLGCON If Ayers were a 22-year-old making a rapid but on-time ascent through the minors, those splits would be no great cause for concern. He wasn't. The 2024 19th-round pick turned 25 in June. He only became age-appropriate for a prospect when he reached Iowa, where he looked lost at the plate. Reports on Ayers's defense behind the plate are mixed. He draws good reviews for athleticism and for his throwing arm, but he's not a finished product as a receiver. Again, that's no problem if a player is 22 or 23 years old, but it's much more of a concern if they're still unrefined as a defender at the most important defensive position as they pass the halfway point of their 20s. The Cubs shouldn't plan on having Ayers play a major role early in 2027. My own opinion is that they should have traded him at the deadline, when his value was higher than it is now—and perhaps higher than it will ever be again. It's fine to keep him around, and even hold out considerable hope for him as (if nothing else) a replacement for Amaya in 2028, but to be as good at the catcher spot as they were in 2026, they need to find this year's version of the player they signed ahead of the 2025 season, on an affordable two-year deal. Bad news: no such catcher is available this winter. Kelly was a unique opportunity, in that he became a free agent younger than most catchers do; he had just turned 30 in July 2024. He had also just completed a season in which he significantly reduced his strikeout rate, not by trading power for contact, but by getting more aggressive within the strike zone and avoiding two-strike counts better. He was, at that moment, a clear plus on defense, although he was a bit worse late in his Cubs tenure. The Cubs would, ideally, replace him with a player who'll be 30 or younger for at least half of 2027; saw their key performance indicators move in the right direction in 2026; and is clearly big league-caliber defensively, if not actively helpful on the run prevention side. That guy's just not out there this winter. Projects aplenty are available. Ryan Jeffers is young enough to fit the mold, and he's an even better hitter than Kelly. There are two problems with him: He's a subpar defensive catcher; and Unlike Kelly, he's highly valued by the market and clearly the best catcher available in free agency. He'll make something like five times what Kelly got two years ago, over a longer term. He might even get a qualifying offer from the Minnesota Twins. Tyler Stephenson is closer to being the same situation. He had a rough enough 2026 to keep his asking price from ballooning alongside that of Jeffers. He did trim his strikeout rate this season, and though he's extremely messy as a defender, the pieces of a good catcher are there. He's a more reasonable target, with real upside if he can get to just a bit more of his power. The team would have to place major trust in its catching department to help him along defensively, though. Every other free-agent catcher with any meaningful track record is at least Kelly's age. Buying into a catcher at that age—including Kelly itself—is never a good idea; those players decline too rapidly. Two or three more interesting players might hit free agency after being non-tendered next month, and trades are always an option, but the reality is that the Cubs will have a hard time maintaining what they got from their catchers in 2026. In an array of imperfect options, signing Stephenson might be the most appealing, if his price tag doesn't get unexpectedly unmanageable. Retaining Kelly or promoting Ayers might turn out to be solid alternatives, not because they actually figure to be good next year, but because they might be the smartest and/or easiest ways to make the best of a bad situation. Ideally, the Cubs would find the surprising but legitimate good solution in the midst of the dreck. They got very lucky that Kelly was available when he was, though, and they're not getting that lucky again this time. View full article

Exactly. Best case for Horton is, like, the All-Star break. Steele is a total mystery right now; the stuff was down even late this year in Iowa, 17 months post-op. Brown faces huge huge huge viability questions. I don't think that neck thing is ever fully going away.

I should have written that more completely/clearly. IMO, they fixed him, but not right away, and the numbers are distorted by the time it took them to get him turned around. He *had* lost velo on his fastball, then got it back. Started elevating it again, too. Regained feel for his sweeper. Stuff and mechanics both improved significantly beginning in late August.

I don't think going for a cheaper alternative is a good thing; they should make a huge offer for Skubal! But if (and, really, when, I think) he signs elsewhere, yes, I'm in on King. He wasn't in this piece just because I focused on guys whose teams made the LCS round. I think Gausman is cooked, or cooked-adjacent. Peterson and Holmes each make some kind of sense, but to know which I would want to see return, I need to know which way the Cubs lean when (imo: inevitably) they fire some people and shake up the pitching department, y'know?

Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images After a disappointing end to a roller-coaster season, the Cubs head into the offseason with lots of money to spend. Arguably, they have needs even deeper than their pockets, but there's no question that they'll have deep pockets. In veterans Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Jameson Taillon, Shota Imanaga, Matthew Boyd and Carson Kelly, they have over $100 million from their Opening Day roster coming off the books, even before accounting for smaller expiring deals and the money they picked up (only to put back down) by acquiring rental players at the trade deadline. That should make Jed Hoyer's front office an aggressive mover over the month-and-a-half between now and the nigh-inevitable lockout. They've already had almost a fortnight to scout and evaluate some of the players on whom they might splurge next month. Here are five intriguing potential targets who are still playing meaningful games, even as the postseason has whittled away all but the four best teams in the sport. Jake Bauers, 1B/OF, Brewers After enjoying a partial breakout in 2025, Bauers overhauled his offseason regimen and came into this season with better functional strength—and with an altered stance, and with a deeper contact point. The sum of those seemingly small changes was anything but small, as Bauers hit .266/.389/.484, setting career highs in almost everything. His 26 homers paced the division-champion Brewers, and he hung in well against left-handed pitchers in his first real chance to be an everyday player since before the pandemic. Though he just turned 31, Bauers is more athletic than the average first baseman, and has even spent substantial time in the outfield as recently as this year. He would fit the Cubs in four important ways: He's temperamentally perfect for their clubhouse. He's excellent with the Brewers in that regard, and would fit seamlessly with Dansby Swanson, Nico Hoerner, Alex Bregman and Pete Crow-Armstrong. His power and patience would give the team the reliable lefty slug they missed for much of 2026. He has elite bat speed. Unlike Michael Busch, he doesn't need everything to go right on a given swing to produce a hard-hit ball, or even a homer. Speaking of Busch, Bauers (who is only about two years his senior) would give the Cubs insurance against another disappointing season by their cost-controlled first baseman. He would enter the season mainly as the designated hitter, but could easily step into the first-base job if Busch's struggles carry over. While DH might be his primary position on the 2027 Cubs, in addition to first base, Bauers would be a fine part-time left fielder. He's not a great defender out there, but neither is anyone else the team is likely to find. As a one-year patch while the team hopes for Ethan Conrad or Josiah Hartshorn to further progress and take over a job in 2028, Bauers wouldn't be half-bad. Improbable though it would have seemed even a year ago, Bauers is almost certain to get a multi-year deal with an eight-figure annual salary. That's not as intimidating as it sounds, though, given the modern player marketplace. Watch him closely as the Brewers take on the Dodgers; he does a lot of things well. Foster Griffin, LHP, Guardians Can I interest you in another 31-year-old journeyman who suddenly became a hot commodity this year? Griffin spent multiple years pitching in Japan, before coming back to the United States this season on a one-year deal with the Nationals. Last winter, teams had interest in him mostly as a reliever, but he proved himself as a remade starter in 2026. At the trade deadline, the Guardians scooped him up. On the surface, Griffin looks like exactly the kind of pitcher of whom the Cubs need fewer, not more. He throws just 92 miles per hour with his four-seamer, on average, and even that oversells him as a power guy: he leans more on a cutter that's more like 89. He has eight pitches, and he throws the kitchen sink at righty batters. It sounds a bit like a generic junkballer. It's not, though. He's more than that. In his start against the White Sox in the ALDS, Griffin was pulled after just 2 2/3 innings, but he racked up seven strikeouts. He's so tough on lefties that he sees fairly few of them, but his sweeper is a bat-misser against them. Against righties, he can use his cutter and two flavors of changeup to mess with timing and induce weak contact, and he gets enough whiffs and throws enough strikes to win. Griffin will get a multi-year deal somewhere this winter, but it won't be for huge money. He's a younger and healthier spin on, for instance, Boyd, which makes him an interesting secondary starting pitching target. Freddy Peralta, RHP, Rays You don't need as much of a primer on Peralta. He was a burr in the Cubs' saddle for a long time while with the Brewers, but his few months as a Met were less than fruitful. It looked like his chances to score a big free-agent payday were slipping away, but after the Rays acquired him just ahead of the trade deadline, they fixed him. Peralta finished with a 3.25 ERA in 10 starts for Tampa, and carried over his success in a start against the Yankees in the ALDS. Without the qualifying offer attached, Peralta becomes a tremendous fit for the Cubs. His durability and athleticism are appealing; so is his ebullience off