Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Jon Durr-Imagn Images That Kyle Hendricks started Game 7 of the 2016 World Series—that it was he who first scooped up the baseball for the Cubs on the night that 108 years of waiting finally ended—is just trivia, really. It didn't have to be. Joe Maddon could have trusted him more, if he'd so chosen, and Hendricks would have met the moment. Maddon was on tilt by the end of the Series, though, and the Cubs' survival in that game ultimately had little to do with Hendricks. He was there. He mattered. But he wasn't the man who drove the bus. A week and a half earlier, though, he sure was. By pure happenstance, really, he was the man who took the ball in Game 6 of the NLCS. Jon Lester was the ace of that Cubs team, and he'd started Game 1 of the NLDS. Hendricks got the nod over Jake Arrieta for Game 2, but that was more because Hendricks pitched much better at home than away that year than because Maddon believed Hendricks was materially better than Arrieta. Hendricks left that NLDS start early, after being hit by a comebacker. He avoided major damage, but that game wasn't going his way, anyway. He only recorded 11 outs and surrendered two runs; he didn't strike out anyone. If things had gone a bit differently in San Francisco, for that team, Hendricks might have landed in any of several very different places in the team's rotation for the NLCS. Chicago nearly finished a sweep when they took Game 3 to extra innings. They nearly had to come home to face the Giants in a decisive Game 5, until a winning comeback in Game 4. As things panned out, though, Hendricks got the ball in Game 2 of the NLCS, and he was very much his usual self again. That night, though, Clayton Kershaw outdueled him, evening that series 1-1 as it headed to Los Angeles. Hendricks didn't participate in the West Coast segment of the series, but when it returned to Wrigley, he was slated to start, and his team held the 3-2 series edge. This time, there would be no telling comebackers. There would be no duel. There was just Hendricks, taking a moment baseball history dropped on him like an anvil and heaving it heroically into place. That weight became no obstacle to Hendricks. It became, instead, the killing stone on which the team ritually destroyed the curse of the billy goat. Hendricks was the tip of the spear. Baseball history contains two postseason games in which one side retired the other in 27 batters, winning and facing the minimum in the process. One is Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series. The other was the night that Hendricks became a legend of Cubs lore, and of the 27 outs, 22 were his. It didn't start smoothly. Andrew Toles lined Hendricks's first pitch into right field for a single. No matter. Hendricks is unflappability personified, a low cap and a drooping chin and all the physical expressiveness of a department-store mannequin—with exactly the same capacity to be intimidated as a department-store mannequin. That first pitch had all the nerves he would show all evening in it. It was 89 miles per hour, which meant he'd overcooked it, and it ran right down the middle. His second pitch was a sinker to Corey Seager, perfectly placed, running to the outer edge at 87 MPH. Seager hit a ground ball up the middle, on which Javier Báez picked the ball on the run and made a brilliant tag en passant on Toles, then threw to Anthony Rizzo in one motion for the double play. Justin Turner gave Hendricks his first real batter. Hendricks started the late-blooming slugger with a pair of cutters down and away, one a ball and one a called strike. Then came three sinkers in a row: ball low, foul, foul, each pitch working farther in on Turner, trying to speed him up and get him looking there. He tried a dipping changeup to get the strikeout, but Turner laid off. Finally, on 3-2, he went up and away—a hole in Turner's swing, but only if you get him looking everywhere else before going there. It worked. Turner flied lazily to right fielder Albert Almora Jr. Three up, three down. When Hendricks took the mound again, he had a 2-0 lead, and the biggest challenge was not to let the excitement or a relatively long sit in the dugout take his edge off. No problem. He started Adrián González with a cutter that started on the outside edge and ran into the white of the plate. That took guts, because González had taken Hendricks deep for the Dodgers' only run against him six days earlier, to left-center. Hendricks knew, though, that González would take the first pitch unless it looked fat out of the hand. It didn't; it only looked fat once it was in Willson Contreras's mitt. González tried to get aggressive on the next offering, a changeup that tumbled down to his knees on the same line on the outer third, but