Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images Pete Crow-Armstrong has yet to register a Barrel in the regular season, according to Statcast. All of his hits on the young year have been ground balls: two hit hard past the first baseman, two gorgeous bunts up the third-base line, and one seeing-eye bouncer the second baseman could only knock down in Monday night's win over the Angels. He's hit a number of pop-ups and lazy fly balls. He often still seems to be swinging too much, leading to unproductive contact. However, Crow-Armstrong has also drawn two walks in his 18 plate appearances so far, so he has a .389 OBP. He walked twice in 22 plate appearances in the Cactus League, and twice in 21 trips in the World Baseball Classic. For calendar year 2026, Crow-Armstrong has almost exactly a 10% walk rate—roughly double his career mark in the majors through 2025. He's seen 226 pitches across the three types of competition in which he's participated, and swung at 55.3% of them. That's down from a rate just over 60% in each of the last two years. By now, it should be clear that Crow-Armstrong will never be a patient hitter, in the style of Ian Happ or Alex Bregman. Even swing rates just below 50% and walk rates around 9%—the typical outputs of Dansby Swanson, for context—are probably too much to hope for. Crow-Armstrong will both create and waste offensive opportunities by swinging; he's going to be much more eager than the average batter. The relevant question is: If it's his hyper-aggressiveness that stands between him and stardom (and it is), how much must he mitigate it to get around the problem? In other words, at what swing rate can Crow-Armstrong be a reliably excellent overall hitter? The answer is much, much higher than it is for most batters. Guys who make a lot of contact (like Nico Hoerner) should err a bit on the side of patience, but Crow-Armstrong has a highly optimized power swing and is going to whiff at a fairly high rate. To make up for that, he needs to go to the plate ready to do damage—especially since he has the bat path to hit more home runs than his frame or his raw bat speed would imply. He also has elite speed, and a near-mad desire to use it. That makes it especially valuable when he reaches base, because he's very likely to steal a base (or two), or to do something similarly game-breaking. (On Monday night, he scored from first on a single when he wasn't even running with the pitch, although it was a high blooper that probably should have been caught.) Ideally, of course, such a player would draw a lot of walks and maximize their OBP, but failing that, putting the ball in play by swinging early in the count leverages his speed well. The bunts Crow-Armstrong laid down in the first two games of the year were exemplars of that, but he can also reach on unintentional infield singles, errors and fielder's choices, and stretch some hits by 90 feet. All of that makes it good that Crow-Armstrong swings more than most hitters. In the past, though, he's swung so much that he sometimes limits his ability to get a good pitch and put the barrel on it. Is ratcheting that baseline swing rate down from 60% to 55% enough to change that? Much depends on the shape of his added patience. Crow-Armstrong is swinging a bit less early in counts this spring, and then increasing his aggressiveness as he protects the plate late. His feel for contact outside the zone is better than one would guess, for a player so focused on that lift-and-pull swing, which allows him to foul off pitches until he earns either a mistake or a miss that doesn't tempt him. On Monday night, he took an 11-pitch walk in which the balls were pitches 1, 5, 7, and 11. None of them were close to the zone; he swung at everything that was. But because he fouled off enough pitches to stay alive, he did earn those bad and un-tempting misses. In his second at-bat against Angels starter Ryan Johnson, Crow-Armstrong took pitches 1 and 4, but swung at everything even remotely close. He fouled off four offerings, then hit the aforementioned, unimpressive single up the middle. Many pitches Crow-Armstrong will face have a better putaway pitch than Johnson. Falling behind and fouling off four or five pitches per plate appearance is no sustainable formula for success. However, these two at-bats are good glimpses of how Crow-Armstrong can swing a lot without giving away at-bats. If he can spoil some two-strike pitches, be smart about sitting on certain pitches when the situation demands it, utilize the occasional bunt, and be even an iota more patient than he's been in the past, he has the tools to be that 30-homer, 30-steal guy the Cubs saw him become last year—the one in whom they've now invested $115 million. The swing rate might have to come down a hair more, in order for him to continue actualizing his power. For now, though, Crow-Armstrong seems to have made some small modulations in his approach—and because he's a physical freak with plenty of value in his legs, his glove and his unconventional hitting profile, small modulations might beget big gains in consistency. View full article

Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images No rain or thick, heavy gray coldness scumbled the skies as the Cubs played their first night game of 2026. In fact, the North Side of Chicago put on one of the great shows of which it's more capable than many people credit, proclaiming itself a four-season city with a gorgeous little summer preview. The outfield walls are still covered only in brown, but the skies were a soft, sometimes inscrutable purple-and-orange as sunset came Monday night, leaving Wrigley Field aglow in a way that often has to wait until nearly Memorial Day. Under such auspicious skies, Edward Cabrera clambered to the top of the cairn for the first time in Cubs pinstripes. Cabrera, 27, has become a bit less heralded an acquisition than it seemed he would be when the Cubs first pulled the trigger on a deal with the Marlins in January. At the time, he seemed a vital infusion of high-end stuff for the starting rotation, and there was little else about the team's offseason about which any fans were excited. Since then, the team has signed Alex Bregman to a five-year free-agent deal and extended both Pete Crow-Armstrong and Nico Hoerner through 2032, making Cabrera seem a bit less like a headliner. In truth, though, he might be as important as anyone to the team's pursuit of its first full-season division title in almost a decade—and he showed why on Monday. In six efficient innings, Cabrera struck out five visiting Angels batters and only allowed two baserunners: one walk, and one hit, a harmless single on a curveball he left up in the fourth inning. He wasn't razor-sharp, in terms of command, but his stuff overwhelmed his opponents. His fastball sat right around 97 miles per hour, and he got 15 whiffs on 40 swings, with most of them coming on his dazzling array of breaking stuff and his signature changeup. Let's