the field. He and Craig Counsell have a great relationship. The front office has liked Peralta from (not-so-)afar for a long time; this winter could be the chance for the two sides to finally get together. Tarik Skubal, LHP, Dodgers It's just not Hoyer's style. It'll be enormously expensive, and if the Dodgers do manage a threepeat, it might be enormously difficult just to talk him out of leaving Hollywood. The Cubs should try, anyway. Skubal is the best starting pitcher who has been or will be available without the qualifying offer attached to him for some time. Since the Cubs were luxury-tax payers this season, they face a stiffer penalty than in the past if they sign a player who does have the QO on them. The decision shouldn't really come down to such things, anyway, but if it did, that would be another reason to go hard for Skubal, rather than settling for (say) Orioles southpaw Trevor Rogers. It's time for the Cubs to break more of their self-imposed rules. Skubal should be their white whale this winter. Even in a loss in Game 1 of the NLCS, it was easy to see why. Alex Vesia, LHP, Dodgers Speaking of pitchers who appeared for the visitors as they lost to the Brewers in the NLCS opener, Vesia was superb. In fact, he's been subtly excellent almost his entire career, with a 2.87 ERA in 372 career appearances. He was even better (2.64 ERA) this season, on the surface, though he struggled with walks and got a bit lucky to maintain such pretty surface-level numbers. Vesia has the missing ingredient for the Cubs' pen, to be sure. He boasts a career strikeout rate over 32%. Put him alongside intriguing but not yet proven options Ryan Rolison and Riley Martin, and the Cubs would have a formidable lefty trio in relief. It's a small potential move, but it could be an important one. Vesia is almost guaranteed to pitch again before the NLCS is over, so the team isn't quite out of chances to see how he can neutralize lefty bats, just yet. View full article

Image courtesy of Geoff Burke-Imagn Images Because the Cubs were so bad at pitching in general this season, their bullpen came in for disproportionate criticism. Their starters often provided little margin for error, and their relief corps wasn't deep or healthy enough to come through when they were needed most. The pen really did lose the Cubs some games in 2026, but it felt like it lost them several more, to many fans; too much was asked of them. Jed Hoyer admitted a "failure" of bullpen construction in 2026, which was not vapid self-effacement. He did fail. The pen wasn't good enough. In truth, though, it should have been much better. Within a fortnight of the beginning of the season, two key cogs in the pen he had built were pulled out of that mix and dragooned back into the rotation, in Colin Rea and Ben Brown. Injuries upstream caused problems, but so did injuries to the core of that pen, itself. Daniel Palencia's World Baseball Classic ramp-up created a challenge for him as he tried to throttle down and then return to full strength, which increased the risk of the injuries that eventually hit him. Phil Maton had had chronic knee trouble dating back two seasons, but signed a two-year deal for significant money with the Cubs—then essentially lost the season to that very knee problem. Hunter Harvey had a balky elbow, because that's what Hunter Harvey does. All three of the quasi-relief aces Hoyer had arranged at the back end of his theoretical pen were, by the beginning of May, clearly not going to be that kind of anchor for that unit. Each problem was foreseeable, so Hoyer must absorb the blame for them—and for the decline of the aged Caleb Thielbar. However, he also got unlucky. The number of injuries that hit the rotation snatched away the safety net he'd attempted to build behind that top tier of arms, and even one of the most promising stopgap slingers (southpaw Riley Martin) went down almost as soon as he came up. From the beginning of the season to the end, though, Hoyer did find a couple of good ways to improve the bullpen, both for 2026 and with an eye toward 2027. He patched the rotation enough over the summer to get Rea and Javier Assad back to working out of the pen at times. Low-dollar signing Jacob Webb emerged as a solid (though overworked) arm, and waiver-wire pickup Ryan Rolison proved he belongs in the majors. Most importantly, Hoyer made a rare, significant investment in a controllable reliever at the deadline, picking up Ryan Zeferjahn from the Angels at a steep prospect price. It was a bit of a flip from the Scott Effross deal in which Hoyer took some pride in 2022; he gave up a controllable big-leaguer with a much higher ceiling for a player he believed would help immediately and has significant upside of his own. What Hoyer hoped that group would become never did materialize. Down the stretch, the club tried to get Brown, Justin Steele, Shelby Miller and Martin ready fast enough to tack them onto the roster, but went 0-for-4. Meanwhile, Webb turned into a pumpkin, and Palencia and Zeferjahn were inconsistent, for different but similar reasons. However, it wasn't the pen that sank the season. The team fell apart at the finish line because of poor starting pitching, and never held a lead the bullpen might have even attempted to protect in the crucial final games of the regular campaign or the Wild Card Series