whiffed. Hendricks ran a cutter way inside on him, then tried two changeups down and away. On the second of them, González hit a soft, floating liner up the middle, which reached a shifted Addison Russell on a leisurely bounce for an easy out. That brought up Josh Reddick, on whom Hendricks again began with a cutter running into the middle of the plate. Called strike one. His next pitch, this time, was not the changeup but his little-used curveball, and its big, slow arc induced a fooled Reddick to hit a topspin bouncer to the right side. It was so mishit, though, that it fooled Báez, just as it had fooled Reddick. It hit the second baseman in the chest, and Reddick got first on the error. No matter. They say Hendricks doesn't have explosive stuff, but he certainly did on the first pitch to Joc Pederson. Just as he threw a fading outside-corner changeup, fireworks went off in the distance, somewhere near the lakeshore, and Pederson tried (far too late) to step out and call time. All he got for his pleas was strike one. Strike two followed, the same changeup but a little bit off the edge, a little low, fouled away by the anxious Pederson. No anxiety afflicted Hendricks. The next pitch was a high fastball, so rare a sighting from Hendricks that it beat Pederson handily for a strikeout. Hendricks then went to work on Yasmani Grandal, but also on Reddick at first base. The Dodger right fielder was looking runnerish, and Hendricks always excelled at thwarting the running game with his quick feet. He nibbled against Grandal, with a changeup that just grabbed the outside edge for strike one and one buried in the dirt for ball one. A backdoor cutter stole him strike two and encouraged Reddick to get a little more. Lengthen that lead, try the steal, there are two strikes, anyway. Bang. Hendricks fired his 'A' pickoff move over, with that sudden turn of the hips and shoulders and that brilliantly light bit of footwork. Reddick was out by as much as any runner you've ever seen, on a pickoff by a righty pitcher. Technically, it was six up, six down. The Cubs tortured Kershaw again for a while in the second, and scored a third run. All Hendricks had to do was keep the train running. He did face an immediate challenge, though: how to get out Grandal a second time in a row, more or less. The answer was: cutter inside (ball one), then back to the outside corner (strike one, called) changeup fading away (ball two), changeup elevated (called strike two). That four-pitch sequence set up a battle. Grandal, one of the most patient hitters in the league and one of its toughest outs, had seen seven pitches already against Hendricks. Hendricks tried a perfect change on the outer edge, but this time, Grandal spoiled it. Hendricks went farther down and away; spoiled. He tried his more cutting changeup, at the bottom edge over the middle of the plate; spoiled. The high fastball that had disposed of Pederson didn't work on Grandal, because he missed too high with it. That brought the count full, but on 3-2, he went back to the cutter, down at the biottom of the zone. Strike three, on a swing that said Grandal expected the changeup. Chase Utley was due next. Though at the end of his career by then, Utley was a great hitter, and wasn't going to give away an at-bat. Hendricks took one from him by the force of precision: backdoor cutter, strike one; changeup down, on the same edge, ball one; sinker away, drawing X's on the outside corner. Utley lined the pitch to left field, but Ben Zobrist caught it with ease. Hendricks didn't mess around at all with Kershaw: three fastballs in the zone, three strikes. Nine up, nine down. Unwilling to give Toles a second chance to hit the first pitch hard somewhere, Hendricks looped in a curveball on the outer black for strike one. The next pitch was a changeup low and away, nibbling the same edge, and Toles put a very good swing on it—but the only thing it was ever going to hit was the end of his bat. Almora made another easy catch. Seager got ahead 2-0, as Hendricks tried the front-hip sinker and the backdoor curve with insufficient precision. Retreating to his bread and butter, though, Hendricks ran the sinker off the outer edge, and Seager grounded out up the middle again. This time, Hendricks cut it off himself and threw to Rizzo. Hendricks stole a strike with a backdoor sinker to Turner, then missed away with that high fastball that worked the previous at-bat. He came back with a changeup diving down and in on him for a swinging strike two, though, and ahead 1-2, he got a weak grounder to Rizzo by running the two-seamer right at Turner's hands. Twelve up, 12 down. It was when Contreras homered off Kershaw to lead off the bottom of the fourth that Wrigley went from loud and excitable to a true cauldron of sound and fearsome