take a moment, though, to talk about that heater. Cabrera made only very sparing use of his sinker Monday night, and threw 22 four-seamers out of his 80 total pitches. Only twice last year did he throw more four-seamers in a game. It seems clear, as we discussed early in spring training, that Cabrera will throw more heaters—and particularly more four-seamers, despite the lousy Stuff grades and generally tepid results that pitch has tended to get—this season than he did in his final campaign with the Marlins. That will continue to surprise some, who watched Cabrera enjoy a breakout in 2025 partially by throttling back on the usage of the four-seamer. Its share of his total pitch count Monday night was roughly double what he averaged last year. Again, though, the Cubs throw more four-seamers than any other team in baseball; it should surprise no one to see them work with a newcomer to find the ways in which that pitch will work for him. As the lineup turned over, he did lean more into his changeup, which is one argument in favor of throwing the fastball more. By forcing hitters—he used the heat especially often against Mike Trout and Jorge Soler, strapping sluggers known for their bat speed but never great high-fastball hitters—to respect that pitch, Cabrera can get more mileage out of everything else, up to and including right-on-right changeups, especially as he gets deeper into outings. Cabrera's slider also got five whiffs for him, on just nine swings. He threw the pitch exclusively to right-handed batters, and he had a new spin profile on it. Though thrown at the same velocity as it had last year, the pitch acted a bit more like a cutter, with less glove-side movement but more backspin, making it harder for the batter to distinguish from his fastball than it was last year. That pitch has been the subject of a bit of a quest for Cabrera over the last year. He had a home base to which he repeatedly returned in terms of movement, but four separate times in 2025, he had two-start stints in which he tired something new with it. In the plot below, the point highlighted with red text shows where Cabrera's slider was working in Monday's outing. Around that, I've identified where he most often worked over the last two years, as well as each of the excursions he attempted toward new slider frontiers. He might yet go back to what he was doing before, but the change to the spin characteristics of the pitch suggests that the Cubs view a more cutterish slider as worth a try. For one night, at least, it worked like a charm. The curveball was also working. Cabrera threw that pitch 13 times, and got three whiffs (on five swings) and four called strikes with it. The most important thing was that, in addition to being able to take something off and land it in the zone, he showed the ability to get the pitch up to 87-88 miles per hour at times. That's a level of power on the curve few pitchers can match, and last year, he was at his best with that offering when he threw it hardest. Velocity Band No. Horiz. Mvmt. IVB Whiff Rate RV/100 < 83 MPH 115 11.2 -10.5 36.1 0.89 83-85 MPH 280 11 -11.2 43.6 1.06 85+ MPH 157 10.6 -10.9 50 2.35 If a pitch isn't losing movement as it gets harder, it's little wonder that it generates more whiffs and better results. Cabrera did see the velocity on the curve decline sharply later in his outing Monday night, which is only logical. It might make sense, as he shifts to a more fastball-forward pitch mix, to blend the curve in with the heater early in outings, then go more changeup- and slider-heavy as the game wears on, since those pitches' effectiveness depend less on velocity than do his heat and his hook. Really, though, Monday night was about more than these nuts and bolts. It was a chance to celebrate (and fantasize about) the future the Cubs are trying to build. The offense put up plenty of runs, and the team won comfortably. More than that, Cabrera looked in control, and when he needed it, he got great defensive support from the defense behind him—a group that, like Cabrera, will be in Chicago for quite a while. The team dropped two games to a dreadful Nationals club to start the season, but in their two wins, Cabrera and Cade Horton have worked quickly, shown exceptional stuff and athleticism, and been surrounded and supported by what is now the locked-in core of what the team hopes is its next champion. Under the pale but pleasant twilight sky Monday night, it was easy to believe that that bright a day is dawning for the Cubs. View full article

Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images Matt Shaw will never be the Chicago Cubs' starting second baseman, shortstop or third baseman. When the team signed Alex Bregman to a five-year deal this winter, Shaw was asked to start learning the outfield, and when they struck a deal with Nico Hoerner that will keep him in the fold at second base through 2032, that became the only imaginable way in which Shaw will find consistent playing time for the team, barring injuries. Of course, Pete Crow-Armstrong is also locked in as the team's center fielder for the foreseeable future, so Shaw essentially has to become a competent corner outfielder to be more than a utility man for the Cubs. That could, of course, mean that the Cubs will soon look to trade Shaw, who remains under team control through 2031. For the moment, though, let's focus on the implications of the team's recent moves should he stay in town, and let's further assume that Bregman, Hoerner and Dansby Swanson are healthy enough to force him to be an outfielder. That leaves two questions to answer: Can Shaw become sufficiently adept in the outfield itself to avoid causing major damage to the defense? Can he hit enough to justify giving him regular playing time in positions where the team will need significant offensive production? The first answer is likely to be 'yes'. Shaw is a good athlete, and though he's small and has a weak arm, he's shown decent aptitude in limited opportunities there this spring. With speed and skills, he should be able to offset his deficiencies and play average or better defense in (especially) left field. He played a couple of balls quite well in right field on Opening Day, despite gusting wind. Offensively, though, the standard in either corner is quite high, and Shaw hasn't yet shown the ability to meet it. He batted .226/.295/.394 last year. There was a prolonged period in the second half in which he tapped into much more power and it was possible to envision him being a valuable bat in a corner spot, but even then, his plate discipline was shaky and he was too whiff-prone. The big leg kick he brought with him to the majors had to be adapted, but even after he did so, he seemed to be overstriding. He wasn't well-balanced, and he wasn't keeping his head still enough to see the ball well. To be a useful right or left fielder, Shaw has to be better and more consistent at the plate this year. The league figured him out after