against San Diego. Indeed, at the end of the team's year, there were only two important silver linings to celebrate: Pete Crow-Armstrong's maturation into arguably the best player in baseball; and The beginnings of a good bullpen coming into focus. There are two major vectors of variance that make building a bullpen difficult. One is performance. Samples are small and the margin for error (whenever you're using an important arm) is tight, and relievers are all failed starters, so most of the time, their performance will be somehow volatile. They might battle command issues or need to have their very best stuff to be effective, but whatever form it takes, a reliever who's good one year might be quite bad the next. The other major vector is health. Because of those things, the Cubs are far from guaranteed to have a good set of relievers heading into 2027. They have to make an addition or two to the mix. That's all they really need, though, because there's enough talent on hand to expect at least the guts of a strong pen in 2027. Rolison, Palencia and Zeferjahn remain under long-term team control, and will cost almost nothing next year. Miller should be a full go in 2027, and even in his rehab stints in Iowa, he looked very good. In fact, his fastball has never been firmer, and his slider-splitter combination was nasty. Martin ended the year healthy. Maton had surgery in September to address his nagging knee problem, which puts him in position to have a healthy year. It's unlikely, for different reasons, that Brown or erstwhile top prospect Jaxon Wiggins ever stick in the majors as starters. They should become part of the relief picture next spring, too, though each might initially stay stretched out in case they're needed for a bulkier role. The Cubs have an affordable club option on Webb, too. You need at least a dozen arms you believe in to feel good about a bullpen mix going into a season, and this team is not there. Nor, however, are they as far away as they seemed for much of 2026. The starting rotation needs major renovation. Hoyer and company should sign multiple starters they can envision as front-line options, in addition to scouring the market for trade opportunities and pouncing on chances to add young, live arms. When it comes to the pen, though, the needs are much more limited. The in-house candidates are stronger than they look, coming off a season in which they were disproportionately diminished by injuries. Palencia, Zeferjahn, Rolison, Miller, Webb, Martin and Maton are a solid base upon which to build. They should be better and healthier, as a group, next year. That's a good thing, since the Cubs need to focus on other, bigger needs. View full article

Image courtesy of Katie Stratman-Imagn Images Most of the Cubs' offseason spending this winter will have to go toward remaking their pitching staff. They need to sign multiple starting pitchers and fix their mess of a bullpen. They can't afford, in other words, to splurge on their outfield, even as they reckon with the likely departures of Seiya Suzuki and Ian Happ. They'll have to spend enough to address one of the corner outfield vacancies (even if it be by re-signing one of those incumbents), but they can't go outside the organization to fill both. One of Pedro Ramírez and Matt Shaw almost has to become a regular corner outfielder next year, or else they'll need to platoon. That's not an exciting proposition, though. Neither player has yet showed the degree of overall offensive competence you want from a corner outfielder. Each has at least some chance to be a plus defender out there, but to realize it, the team would have to sacrifice the value either can provide via versatility. The upside of the duo is real, but tapping into it will require some careful evaluation. Let's weigh the options by examining the two. A Mess of a Player: Matt Shaw's Approach and Swing Problems In 202 plate appearances in 2026, Shaw hit .237/.327/.410. He walked a little over 10% of the time and his strikeout rate was a healthy 17%, but overall, that production was the result of good luck. Shaw mostly hit the ball to the big part of the field. He didn't hit it hard very often. He hit a couple of wall-scraping home runs and a couple of doubles that fell in when they shouldn't have. He got some infield hits that resulted primarily from dumb luck. The process underlying his results was poor. To wit, in 2026, only one hitter in the league took a lower percentage of their swings on balls in the middle of the zone, vertically, than did Shaw: Javier Báez. It's jarring to lay the name of any player walking as much as Shaw did side-by-side with Báez's, but that's where he fell. Shaw got lucky to walk that much, of course. He swung less often at pitches inside the zone than an average batter does (60%, against a league average of 67%) and more often at ones outside the zone than an average batter does (32.5%, against an average just under 29%). But beyond swinging at the wrong pitches, he erred by not knowing what pitch he was even looking for. Shaw has a greater capacity for manipulating his bat path than a typical hitter. His average tilt on low pitches was about 16° steeper than on high ones, a disparity greater than all but four other hitters: Luis Arraez, Gavin Sheets, Jake Mangum and Marcell Ozuna. Just on the other side of Shaw on that