joy. It pretty much stayed that way, and that might have startled or overexcited a different player. Hendricks, for his part, got González on a first-pitch cutter at the bottom of the zone, inducing a sharp but manageable grounder to Russell. He started Reddick with a low cutter, for a called strike. He lost an attempt to throw another backdoor curve, but when he came back from that with a changeup in the middle of the plate, Reddick just popped it up. Báez went over and took the ball away from Rizzo, but whichever of them caught it, the play was going to be easy. Home plate umpire Ted Barrett missed what should have been strike one to start Pederson, on a high cutter, but Hendricks came back with a lower one to even the tally. He missed away with another curve (really, he didn't have great feel for that pitch for most of the night, but all his misses with it were far beyond the areas where he might have gotten hurt), then got strike two with a balloon ball of a changeup away. After that floater, when he threw a sharper, tumbling change in the dirt, Pederson had no chance. It was a swinging third strike. Fifteen up, 15 down. Anthony Rizzo made it, officially, a blowout with a fifth-inning homer. Kershaw tried to get cute with a dropdown slider against him. Rizzo did decidedly non-cute things to that ball. Hendricks had only been expected to give the team about five innings in this contest, and he'd done that. The lead was five. If his night had ended there, no one would have blinked. Instead, he took the hill again, facing Grandal—who had already seen 12 pitches against him in the game. He tried a high cutter to start him, but missed up. He went back to that floating, slightly slower high changeup away, to even the count, but then failed to get the chase when he threw a curve (executed correctly, this time, but to no avail) ankle-high over the inner third. For the first time, he started to look ever-so-slightly tired. He tested the outside corner with a cutter, but released it a hair early and missed high and away with it. For the first time all night, he was meaningfully behind in a count, 3-1. No matter. He threw two gorgeous cutters, one down and in and one that found that upper, outer edge, both drawing whiffs from the sharp-eyed Grandal. Eighteen pitches weren't enough for Grandal to figure him out; none of the other Dodgers would get anything close to that many chances. His command was still a bit compromised. He started Utley with a good cutter down and in, but his impression of a backfoot curveball proved unconvincing, and a 1-1 backdoor cutter didn't reach the plate. No matter. A 2-1 pitch that must have looked like a hittable sinker to Utley was really a changeup that ran off the plate away, and the aging star tapped a grounder to Báez. Kershaw's night ended with Andre Ethier pinch-hitting for him. Hendricks missed with a cutter, then a changeup down and away, but then he stole a strike with a low cutter. He tried to go even lower with a sinker, but missed. Another 3-1 count. No matter. Ethier was trying to buy a walk, and so Hendricks filled up the zone with a cutter. On 3-2, he landed another perfect backdoor cut-piece, and Ethier became the first Dodgers batter all night to hit the ball to Kris Bryant, at third base. It was an easy grounder. Eighteen up, 18 down. Toles had clearly been looking down and out over the plate in each of his first two turns, and he'd been aggressive, too. That made Hendricks's job the third time easy. He threw him a cutter up and in, tying him up badly and inducing a pop-up to Russell. He fired a first-pitch cutter to Seager to jump ahead 0-1, then went sinker-sinker, down and away. One of them missed off the edge; Seager fouled off the other. On 1-2, he tried a change of eye levels with a high fastball, but Seager fouled that off, too. Having set him up, Hendricks went for two straight buried changeups. but Seager laid off them, filling the count. No. Matter. Hendricks had one more changeup to offer, and it was a thing of beauty. He turned it over hard, got two-plane fade on it, and Seager tried to kill it. No luck, no contact, and a strikeout where a walk could have been but was never going to be. Like every other Dodgers batter, Seager was more anxious than Hendricks. He threw Turner another surgical first-pitch, backdoor sinker. He tried to get another whiff with that changeup slicing in under his bat path, but Turner laid off it for ball one. He tried again, but the pitch hung. Turner had been looking for the cutter, though, and even a slightly elevated change brought a weak foul pop-up to Rizzo. Twenty-one up, 21 down. González looks to do damage on the ball down and away, so much that Hendricks tried a first-pitch bender below the zone to start the eighth. It missed. He tried a cutter up