his July/August power binge, and countered his adjustments; he'll have to adjust again. This spring, he hit .320/.417/.500 in the Cactus League, but all that matters is what happens once the games count—and that, in turn, will be determined by whether Shaw can make adjustments that yield better pitch selection, more contact, and/or more power. In that regard, there's good news and bad news, so far. Shaw has made a major adjustment this spring to shorten his stride and (thereby) improve his stability in the box. That should mean better pitch recognition and a better contact rate, over time. Here's a comparison of his stance and stride for 2025 with the one he's shown (in an extremely limited sample, of course, but the difference is real and intentional) in 2026. As you can see, he's dramatically reduced the length of his stride, and he's also a bit closer to the plate and a bit deeper in the batter's box. All of these things are good, in the long run, for his odds of making good swing decisions and making contact on swings. The sample is too small for the results to say anything meaningful about the efficacy of the changes yet, but for this, we don't really need stats. We just need proof that he's changing the math—the physics, the geometry, and the algebra—of his duel with opposing pitchers. We have it. For what it's worth, Shaw is also swinging a bit more steeply this season. That's a noisier thing, over a sample of a game or two, and it might not remain true, but it's noteworthy because his swing appeared to have that extra tilt even in the spring. A steeper swing would yield a greater amount of damage at the same bat speed. That, alas, brings us to the bad news: Shaw's bat speed so far is dreadful. On 14 competitive swings, Shaw's average bat speed is 65.8 miles per hour. Last year, his monthly bat speeds ranged from 68.4 MPH to 70.5. Again, it's too early to treat this as something lasting and real, but directionally, it makes a sad sort of sense. Shaw's highest bat speeds last year were when he was striding most aggressively; he got a lot of bat speed from the sheer momentum of his attack. Shortening the stride increases control but lowers momentum. Increasing tilt improves the chances of squaring the ball up but decreases sheer torque. Shaw will, surely, swing faster than this as he settles in and gets going this year. Still, if he doesn't get back up to at least that 69 MPH range, he has little hope of having average power. That applies extra pressure to control the strike zone well, minimizing strikeouts and increasing walks. He might well prove able to do that; those are the things his tweaks this spring should augment. It's just a troublesome signal, for a player whose value will have to come in large part from his bat for the foreseeable future. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images We're seeing something special—something rare. Not since Ryne Sandberg, Shawon Dunston and Mark Grace have the Cubs had three key players spend the majority of a decade together on the field, at positions and in places in the lineup where their connectedness and mutual importance were obvious and determined the fate of the team each year. With Nico Hoerner agreeing to a deal Thursday that will extend his tenure with the Cubs through 2032, that's exactly what we're going to see, again. In fact, this core could be deeper and even longer-lasting than the Sandberg-Dunston-Grace group, to which Sammy Sosa was added late in a long run. Hoerner and Dansby Swanson have been teamed up around the keystone for the Cubs since the start of 2023, and Swanson's seven-year deal doesn't end until the fall of 2029. Pete Crow-Armstrong joined the mix at the tail end of 2023, but the trio only started two games together that year. Between Crow-Armstrong's inconsistency and some nagging injuries to Hoerner and Swanson, by the middle of 2024, they'd only played another 20 times alongside one another. From June 22 through the end of 2024, though, they made 76 shared starts. In 2025, they started together another 144 times, as Crow-Armstrong established himself and Hoerner enjoyed a career year. Already, then, they've made 243 starts as a group, counting Opening Day's lineup against the Nationals. Though injuries will surely intercede at some point in the next four years, there's a solid chance for these three to end up playing 800 times together as Cubs—especially if they make the playoffs multiple times in those years and make deep runs. Swanson and Hoerner are each notable for their willingness to play through minor injuries, and they're relatively good at it. Together, those three anchor the Cubs' elite defense, and they'll continue to do so for the balance of the decade. Look for more than two players showing up on the lineup card together, and the frequency of occurrences diminishes quickly. It's just the nature of baseball. Even in their first few years together, before Dunston's role changed and injuries began to limit Sandberg, the aforementioned trio of infielders usually appeared together only 120-130 times a year. Last season's incredible stability won't be the norm, but Swanson, Hoerner and Crow-Armstrong are all high-volume players. Remarkably, they're in position to spend over half a decade together as regulars, and Swanson and Hoerner could surpass Dunston and Sandberg in terms of their tenure together as a double-play combination. Just as notably, this essentially locks in the team's infield for the next four years. Michael Busch can't become a free agent until after 2029, like Swanson. He and Alex Bregman (under contract through 2030) are set at the corners, with Swanson and Hoerner up the middle. This will be the closest the Cubs have ever come to the famously long-lasting Dodgers infield of Ron Cey, Bill Russell, Davey Lopes and Steve Garvey. That group was intact for over eight years; this one won't get that far. Their overlap will be historic, though, within the context of the Cubs. It's also a bit of a balm to the hurt of many Cubs fans, who held out hope that the core of Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Javier Báez and others would stick around this way. Swanson, Hoerner, Crow-Armstrong, Bregman, Busch, and even Ian Happ (part of the last core, as well as this one, and likely to depart after this season), Matt Shaw and Moisés Ballesteros could form the remarkably stable group of good players that the last decade promised, but couldn't quite deliver. Of course, that Rizzo-led group did something this team has yet to do: win a World Series. For that matter, this group has yet to win their own division. Since Swanson's arrival, the team has not finished below .500, and it's increasingly likely that they'll remain a winning club for the rest of his contract, but they're yet to catch and pass the Brewers. That could change this season, but the front office didn't wait to see whether it would do so before committing long-term dollars to Crow-Armstrong and Hoerner, to go along with Bregman and Swanson. They've taken a leap of faith, just as the Ricketts family did by extending Jed Hoyer last summer. The players who will determine the success or failure of the Cubs for the next half-decade are all here, now. They're being given a chance to do something special together, and to build an unusually excellent bond with the fan base along the way. No one said it would be easy, though. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images You can safely get used to this Cubs core. It's going to be here a while. The team agreed to a six-year extension with (formerly) impending free agent Nico Hoerner Thursday, according to multiple reports. Jesse Rogers of ESPN was first with the news, on Twitter. Hoerner, 28, was due to become a free agent at the end of this season, at the conclusion of the three-year extension to which he and the Cubs agreed almost exactly three years ago. Instead, he'll stick around through at least 2031, locking in a fourth member of the team's positional core for the medium term. Unlike the deal Chicago agreed to with Pete Crow-Armstrong earlier this week, this one is a major surprise, and a game-changer for the team's future. Hoerner was much closer to free agency, and his possible departure made it easy to see how a number of players' futures with the organization might go. Dansby Swanson could have moved to second base as soon as 2027. Jefferson Rojas, the team's burgeoning shortstop prospect, could have taken over at short. Alternatively, Matt Shaw could have taken over for Hoerner next year, since he's been displaced from third base by the arrival of Alex Bregman. Now, none of that is in play. Swanson's contract runs through 2029, as he heads into his mid-30s. Hoerner, Swanson, Bregman and Michael Busch are overwhelmingly likely to make up the team's infield for the next four seasons, which could get the trio of Swanson, Hoerner and Busch close to 1,000 games together before Swanson or Busch hits free agency. Meanwhile, the pathway to playing time for Rojas and Shaw just got murkier, and the likelihood of a similar extension for Ian Happ or Seiya Suzuki plunged toward zero. Hoerner is, by every account, a great fit in the clubhouse and an asset in the community. He plays with energy and smarts, and became the best version of himself last year, providing hope that he might be entering his prime as a perennial All-Star-caliber second baseman. This extension introduces some tough questions, since there will be defensive degradation to consider and the team needs ways to develop and install new blood, but it's an exhilarating moment, too. Hoerner, Busch, Swanson, Bregman, and Crow-Armstrong will be the spine of this team for the majority of a decade, by the time they're done playing together. Moisés Ballesteros could end up being a sixth in that collection of talent, and Cade Horton, Edward Cabrera and Daniel Palencia offer a pitching-side reflection of that abundance. Suddenly, the Cubs' future is much more clear, and even if there are some reasons to be wary of locking them all in, there is also much reason to celebrate. From a fan's perspective, keeping a group with such a history of and dedication to winning together for such a long time augurs well for the organization. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images The Nationals pulled off a shocking Opening Day blowout against the Chicago Cubs Thursday, winning 10-4. They chased starter Matthew Boyd in the fourth inning, and tacked on runs via late long balls to put away the much better Chicago club. For Boyd, the problem was not an inability to miss bats, but a fatal attraction to the Nationals batters' barrels. Five Washington batted balls against Boyd were 103.8 MPH ore harder, including three crucial hits that contributed to their scoring against him. He was a bit lucky that the line wasn't worse, given how hard the visitors were hitting him when they made contact. Some good defense and a bad baserunning play gave Boyd three of the four outs recorded on balls in play. That wasn't because of a lack of sheer stuff. Boyd's fastball was right in line with last year in terms of velocity, and his changeup, slider and curve all showed similar movement to their norms. In fact, Boyd got whiffs on over half the swings Nationals batters took against him, leading to seven strikeouts. Washington's plan was extremely guess-heavy; they were locking in and sitting on specific pitches in specific counts and situations. When they were wrong, Boyd fooled them badly and racked up whiffs. When they were right, though, they were all over him. Boyd got barreled up on a first-pitch fastball to CJ Abrams and on an 0-1 slider to Daylen Lile. He also got burned trying to sneak a fastball past Brady House on a 2-2 count, and Joey Wiemer took advantage of a good but guessable changeup in a 1-1 count to hit a long home run. Boyd doesn't have unusually intense stuff, but he's hard to read and his pitches have a wide variety of movement. What they don't have is unexpected movement. Thus, if you carefully plan to commit to a given pitch type from him and you get it—especially if it's roughly in the location you expect—he becomes hittable. Of course, if you're wrong, you won't merely slightly mishit the ball, but come up empty altogether. The gameplan worked for the Nationals Thursday. Boyd will have to make some adjustments for his next start, to be less predictable in both sequence and location. This problem isn't entirely new. In the second half of last season, Boyd ran into it somewhat often, and was vulnerable to just this kind of roughing-up. He and Carson Kelly might need to collaborate to develop a different strategy. Last year, opponents had a .620 OPS when either Miguel Amaya or Reese McGuire worked with Boyd, but a .673 mark when the southpaw was paired with Kelly. Opponents hit 16 oif their 22 homers on the year off Boyd in the starts in which he and Kelly worked together. It's just one game, and one loss. For Boyd and the Cubs, though, every game has to be precious this year. The loss Thursday served notice that while much of what he does still works, he'll have to make further adjustments to stop the league from guessing right often enough to hurt him. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images Opening Day is the philosopher's holiday, for it's much more about questions than answers. We won't instantly have complete insight into the 2026 Chicago Cubs after Thursday's season opener; we'll merely have a lone game of data to which to cling as we scramble to reinforce our prior beliefs. Even a week or a month from now, answers about who and what this team is will be elusive; that's the nature of a 162-game marathon. Thus, Opening Day is primarily about agreeing on which questions matter most. Here are five things Cubs fans should watch and wonder about, beginning Thursday and stretching slowly across the spring and summer. 