leaderboard are Ildemaro Vargas, Ernie Clement, Ryan O'Hearn and Andrew Benintendi. As those names suggest, that maneuverability of the bat is a sign of a good hit tool. The raw tool goes for naught, though, if not accompanied by good swing decisions. If the Cubs are to trust Shaw with full-time duty, they'll need to see him make better ones. Having that bendable swing means one can better cover the zone from high to low, so Shaw doesn't need to approach his at-bats like (say) Alex Bregman. The Cubs' veteran third baseman (and Shaw's usurper at the hot corner) took 71% of his swings this year at pitches in that middle vertical segment, better than all but three other hitters in the league. Bregman has average flexibility in his swing tilt and (like Shaw) maintains his bat speed better than an average hitter when he has to change his tilt for a low or high pitch, but he stays locked in on that most productive band. Shaw can be more flexible, but he must be more selective than he was this year, or he'll never make the most of his talent. Too Flat? The Outlier Swing of Pedro Ramírez There's nothing (or at least, much less) wrong with Ramírez's swing decisions. He chases about as often as Shaw, but is much more aggressive within the zone. He put up almost identical numbers to Shaw's this season, despite being a year younger; not having played in the majors the previous season; and getting very sporadic playing time. All of that speaks in his favor. So does the fact that he stayed healthy this year, while Shaw was unable to do so. On the other hand, there are reasons to worry about Ramírez's swing, especially from the left side—the swing he'll need to use at least 70% of the time to be a regular in the bigs. Only two left-handed batters (Ildemaro Vargas, again, and backup Padres infielder Sung-Mun Song) had flatter swings than Ramírez this season. Not all flat swings are bad, but swings with more tilt give a player a wider range of pitches and timing signatures on which they can succeed. Ramírez catches the ball much farther in front of his body than do Vargas or Song, too. That part is good. Flat swings work best when a batter gets the ball out front, centering it up. Over time, though, swings that flat tend to produce too many balls that aren't centered. Ramírez hit too many high, harmless fly balls and too many grounders, especially from the left side. There's more to like about Ramírez's development in 2026 than about Shaw's, offensively. His shortcomings are at least as pronounced as Shaw's right now, though. Barring a swing change, Ramírez will struggle to produce at the level the Cubs should want from a left or right fielder for the foreseeable future. About the Leather Say Shaw cleans up his approach a bit, and say Ramírez's swing can be adjusted slightly. In that case, they would form a strong timeshare at the plate, with Shaw taking slightly more than the usual short side of a platoon. The question of their overall value, then, would come down to the defense. So, in turn, does the question of which one deserves more time, if a platoon isn't on the cards. Shaw is faster. He adjusted tolerably well to right field, but between his injuries and the improvement of Suzuki as a defender, he ended up playing very little there. Ramírez, however, played almost exclusively on the infield in the majors, and even his minor-league career has been spent on the dirt. He runs well, for a stocky infielder, but he has no experience to speak of in either left or right field. Neither player is likely to be more than average in the outfield next year. In the long run, that could change, but the team needs to see at least one of them thrive with the bat in order to determine whether that wait is worth it. Kevin Alcántara is still around, for now, but he'll be out of options next spring, and he's been given no runway from which to gather developmental momentum and lift off. It's not at all clear that the Cubs were wrong to deny him that playing time. In 935 plate appearances over parts of three seasons at Triple-A Iowa, he's been fairly static. He walks about 12% of the time and he's slugged .482, but that league inflates power numbers, so the latter is not impressive. The former comes at the cost of a strikeout rate pushing 30%. He's toolsy, but Alcántara might never make enough contact (or lift the ball enough) to play productively in the bigs. He's much more likely to play above-average defense in a corner than either Shaw or Ramírez, but the bat can't be trusted. To build a good enough lineup in 2027, the Cubs have to spend some money for an outfield bat. They also have to achieve an overdue homegrown improvement, though. If they can't, their offense and defense will backslide, and whatever pitching upgrades they manage will have to work overtime to offset the degradation. View full article

I think that's 80% right. I do think we need to keep in mind that he's 32, with a skill set I don't think will age very well. I mean, you heard me, above: I think it's an easy call to make the QO. But I'd certainly be wary of a long-term deal with him, and I think you're probably *slightly* overselling the difficulty of doing better than 2027 Ian Happ? But the reality that it won't be that easy to do better than *2026* Ian Happ (or, certainly, 2022-25 Ian Happ) is probably the most important one to wrestle with.