and in; it missed. He then went for three straight cutters starting on the outer edge and running in, trying to get weak contact to bail him out of the bad count. Even with five runs of cushion, he wasn't going to walk González. He wasn't pitching for strikeouts or glory, but for the team. On a 3-1 pitch, González obliged him with a fly ball to center field, where Dexter Fowler got his first action of the game. Hendricks's first pitch to Reddick was a cutter that didn't start as far out on the edge as he'd meant, and which ended up right down the middle. Reddick hit a clean single to center, two balls in a row for Fowler, and that ended Hendricks's night. No matter. Aroldis Chapman would finish the job, with two double plays leading to a four-up, five-down save. Before that, though, came the ovation of a lifetime. Hendricks left Wrigley Field with the crowd in as true a frenzy as has met the departure of any starting pitcher in the stadium's history. Báez tugged at the name on the back of his jersey as he started away. Maybe Hendricks wanted to absorb the adulation head-down, brow stoic, but his teammates wanted none of that. They'd just watched him knit them all together, pick them all up when they wobbled, and carry them to the end of the curse, if not quite the end of the night. As great as Kerry Wood's 20-strikeout mega-gem was, it's not the best and greatest pitching performance in Cubs history. This was. Officially, the Dodgers collected two hits against Hendricks that night, and they reached on one error. No matter. That night, that team was perfect, and their starting pitcher made them so. Destiny chose Kyle Hendricks, a nobody eighth-round pick with a fastball from the wrong generation and a changeup from Hell, to be the one who ended sport's most famous droughts. On the night when he made baseball history, the man who famously lived at 88 miles per hour threw 88 pitches. He was masterful, and unshakable, and such a team guy that (even though it took until the very end) he leaned on every teammate to assist or record at least one out, but he was also a towering individual performer in that game. Hendricks won't go to the Baseball Hall of Fame, but he's a shoo-in for the Cubs Hall of Fame. He'll retire, it was reported Monday, so we've seen the last of him in the major leagues. No matter. For most Cubs fans, he'll live and pitch forever, over and over, whenever they close their eyes or go to YouTube to savor the highlights. There might be no more ideal image to capture one player's career in one picture than that moment when, surrounded by teammates and a manager somewhat awestruck by the massiveness and the beauty of his performance, Hendricks handed the ball to his skipper, with Báez tugging at that name to make sure everyone in the park knew just who had dominated on the biggest stage in Chicago sports history. View full article

Image courtesy of © Christopher Hanewinckel-Imagn Images The Chicago Cubs extended the qualifying offer to outfielder Kyle Tucker and to left-handed pitcher Shota Imanaga, ahead of Thursday's deadline to make such decisions. Along with the earlier news that they extended right-hander Colin Rea and that Justin Turner's mutual option for 2026 was declined, the moves round out the team's set of roster machinations as true free agency begins in earnest. For Tucker, the offer was a mere formality. The Cubs were never going to let him go without making that offer, and Tucker will not seriously consider accepting it. This is, in a way, the completion of the trade between the Cubs and Astros last offseason. It becomes (barring the unexpected but still possible development of Tucker returning to Chicago) a trade of Cam Smith, Isaac Paredes and Hayden Wesneski for Tucker and a 2026 draft pick, between the second and third rounds. In 2025, Tucker was less than he or the Cubs hoped he would be—but that was still, on balance, quite good. He batted .266/.377/.464 in 597 plate appearances. He was worth roughly 30 runs more than an average hitter, and was great on the bases. Much of that value was concentrated in the first half of the season, though, and he was disappointingly subpar in right field. The Cubs hoped they were acquiring a player and forging a relationship that would last a decade beyond 2025, but now, they're likely to be happy to take the draft pick and find a replacement for Tucker's offense elsewhere. Issuing the offer to Imanaga is the far more interesting decision, for today. A few months ago, it still looked likely the team would pick up their three-year, $57-million option on him at the onset of the offseason, but after his brutal finish to the season, that went out the window. After Imanaga turned down his own player option, Chicago seriously considered not extending him the offer, sources