1. Will the Cubs Get Edward Cabrera Right? At the risk of triggering many Cubs fans who lived through the unhappy denouement of the last miniature Cubs dynasty, the player who looms as a warning against full-fledged enthusiasm about Cabrera is former high-profile, electric-armed acquisition Tyler Chatwood. The Cubs front office was very excited to get ahold of Chatwood, but his awful command compromised his awesome raw stuff. Cabrera should be better than Chatwood was, but tapping into the best version of him means getting some key developmental dilemmas just right. The good version of Cabrera is neck-and-neck with Cade Horton for the title of ace in this rotation, and could strike out 250 batters. The bad version runs into so many problems with his suboptimal fastball shape and average-minus command that his ERA balloons toward 5.00, even if he stays healthy. The Cubs spent the spring trying to help him find the version of his fastball that can set up the rest of his arsenal, but we won't know how successful that experiment was for some time. 2. Which Version of Pete Crow-Armstrong's Offensive Profile is the Real Deal? He's officially the face of the franchise, now. He's one of the best defenders in baseball. He's only 24 years old. Crow-Armstrong is the Cub with transformational, superstar potential—but ultimately, he had a .287 OBP last year. His lack of plate discipline became a real and serious problem; we don't yet know whether he can be a consistently effective hitter. All the power-speed dynamism he's demonstrated makes Crow-Armstrong the centerpiece of this lineup, if he's the best version of himself. That version of him has to be one with a more consistent plan in the batter's box, though. 3. Does Dansby Swanson Have Time Left at Shortstop? The Cubs have to be pleased to have gotten three years into a seven-year pact with Swanson without having to even consider moving him off the position they signed him to play. He's been a consistently above-average shortstop and the anchor of a team defense that lies at the heart of their overall team-building philosophy. But that can't last forever. Regular shortstops who stay at that position into their mid-30s are virtually unheard-of in the modern game, and Swanson is now 32. He'll still play there this season, but whether he can remain a plus glove is a very fair question—and a very important one, to this year's team. 4. Can Matt Shaw Handle His New Role? It was a highly productive spring for Shaw, who learned to play the outfield and showed off a blessedly simplified setup in the batter's box. The Cubs need that to translate to the games that count, but the challenge ahead of Shaw is even greater than the one behind him. He'll be finding his playing time one game at a time this season, but he's an important part of the team's plans. Without sturdy contributions from him on both sides of the runs ledger, the lineup's depth won't match that of the Brewers. If Shaw takes a big step forward, though, he could be a catalyst for the ascendancy of the whole club. Here's the problem: For any player, succeeding while moving between positions and sitting at least one or two days a week is difficult. For a young guy who's shown shaky pitch recognition and whose mechanics are always in danger of unproductive digression, it's doubly so. Shaw has to prove himself unusually good at a tricky balancing act. 5. Will the Bullpen Be as Good as Its Less Proven Previous Editions? By Jed Hoyer standards, the Cubs made big investments in the bullpen this winter. It was an overhaul of the relief corps, and one that leaves them with few optionable arms. On the other hand, they have lots of proven dudes out there, in Phil Maton, Hunter Harvey, Caleb Thielbar, Hoby Milner, and Jacob Webb. It's a group the team should be able to count on not to implode, as some recent acquisitions have (Héctor Neris, Ryan Pressly), but the upside is a bit limited. Even acknowledging the emergence of Daniel Palencia as a true relief ace, the team needs someone to take an unexpected step forward in order to get a championship-caliber performance from this pen. That makes Ben Brown a pivotal arm. Relegated to the pen by a healthy and deep starting rotation, Brown has a chance to be that wipeout multi-inning reliever that has so often been the signature of Craig Counsell's bullpen management. But Brown still carries real risk, and the team still needs someone from the rest of the mix (perhaps Harvey, whose stuff stands out from the crowd) to have something better than their average outcome this year. This team has 100-win upside, and should be over .500 even in a relatively unlucky world. They're a legitimate threat to the hegemony of the Brewers in the NL Central. They still face some big questions on Opening Day, but the answers to those questions look likely to be positive. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images Jed Hoyer has been in charge of building the Chicago Cubs roster since late 2020, when Theo Epstein resigned and Hoyer was promoted to president of baseball operations. The 2026 campaign, then, will be his sixth as the architect of the club. He's 0-for-6, so far, when it comes to building a solid bench. This year, the glaring, flashing beacon of Hoyer's annual failure is Scott Kingery. Set to turn 32 next month, Kingery has 1,156 career plate appearances and a .227/.278/.382 batting line. He's a solid but unremarkable defender at any of a handful of positions. He is, by any definition, below the replacement level for a team with any semblance of developmental competence or resources to spend. By now, though, Cubs fans have become accustomed to having someone essentially unplayable keeping a portion of the bench warm each spring. In 2021, Eric Sogard played 78 games for the Cubs, despite batting .249/.283/.314 and being unimpressive at each position where David Ross played him. In 2022, the team tried out Jonathan Villar, Michael Hermosillo, and Clint Frazier in stints of varying lengths. Those were rebuilding years, but those weren't players who came in via July trades; they were the team's Plan A for bench spots. Nor did things improve as (in theory) the Cubs pivoted toward contention in 2023. That was the year of Trey Mancini, Eric Hosmer and Edwin Rios, Though the 2023 Cubs' failures of depth were responsible for their missing the postseason, Hoyer learned nothing. In 2024, he brought back all three of Patrick Wisdom, Miles Mastrobuoni, and Nick Madrigal, when even a generous assessment and an optimistic vision would only have justified keeping two of them. He also sought a mulligan on his repeated failures at first base by signing Garrett Cooper. In 2025, having failed spectacularly again, he invested more resources in addressing the bench—but came up just as empty, because Justin Turner, Gage Workman and Vidal Bruján were uncannily, unaccountably similar to the players who had flopped in their very roles over the previous three years. This winter, though, Hoyer did nothing better to deepen his