Image courtesy of Katie Stratman-Imagn Images You can't have a season as good as Pete Crow-Armstrong's 2026 without getting a bit lucky. In Crow-Armstrong's case, that wasn't primarily about finding grass and running an unduly high BABIP. It was about getting some unexpected relief via the uncertainty of opponents. Only two batters in the league had more expected runs go unclaimed when opponents failed to challenge incorrect called balls against them than did Crow-Armstrong. Milwaukee's Brice Turang saw opponents miss 42 chances to challenge pitches that should have been called strikes; the Dodgers' Freddie Freeman got away with the same number. Crow-Armstrong, however, got a whopping 45 extra called balls because opposing pitchers and catchers failed to challenge when he took tough pitches that were actually in the zone. Turang's and Freeman's opponent misses were, on average, a little more valuable to them, so Turang got 6.9 runs of value from not having strikes called, while Freeman snuck in at 6.8—just ahead of Crow-Armstrong's 6.7. Only those two got more value from catchers not tapping their helmets; only Carson Benge (48) and Steven Kwan (49) had a larger number of total pitches that should have been called strikes but weren't, on which opponents didn't challenge. Most of the guys who lived in that range with Crow-Armstrong had something in common: extreme patience at the plate. Kwan swung at barely 51% of the pitches he saw even in the zone this year, and chased just under 20% of those outside the zone. Taking so often at the edges creates the conditions for more called balls than the average batter. Benge and Turang swung at around 64% of the in-zone pitches they saw, with fairly low chase rates. Two other hitters near the top of the unconverted overturn leaderboard, James Wood and Geraldo Perdomo, got there because they swung at around 56% of pitches in the zone. As you know, Crow-Armstrong isn't like that. In 2025, he swung at over 81% of the strikes he saw. Even this year, as he made a radical shift toward patience in the box, that number was over 68%, and his lowest monthly mark (in July) was 65.2%. He's aggressive within the zone, which makes finding him at the top of this leaderboard surprising. The only player like him, in that regard, is Freeman, who has made a career out of telling balls from strikes as well as anyone. Every single season, he swings at over 70% of the in-zone pitches he sees, but he keeps his chase rate down. That's earned him some calls over the years, and in the first year of ABS, opponents proved reluctant to challenge him even when that happened. What's surprising is that Crow-Armstrong, whose reputation is as a free swinger and who only moderated (rather than truly upended) that approach in 2026, would land right next to Freeman and a slew of patient hitters. Some of it is good strike-zone judgment, to be sure. Crow-Armstrong did improve on that score this year, though his in-zone swing rate actually dropped a fair bit more than his chase rate did. He understood, right away, that the smaller zone played into his hands. He locked in more on the pitches he wanted to attack, and he laid off more offerings even if he knew there was a chance they would be called strikes, knowing that doing so was necessary in order to fully cover the pitches he could drive. He was also good at pressing for his rights when a call went against him. As we saw in Wild Card Series Game 2, that sometimes showed up as hyperaggressiveness, but Crow-Armstrong left few (just 18) "bad" called strikes as strikes. He came out way ahead, by being proactive and having opponents prove too conservative when calls broke in his favor. That last part isn't a skill, though. Crow-Armstrong owes the value he got from catchers not flipping his incorrect balls into strikes not to his own savvy, but to manager Craig Counsell, and to his teammates. When I listed the other hitters who shared this trait with Crow-Armstrong, did you notice the other common thread between them? They all bat at the top of the order (or very near it). When Crow-Armstrong would come up in the first inning of each game, teams would be naturally conservative with challenges. There's hardly ever cause to risk burning one of your challenges in the first two or three at-bats of a game; you have to be incredibly certain to trigger a review. That meant that if a pitcher got squeezed in Crow-Armstrong's first plate appearance each day, it was likely to go uncorrected. Often, by the time Crow-Armstrong would come up again (especially, say, for the third time), the other team would be down a challenge. Maybe one of their hitters burned one, but Crow-Armstrong's much more patient teammates get part of the credit, too. Michael Busch chased only 25% of the pitches he saw outside the zone this year. Alex Bregman's rate was even lower: 23%. Ian Happ was patient, too. No hitter in baseball prompted more failed ABS challenges by opponents than Busch, at 17. Bregman tied for sixth, at 15. Happ lured opponents into 10 bad challenges. Nico Hoerner got nine (as did Crow-Armstrong). Dansby Swanson got eight. Seiya Suzuki got seven. Hitting at the top of the lineup is a huge advantage in terms of the utility you derive from ABS, especially for an aggressive hitter. It might feel too early to challenge a borderline strike in your first at-bat or two, but you don't take all that many of those, anyway. Meanwhile, your opponents feel the same squeamishness about challenging a called ball your first trips through, and by your third, fourth and fifth turns, they might have to be more careful, because they're already down a challenge. This "gamification" of the zone is a frustrating part of ABS for many fans, but for what it's worth, most sports have some analog of this type of situation. A soccer player on a yellow card has to be more judicious about their tackles. A basketball player in foul trouble has to tread lightly, too. When players or teams are more conservative because they might suffer a steeper penalty for a second "offense"—returning to our actual topic, a failed challenge—it's not really a sign of a poorly designed system. It's just how sports work. However, if might be worth discussing a change whereby, instead of two challenges per team per game, each player only gets the right to lose one. That