familiar with the team's thinking said. They were deeply concerned by the problems that developed as he lowered his arm slot in 2025. His fastball's carry remained valuable, but the inability to hit the bottom of the zone with it or get his strike-to-ball splitter working for whiffs steadily eroded his effectiveness throughout the campaign. How the Cubs' winter goes from here might now hinge on whether Imanaga decides to accept the $22.025 million they're offering. That's a significant raise on his side of the equation, though he would have been guaranteed more if he had exercised his option, as he would also have had one after 2026. For the Cubs' part, the money is essentially a wash for 2026. If they'd exercised their own option, they'd be locked in to two extra years, and they'd also have had to make a supplemental posting fee payment to the Yokahoma Bay Stars, Imanaga's former team in NPB. They can easily justify this payment, then, but if Imanaga turns them down, they'll be especially heavy on impending draft compensation and will have lots of flexibility to spend on a replacement for him. They'll receive a draft pick for Tucker (and, if he declines the offer and finds a new home, Imanaga), so they might be more open to surrendering one for the right free-agent signing this winter—especially since, coming off a year of dipping back below the competitive-balance tax threshold, they would surrender only their second-highest pick in doing so. That would be their second-rounder, which is likely to be roughly a dozen picks ahead of the pick(s) they'll pick up. Chicago's projected payroll for 2026 is right around $144 million, but they have to replace a middle-of-the-order bat, supplement their bench, sign at least one starter and replenish their bullpen. If Imanaga accepts the offer, they might not make a splash in the starter market, but they'd then be near $170 million. They're also likely to engage at least one of Nico Hoerner, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Cade Horton about a long-term extension, which would raise their payroll for 2026, too. Now, the groundwork is laid in full, and the team knows what they will and won't have to do—and how much budgetary space they have in which to do it. View full article

Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images The Cubs and Colin Rea agreed to a one-year deal for 2026 with a club option for 2027 Thursday, a source confirmed to North Side Baseball. Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors was first to break the news. Rea, 35, will make at least $6.5 million in total, and can make up to $13 million if the Cubs exercise their option next winter. The pact comes just hours before the decision point on the team's would-be 2026 option. included in the contract Rea signed last winter. That deal would have paid him $6 million this year, and the alternative would have been paying a $750,000 buyout. The Cubs ponied up an extra $500,000 to guarantee themselves a chance to bring Rea back on affordable terms in 2027, if they so choose. For Rea, this deal offers shelter from a market that projects to be frigid. As has become their custom, the league's owners have tightened their purse strings as negotiations over the next collective bargaining agreement loom. One source indicated that the Cubs considered declining the option on Rea, and pressed for the extra year of team control in exchange for picking it up. At the same time, this structure benefits the Cubs. With the buyout on next winter's option expected to be slightly larger than the one they just circumvented, they'll pay fractionally less for Rea in 2026 than they otherwise would have, and they gain the flexibility that comes with that 2027 option. Bringing Rea back in some form became something close to a no-brainer, though, once Shota Imanaga declined his team option for 2026. In fact, though they didn't have equal terms on which to make the decision, this sequence of moves suggests the front office has more faith in Rea for next year than they have in Imanaga. Earlier this week, I wrote about the decision to decline Imanaga's three-year team option (and the fact that the team might yet decline to give Imanaga a qualifying offer) at Baseball Prospectus, through the lens of the new pitcher arsenal metrics on that site. Imanaga took an important step backward last year in his ability to get the ball down, and especially to bury his splitter; that became an increasingly lethal problem as the year wore on. Other pitchers might weather such a change better, but Imanaga's limited arsenal and difficulty with deceiving or surprising hitters made it hard for him to do so. By contrast, Rea has worse raw stuff than Imanaga—more velocity, but from the right side instead of the left, and with less lively