positional roster. He's falling into a pattern that stretches across his tenure as the leader of the team: paying strict attention to detail in choosing big moves and mostly getting them right, but neglecting the bench or making the same mistakes there over and over. In fact, his approach to the bench has been very similar to the one he takes with the bullpen. It's worked like a charm for the relief corps, which might be giving the team false confidence about applying the same plan to the bench—where they've had no success whatsoever. Under Hoyer, the Cubs have signed major free agents (Seiya Suzuki, Dansby Swanson, Cody Bellinger and Alex Bregman) and extended key contributors (Ian Happ, Nico Hoerner, Pete Crow-Armstrong). They've done well with those moves, and they build a solid starting lineup almost every year. But their lower-level moves have missed much more often than they've hit; the only mild exceptions are catchers Yan Gomes and Carson Kelly. This winter, Hoyer signed veteran slugger Tyler Austin, who was penciled into one spot on the bench. After he was hurt early in camp, though, the team scrambled a bit. They scooped up Michael Conforto, to complement the winner of a competition between minor-league signees Dylan Carlson and Chas McCormick for the fourth outfield spot. If Austin had been the team's only spring loss, they might have slotted Matt Shaw in as their backup infielder, but once Suzuki went down with a sprained PCL, the path opened for an extra infielder, with Shaw getting more time in right field. Thus, Kingery will sponge up a spot on a team with playoff aspirations, for the first time in his entire career. He was once a moderately hyped prospect, but he was a bust, and his only significant playing time since the pandemic came with last year's Angels. It's a galling error in team-building to have Kingery on the roster, even if it's only for a fortnight. It's a stark reminder of Hoyer's consistent inability to keep up with (among others) the rival Milwaukee Brewers, who perennially find lots of value at the bottom of their roster and with low-level pickups. That's why the Brewers have run circles around the Cubs for the last half-decade, and if they beat Chicago out for a fourth straight division title in 2026, it will be for the same reason. Kingery didn't even play well this spring, except by drawing a fistful of walks and stealing some bases once he got on. He's on the roster solely because, when two players were hurt in the preseason, Hoyer's creaky construction of the roster was immediately exposed. It shouldn't be long before Kingery is pushed out, but even once he is, Conforto and Carlson will have relatively safe jobs—and neither is an especially good bet to have a good 2026. The Cubs must do better at this, but they extended Hoyer last summer, so the decision-maker will remain the same. Hoyer needs to do some serious self-evaluation and improve as a reinforcer of his positional core, but it's already too late to put the pieces in place as well as he should have for this year. View full article

Image courtesy of © Thomas Shea-Imagn Images When you watch Pete Crow-Armstrong hit, 'optimized' isn't the first word that springs to mind. Because he swings at practically everything, the Cubs' young center fielder is forever displaying his warts. He often looks like a mess up there, because when we think about players who are exceptionally efficient at the plate, we think first about swing decisions. That's the internet's shared inheritance, having witnessed Moneyball and the change it wrought throughout professional baseball. Crow-Armstrong is an extremely aggressive hitter; his approach has plenty of rough edges. Break down his actual swing, though, and you're forced to admit that there's a method beneath the madness. Far from flailing at the ball the way many free swingers do, Crow-Armstrong spent 2025 drawing a bead on the ball and attacking it in a very calculated way—without the restraint of a Juan Soto or a Kyle Schwarber, but very much with their level of lethal barrel accuracy and timing. Only six qualifying hitters pulled the ball in the air on a higher percentage of their batted balls than Crow-Armstrong did in 2025, and every name makes it a bit clearer how important that skill is: Isaac Paredes - 38.5% Cal Raleigh - 38.4% Spencer Torkelson - 31.8% Max Muncy - 31.5% Kyle Schwarber - 31.1% José Ramírez - 30.9% Pete Crow-Armstrong - 30.2% Raleigh and Schwarber, of course, led their leagues in homers last season. Of these seven players, only Paredes and Muncy failed to crack 30 homers, and then only because each of them missed a substantial portion of the season. Though lithe and speedy, Crow-Armstrong's swing is as geared for power as the game's elite sluggers—and that was no accident. Crow-Armstrong entered last season knowing he needed to tap into more of his power. He'll never be a Schwarberesque home-run hitter, because Schwarber is much stronger and has about two grades better raw power than Crow-Armstrong does. However, Crow-Armstrong knew that he could produce at least average pop, as measured by 90th-percentile exit velocity. That number is a better indicator of power than a player's average EV, and the league's median EV90 last year was 105.1 miles per hour. In a limited stint at Triple-A iowa in 2024, Crow-Armstrong had put up an EV90 of 105.7 MPH, but in an uneven year in the majors, that number was just 101.2. Worse, the percentage of his plate appearances that ended in a pulled fly ball was a robust 17.9% in the minors, but an unimposing 10.9% in the majors. Thus, he came to camp in 2025 ready to attack the ball more ferociously, but also to lift it and maximize the damage done by the contact he made. Firstly, he developed a more spread-out stance, but didn't shorten his stride accordingly. Though starting deeper in the batter's box, he began catching the ball farther in front of his body, thanks to the aggressiveness of his lower half. Although Crow-Armstrong's swing is steeper, slower and targeted differently than Juan Soto's, it's a bit instructive to compare the way he gets into his lower half to the way Soto does so. With his new stance and stride, Crow-Armstrong—like Soto—stretches the elastic aspects of the body and maximizes the torque he eventually produces. His swing speed increased by nearly 2 MPH in 2025, but it wasn't because of dedicated bat speed training. He just got much more aggressive, forcing his body into a position where it had to fire a harder swing. Compare his 2024 (left) and 2025 (right) swings at three crucial moments, and you can see the differences. The wider base created more torque right from the beginning of his swing last year. That opened his front side sooner, which allowed (and, indeed, compelled) him to get around the ball more, even as he began to work up through the ball, rather than down into the hitting zone. By the time he made contact, his barrel was almost 4 inches farther in front of his