would force catchers to be more careful, and it would take many hitters (on teams who turned most of the ABS privileges over to their backstops) off the leash a bit. On the other hand, it shouldn't prompt a huge rise in actual challenges, because all players would know they had only one miss available. You'd even see pitchers be allowed to challenge by their clubs, at that point. In the meantime, Crow-Armstrong profited handsomely from his teammates forcing bad challenges in between his turns. Fifteen of the 45 pitches that could have been strikes but weren't corrected came when the opposing team was down to one challenge left, and those didn't all come in the eighth or ninth innings. Sometimes, they came in the fifth, or even the third—stages of the game when, absent the knowledge that they'd already lost their buffer, opponents probably would have begun to feel comfortable challenging him. Not all of the benefits of this phenomenon arrogate to Crow-Armstrong and his fellow leadoff hitters. He enjoyed lots of added value because teams eschewed chances to challenge, but only twice this year did Crow-Armstrong take a called ball in the zone at a juncture where the other team couldn't challenge, because they'd run out. Busch, however, took eight such pitches, because by the time the lineup came back to him a fourth time, that second challenge was often gone. The effects are greatest for leadoff hitters, though. Here's the percentage of takes on pitches inside the zone that were called balls (and not fixed) when the defense had a right to challenge, by batting order position: 7.6% 6.8% 6.5% 6.7% 6.4% 6.5% 6.6% 6.6% 6.4% It's a small consideration, but a real one. It bolstered Crow-Armstrong during his supernal season. The league always adjusts, though. Expect him to be assailed a bit more with challenges next year, even if he maintains exactly the same plate discipline he showed this season. One way or another, he'll feel the sting of regression in this area, because he'll either chase more pitches, get fewer generous calls, or watch more of those lucky calls reversed. This is the nature of being awesome; people will start hunting ways to slow you down. View full article

Image courtesy of Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images Next month, as the offseason ramps up (before, in all likelihood, ramping right back down at the end of November), the Cubs will have to make a large number of decisions in a short time. We've already talked about their decision points on qualifying offers and on their existing contract options. Now, let's weigh their choices with regard to each of the 11 players who enter the offseason as arbitration-eligible, making their salaries uncertain (but relatively predictable) for 2027. The best approach here is probably to sort everyone into buckets. There are three things you can do (barring a trade) with a player due for a raise via arbitration in the forthcoming season: non-tender them (making them a free agent), tender them a contract (pushing down the path toward a one-year deal), or extend them (locking in their salary for multiple seasons, to gain cost certainty and/or longer team control). The team has at least one candidate for each of these paths this fall. Cubs Non-Tender Candidates Two players are almost no-brainer non-tenders for the Cubs. They picked up Gabriel Arias as emergency infield depth after Dansby Swanson strained his oblique in August, but that made them just the latest franchise to which Arias has bounced via waivers. He's been so available because he's been unproductive, and has now exhausted his minor-league options. He's a bench player on any team with serious aspirations to contend, and though he plays good enough defense all the way around the infield, he's never found a way to turn good bat speed into consistent pop, and his approach is ragged. He's in line to make roughly $1.3 million in 2027 if tendered a contract, according to MLB Trade Rumors's projections. That's not much, but 'not much' is also what he's worth. He can't be sent to the minors without being exposed to the other 29 teams. It's not worth using a roster spot on him all winter. Almost all of that also applies to Ethan Roberts, even though Roberts (unlike Arias) has been part of the Cubs organization for years. He's never showed the ability to stay healthy or to get many outs even when he is, and he's now out of options. His ability to spin the ball and create glove-side movement has bought him time with the Cubs, who love that profile. MLB Trade Rumors only projects him to earn $800,000 via arbitration, so he's essentially a league-minimum guy, even as he hits the phase of his career at which he's supposed to start gaining earning power. In theory, as with Arias, there are three years of team control left here. Roberts just isn't good, though, and if he can't be shuttled to the minors when needed, he's not worth keeping around. Easy One-Year Sign-Ups Most arbitration-eligible players don't inspire particularly interesting action. You just tender them a deal, agree on terms, and move on. That's what the Cubs will hope to do with the majority of their class this year. Michael Busch and Miguel Amaya are arbitration-eligible for the first time this year. Each is older than your average player with just three-plus years of service time, so the team doesn't stand to gain great value from considering a longer-term arrangement with either of them. Nor did either have a good enough year to merit that kind of heavy investment. Each easily clears the bar for keeping them around, though, given the affordable salaries ($1.7 million for Amaya; $5.4 million for Busch) MLBTR projects for each. (For what it's worth, I think Busch will come in under that number, one way or another.) The same is all true, in fact, of reliever Ryan Rolison, whom MLBTR thinks will earn $1.1 million in his first trip through arbitration. Keeping those three requires no difficult decision; the front office will gladly pay what each is likely to get via the system they're moving through. None of the three firmed up long-term jobs with the team this season, but all three did enough to ensure that they'll be asked back in 2027. Pitchers to Roll the Dice On Four inexpensive pitchers who still have multiple seasons of club control left are candidates for very