movement; no single secondary pitch with the swing-and-miss potential of Imanaga's splitter—but an exceptionally deep arsenal and a good idea of how to use it to maximum effect. Hitters can accurately identify the pitch type early against Imanaga almost 82 percent of the time. That's both because he relies so heavily on his four-seamer and splitter, and because those two pitches have such disparate movement. Right away, the trajectory, spin and velocity of the offerings lets the hitter spot differences. Rea couldn't be more different. Hitters can accurately identify which pitch he's throwing just 55.5 percent of the time, which places him in the top decile of the league in disguising pitch type. Because he has so many offerings he trusts—four-seamer, sinker, cutter, curveball, slider, sweeper and changeup, the last of which he switched from a splitter to a kick-change this year—he can also use sequencing to surprise hitters better than most pitchers, and the breadth of movement and velocity bands within which he can work is huge. As he and I discussed in July, he made changes under the Cubs' guidance this year, moving the four-seamer to a place of greater primacy within his mix, but he still made great use of all his offerings. Fascinatingly, his move from the third-base side of the rubber to the first-base side made each of his pitches work better with his four-seamer, and the concomitant switch from being sinker-heavy to letting the four-seamer lead thus led his stuff to play up nicely. Here are the stuff ratings (StuffPro, where 0 is average and negative is better; it's expressed in runs against average per 100 pitches thrown), the pitch type detectabilities (the percentage of the time the hitter was estimated to accurately identify the pitch) and the best tunnel pair for each of Rea's offerings, for 2024 and 2025. Pitch Type 2024 SutffPro 2024 Pitch Type Prob. 2024 Tunnel Pair 2025 StuffPro 2025 Pitch Type Prob. 2025 Tunnel Pair Four-Seamer 0.9 35.8 Sinker 0.6 69.4 Kick-Change Sinker 0.1 63.2 Four-Seamer -0.1 45.2 Four-Seamer Cutter 0.3 42.8 Sweeper 0.2 55.8 Four-Seamer Slider - - - -0.4 28.4 Four-Seamer Sweeper 0 50.8 Cutter -0.8 55.8 Slider Curveball 0.1 49.4 Sweeper -0.1 73.4 Kick-Change Splitter 0.7 27.8 Sinker - - - Kick-Change - - - -0.3 47.9 Four-Seamer It was actually a bit easier to identify Rea's pitches in 2025, on balance, because of his move on the rubber and the fact that he threw his four-seamer more than he had thrown even his more prominent sinker in 2024. However, the StuffPro columns show how impressively his stuff played up thanks to alterations to his angles and his mechanics. His mix also widened, with the addition of the slider, and as you can see in the tunnel pair columns, four of Rea's other six pitches looked like his fastball at least a substantial share of the time for hitters last year. On almost every pitch he threw, hitters read four-seam fastball, but they were wrong often enough to produce a fair number of whiffs and plenty of weak contact. The drawback with Rea, as we discussed late in the 2025 season, is that he runs out of steam a bit near the end of most campaigns. On balance, though, he's a very useful arm. The Cubs will work hard to ensure he's not counted on for as many innings in 2026 as he was in 2025, but he's proved himself to be an average-plus big-league arm. Unlike Imanaga, he has ways to make up for it when his stuff or even his location is less than perfect; his arsenal depth and pitchability fill in the gaps. For now, Rea can be penciled in as the Cubs' fourth starter, behind Cade Horton, Matthew Boyd, and Jameson Taillon. By the middle of next season, the team will hope to have Justin Steele back from his April Tommy John surgery and be nearly ready to promote starting prospect Jaxon Wiggins. They also have Javier Assad, Jordan Wicks and Ben Brown as depth options who could start or relieve for them. A long winter lies ahead, and one or more of those younger players might be traded before Opening Day. Injuries have to be taken into account, too. The Cubs will aim to add a high-profile arm to the front end of their rotation, pushing Rea down the depth chart, but in the meantime, they acted to secure some high-quality depth for the back end of their rotation and the long relief segment of their bullpen. View full article

That's certainly his attitude, and he got it done more often than not late in the season. But remember, you only saw a snapshot of him. He missed the first two months of the season. He's only pitched full seasons twice in his career (2021 and 2024). And again, he'll turn 36 before Opening Day. If you carry him for the full season, you have to be pretty careful with his usage, or he's going to either wear down or break down. That's the real track record here.