frame, oriented more toward right-center field, and working more steeply uphill. Swinging harder and catching it farther in front meant that Crow-Armstrong's EV90 jumped right back up to the league's average over his first full season in the majors in 2025, at 105.2 MPH. Obviously, though, his power played at much more than an average level. That's because a whopping 18.9% of his plate appearances ended in pulled fly balls. As the leaderboard above hinted, he'd optimized his swing. It unleashed a version of him with plus-plus overall power, including not just the 31 home runs but 72 total extra-base hits. To visualize this another way, consider the distributions of Crow-Armstrong's batted balls by exit velocity for both 2024 and 2025. Here's the first of those years. I've colored the chart by expected batting average, based on exit velocity and launch angle. As you can see (and would guess), the best results came when he hit the ball over 100 MPH, but he was more likely to hit it in the upper 70s. This is an interesting distribution—not unique, but unusual. Most players' histograms show something closer to a normal distribution. This one is a reminder that even as a rookie, Crow-Armstrong was prone to either click on a ball or miss fairly badly, leading to those mishit balls with 75-85 MPH exit velocities. He had a similar distribution in 2025, but note the important differences. Firstly, this is closer to a distribution curve with a hard rightward skew, rather than a bimodal distribution. Crow-Armstrong got better at missing by smaller margins. He also hit more balls hard, especially above 105 MPH. Just as importantly, though, look at the red glow of those tall bars where the plurality of his batted balls still fall. By pulling it and lifting it more often, he got a lot more mileage out of those balls on which he made middling contact, too. He found many more hits by hitting low fly balls and flared line drives at those exit velocities than he had by hitting them (mostly) on the ground in 2024. He also collected several RBIs on sacrifice flies by operating that way. Crow-Armstrong has only average raw power, as even he knows. He has below-average feel for contact, and below-average plate discipline. By optimizing his swing path, though, he exploded into being a plus power threat with average hit-tool utility last year. If he can figure out how to better control the strike zone—a somewhat pie-in-the-sky hope, but one of which there was some evidence this spring—he can take a further step toward greatness. For now, though, his swing and his approach have turned him into a sufficiently dynamic offensive weapon to make him worth a long, nine-figure deal with the Cubs. Even amid his breakout, early last summer, his frankness and advanced understanding of his own game were gratifying. Now, that polish—in however unorthodox a form—has borne fruit for him. The Cubs are buying into the ongoing optimization of their elite outfield athlete. It's a big gamble, but one he's already shown them he can make worthwhile. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images The Cubs aren't letting their next core slip out the door the way the last one did. They've agreed to a long-term deal with star center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. Jeff Passan of ESPN was first to report the news, on Twitter. Crow-Armstrong, who will turn 24 on Wednesday, was already under team control through 2030, but was due to reach arbitration eligibility next winter as a Super Two player. He batted .247/.287/.481 in a breakthrough 2025 campaign, with 37 doubles, 4 triples, 31 home runs and 35 stolen bases. He continues to struggle with plate discipline, but is arguably the best defensive center fielder in baseball. Playing for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, he hit two home runs and had a .965 OPS, elevating what had already become an international profile during last year's Tokyo Series against the Dodgers. The deal is not yet finalized, but is expected to extend the Cubs' control of Crow-Armstrong by at least two seasons, a source said. The structure will be different, but the terms are believed to be similar to those to which the Diamondbacks and Corbin Carroll agreed in 2023, and to those on which Jackson Merrill and the Padres got together last spring. Those deals were for $111 million over eight years and $135 million over nine years, respectively, though each of those players had less service time than Crow-Armstrong has and were further from arbitration eligibility. This deal, then, could include more guaranteed money but compensate by giving the Cubs an extra club option. Though similarly dynamic, Crow-Armstrong is less well-rounded at the plate than are Carroll and Merrill, making the comparison instructive but imperfect. As we reported last April, Crow-Armstrong and the Cubs had extension talks before his breakout season, but they didn't come especially close to agreeing at the time. Crow-Armstrong's camp sought a nine-figure guarantee, and were only willing to come to the table if at least $80 million were guaranteed and half that much again were attainable via incentives and options. The Cubs, by contrast, offered him a deal that could have topped out around $80 million, but which was only set to guarantee him a bit over $50 million. In 11 months, he more than doubled his earning power. Though they could structure the deal to begin in 2027, a league source said the Cubs will absorb the hit to their competitive-balance tax payroll figure for 2026, pushing them deeper into the first tier but not to the threshold of the second tier of tax penalties. That will soften the blow in future years by lengthening the deal and lowering its annual average value. The team still faces open questions about whether to extend Nico Hoerner, Ian Happ or Seiya Suzuki—all due to become free agents this fall. However, Crow-Armstrong is now locked in as the center-field centerpiece of what the team hopes will be its next championship core. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jordan Godfree-Imagn Images Ben Brown doesn't lack confidence. The tweaks he made this winter changed the righty's profile as a pitcher, and he firmly believes that he's tapped into the fullness of his potential for the first time. "This is the best I have ever http://been," Brown told 104.3 The Score's Bruce Levine earlier this month. "It should be clear to anyone [who] has watched me. So regardless of anyone’s opinion of me, it shouldn’t change how I feel about myself.” That comment spoke to Brown's fierce desire to be part of the big-league team as they head north this week, and on Monday, that wish was fulfilled. The Cubs optioned Javier Assad to Triple-A Iowa, shortly after having reassigned Corbin Martin and Collin Snider to minor-league camp. Brown has made the Opening Day roster, as the team's second long reliever. He and Colin Rea will be the team's fallback starter options, as well as going multiple innings at a time out of the bullpen when needed. Assad will be assigned what would have been the alternative role available to Brown, serving as a starter in Iowa and staying ready for an injury that might shelve one of the team's top five starters. Brown's sinker garnered lots of attention right from the start of camp this year, and it seems to have transformed his game in an interesting way. More important than the addition of the sinker, though, is the fact that his fastball has sat at 97 MPH this spring, after averaging under 96 MPH last season. His heater works so much better at the higher end of his velocity range than at the lower end that seeing his velocity tick up carries more weight than it would for a typical pitcher. That's borne out by the results he's achieved this spring, despite what seems like a degradation in shape on the four-seamer that has diminished his grades within some stuff models. Here's a comparison of his stuff from 2025 to what he's shown this spring, in a vacuum. Interestingly, in studying video, Brown doesn't seem to have lowered his arm slot this year, which makes it somewhat difficult to explain the loss of carry on his four-seamer and the decreased depth on his knuckle-curve. With the sinker in the mix, though, the four-seamer is running less to his arm side, so there's more consistency in his shape. Brown appears to be less focused on maximizing extension and getting down the mound this year, having exchanged some of that intensity of movement for better posture at release. That's led to better command and the newfound ability to differentiate the sinker from the four-seamer. As a result, while each pitch might grade worse in certain computer models, Brown is missing more bats this spring. The difference lies as much in the variability in locations he can reach with his altered arsenal as in the sheer power or intensity of his stuff. Here's where he located each of his pitches against both lefties and righties in 2025. Here's where he's located his pitches this spring. That he's locating the four-seamer higher than he did last year (to both lefties and righties) only makes it an even more intriguing mystery that he's getting less carry, because on average, the higher a pitcher's target, the higher their induced vertical break will be. However, it also underscores that Brown's change in posture and mechanical efficiency increases his ability to hit specific targets, and the introduction of the sinker creates a whole different look for right-handed batters than he offered last season. This is the best version of Brown—not just (or even mainly) because of the new pitch, but because he's throwing harder and locating better at the same time. He did that all spring while stretching out with an eye toward starting, so if he can get the fastball to tick up still higher in relief—without giving back the improved control and execution—things can go another level higher. For now, the Cubs made the right choice, because Assad is the guy who needs to stay ready for a mid-season rotation assignment. Brown, if things go perfectly, should stay in the bullpen and continue to cultivate the improvements we glimpsed this year during Cactus League play. View full article

Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-Imagn Images Signing relievers to multi-year deals is not typically part of the Cubs' team-building plan. Even a modest two-year commitment to Phil Maton this winter was a relatively significant investment, by Jed Hoyer's standards; he prefers to cobble together a relief corps without using up a meaningful share of his total resources. It might be worth making Daniel Palencia the exception to that rule. The Cubs' closer, 26, is still five years from reaching free agency based on service time. However, he'll reach arbitration eligibility next winter. He had 22 saves last year, and will probably save more games this season. The arbitration system infamously underpays middle relievers, but rewards those who rack up high saves totals. Palencia is in line, absent any change, to go through the arbitration process four times, and his salary will rise steeply because of his role. Instead of risking seeing him push toward an eight-figure salary by 2030 and being in a position where his earning power diminishes their interest in retaining him, the Cubs could lock Palencia up right now, to an exceptionally team-friendly deal. He only received a $10,000 signing bonus when he joined the Athletics organization in 2020. As a reliever, he has to reckon with the inherent volatility of his role, and unlike most big-leaguers, he's not set for life. A contract extension for Palencia wouldn't need to include massive guarantees. Instead, the Cubs could lock up Palencia for the balance of his five years of team control, and add one or two club options that would extend their control. The cost would be trivial, from the team's perspective. Here's one possible structure: 2026: $1 million + $2-million signing bonus 2027: $2.5 million 2028: $4 million 2029: $5.5 million 2030: $7 million 2031: $11 million - club option with $1-million buyout 2032: $12 million - club option with $2-million buyout This structure would guarantee Palencia $23 million, with the opportunity to earn as much as $45 million if the team options are exercised. It's not dissimilar from the deal to which Cleveland signed now-disgraced closer Emmanuel Clase in early 2022. That deal also included incentives, which Palencia's could, too, but he doesn't have quite as strong a track record as Clase had when he signed, and the Cubs have more leverage over Palencia (based on his age and amateur signing bonus) than the Guardians had with Clase, so the incentives could be muted. A deal like this would ensure that the Cubs don't end up owing huge money to Palencia in 2029 or 2030. It's not terribly uncommon for high-end relievers to reach eight figures in arbitration, especially if they become Super Two-eligible, as Palencia will next winter. Astros closer Josh Hader made over $25 million in his final two years of arbitration, alone, and got $4.1 million in his first year as a Super Two guy. Palencia, again, is not quite on Hader's level, but that illustrates how much a closer can rack up money via arbitration. The Cubs have every incentive to gain some cost certainty, given their lack of power arms waiting in the wings in the minors. Palencia, for his part, would have a hard time passing up over $20 million in guaranteed money, since he's one elbow surgery from ending up as a free agent next winter with less than $2 million in total career earnings. Although deals with Pete Crow-Armstrong, Nico Hoerner or others would be more impactful, the Cubs could secure Palencia's services pretty cheaply, and it could resolve some of their perennial uncertainty in the bullpen without eating into their ability to do anything else. The two sides should be talking, and try to hammer out a deal before Opening Day. View full article