low-wattage multi-year deals, if the team is particularly excited about any of their futures. Daniel Palencia and Ben Brown will both qualify for arbitration as Super Two players, meaning they can begin to get raises despite being just shy of three years of service. They're under team control through 2030, but they'll start getting seven-figure salaries (albeit just barely: $1.2 million for Palencia, $1.3 million for Brown, according to MLBTR) in 2027. The upside on both hurlers is obvious. Brown has flashed the ability to pitch at the front end of the team's rotation. There are major injury red flags in his file, but if the Cubs want to avoid seeing his salary spike as he moves through arbitration (should he get past the neck issue that has plagued him the last two years), they might seek an extension with him. These tend to be just two-year pacts, with the second year often being a club option. They're just ways, again, to keep arbitration costs down. Those can escalate quickly, especially for guys who achieve Super Two status and go through it four times, rather than three. Much of the same applies to Palencia. There's a bit less cause for deep concern about his health than with Brown, but the ceiling is also lower, since he's purely a reliever. On the other hand, closers' salaries rise disproportionately via arbitration, because that system still rewards the accumulation of saves. If the Cubs view Palencia as a closer candidate again in 2027, they would do well to lock him up for two or three years (at a cheap price, with an option in the mix) and eschew multiple trips through arbitration. In so doing, they'd give Palencia more guaranteed money than signing him for one year would require, but get their value from cost certainty and a flatter increase in his salary from 2027 to the subsequent years than is otherwise likely. Javier Assad signed a deal like this last offseason. He made $1.8 million in 2026, as a Super Two guy in his own right, but the Cubs also got a $3.3-million option for 2027 in the deal. Since MLBTR is projecting just $2.3 million in earnings for him in 2027, Chicago will probably decline that option, but they might re-up with Assad on another deal that gives him some guaranteed money and preserves their upside by capping what he can earn in 2028. Assad can still be optioned to the minors next year, and might actually spend part of the year in Iowa yet again, if the team is sufficiently aggressive over the winter. Either way, though, he'll be valuable depth, and adding a second year to a deal with him makes sense. In the least-heralded trade they made on deadline day, the team also snagged lefty starter Braxton Garrett, from Miami. Garrett still has two more years of team control remaining, though he used his last minor-league option this year. Next season, he'll be roster-locked, but the Cubs like him, so they're very likely to at least tender him a contract. He's only set to make $1.6 million in 2027, but since he'll have to be on the big-league roster all season, his salary could shoot up quite a bit in his final year of eligibility in 2028. To dodge that risk, the team could look to sign him to a two-year deal. Unfortunately, they didn't gain enough information about him down the stretch to consider a longer-term deal that actually extends their team control. The Very Uncomfortable Calls There's no realistic chance that the Cubs non-tender Edward Cabrera, and almost none that they do so with Justin Steele. After trading a top prospect to acquire Cabrera over the winter, they're invested in him, and he still has two seasons of club control left. Steele, a beloved part of the organization for over 12 years, only has one year of club control left, but parting with him before using it would be painful for all parties. That said, Cabrera's 2026 campaign was a nightmare, and the reclamation project the team will have to accomplish to get value from him next year is daunting. He's set to make $4.8 million or so via arbitration, by MLBTR's reckoning, so it won't be a cheap remodel, either. To make their predicament a bit less painful, the team might try to strike a two-year deal with Cabrera, capping what he can earn in his final year of arbitration eligibility in 2028. There's no way they can commit to him long-term, but they also can't cut the cord on one of the few arms in their organization who has good enough raw stuff to consistently get out big-league hitters. They'll just have to hope they can get him to actually do so next season. Steele is a different case. Given the setbacks that prevented him from getting back to the big leagues the year after his April 2025 Tommy John surgery, his $6.8-million projected salary is like a baby albatross. His stuff didn't look good at all in his late-season rehab starts for Triple-A Iowa. He's not guaranteed to be a big-league-caliber starter in 2027, let alone one a team can confidently pay almost $7 million. The path forward for player and team is most likely to involve a multi-year deal. Steele can give up some earning power for 2027 by agreeing to a lower salary (maybe $5 million or so; maybe less), while preserving a high ceiling via incentives. Meanwhile, the Cubs would either guarantee a second year or offer Steele a club option for 2028 at a high salary, with a substantial buyout. If structured correctly, a deal whereby Steele could earn even more than his projected salary next year and then become a free agent could still be favorable to the Cubs. They can't afford to just hand him the same amount he made in 2026, though, knowing there's at least some chance that he becomes dead money again. This arbitration class isn't especially expensive. That's good news, in a way, for a team with hefty obligations to multiple veteran position players and a desperate need to add pitching via free agency and/or trade. In a much more important sense, though, it's very bad news. The Cubs would be happy to be paying $10-15 million more to this group than they'll end up paying. That would mean that Brown, Steele and/or Palencia stayed healthy; that Busch built upon his breakout 2025; and that Amaya and/or Cabrera took the steps forward the team hoped for from them. Instead, they'll get a good deal on several of these players for 2027, but only because almost all of them underachieved. View full article