Image courtesy of © Kirby Lee-Imagn Images, Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images The Cubs traded Andrew Kittredge to the Baltimore Orioles Tuesday, saving the $1 million they were otherwise poised to invest via buyout on the $9-million option they held for his services in 2026. In return, they received only cash. They chose, in effect, something just under $2 million in extra financial flexibility right away over the chance to spend $8 million (the value of the option, less the buyout) to keep Kittredge. That deal won't be especially popular, at the front end of an offseason and before Jed Hoyer has made any more concrete moves toward maintaining his team's competitive position for 2026. Importantly, though, the concreteness of Kittredge worked against him. This moment of the offseason is all about fluidity. By not committing to Kittredge, the Cubs freed up the money they would otherwise have spent on him, keeping their options open—and freed up a place on their 40-man roster, to boot. That's not to say that the trade will prove to have been wise. In chess parlance, it's an opening move that sharpens the position quickly—just as shoving out Shota Imanaga was. Hoyer is fighting to keep options open, but in so doing, he's reducing the chances of a broadly popular, successful but unspectacular offseason. Moves like this one raise the stakes of the rest of the winter's work; they make it harder to envision a comfortable middle road. They will, inevitably, make fans more nervous, because they trade in safety nets for the walk on a high wire. Nonetheless, it's easy to see the logic at work. As I wrote back on October 22, there was never a chance the Cubs would bring back both Kittredge and fellow right-hander Brad Keller this winter. They had to make an early choice between the two, and saving the buyout (plus getting a little extra cash) does incrementally increase the chances that they can retain Keller. Considered in that light, this decision makes a good amount of sense. It's still possible that the Cubs will divert these resources elsewhere, and not spend as much as $9 million on any one reliever this winter. It's more likely that they'll reinvest this money somewhere, though, and Keller—a player with whom they're familiar, now; one five and a half years Kittredge's junior; and with a different path to similar levels of brilliance this year—appears to be the option they preferred of these two. Hoyer's biggest goal for the pitching staff this winter has to be missing more bats. A key question, then, is whether Kittredge (despite a gaudy strikeout rate over 30% in 2025) can be that swing-and-miss reliever. Keller had a lower strikeout rate than Kittredge's in 2025 and has a much lower one for their respective careers, but Keller had also been a starter until this year. The Cubs probably assessed the two along lines that look roughly like this. Let's walk through it together. Pitcher StuffPro PitchPro Pitch Probability Surprise Factor Mvmt. Spread Vel. Spread Andrew Kittredge -0.2 -1 80.9 101.4 79.4 71.1 Brad Keller -0.5 -0.5 71.9 109.5 93.9 89.9 StuffPro and PitchPro are Baseball Prospectus's pitch quality metrics, akin to the slightly more famous (but slightly less robust) Stuff+ metrics at FanGraphs. StuffPro measures the sheer nastiness of a pitch's movement, speed, release and approach angles, while PitchPro also adjusts for location. Zero is average, and a negative number is better; the scale of those two numbers is runs against average, per 100 pitches. In brief, Keller has better raw stuff than Kittredge. The latter achieved more, in 2025, by being more precise with his locations. Pitch Probability expresses the likelihood that a hitter's diagnosis of pitch type out of the hand will be accurate for any given pitch by that pitcher. Surprise Factor utilizes a pitcher's mix and their usage patterns to give an indexed rating to the ability to violate a hitter's expectations, not via immediate release point or trajectory but by going to a pitch they rarely use or using it in a rare situation. Movement and Velocity Spread rate the extent to which a pitcher's pitches tend to vary from the movement or the speed a hitter expects based on the pitch type they're likely to guess on a given offering. For Surprise Factor and both Spreads, the baseline is 100, and higher is better. Keller is better at disguising which pitches he's throwing that Kittredge is. He's better at using unpredictable variations in usage or sequencing to put a hitter on the defensive. His pitches move in a more productive variety of ways, and he changes speeds more deceptively, to boot. The only fundamental skill at which Kittredge outstrips Keller is hitting his spots. While that's an important skill—and one the Cubs value, perhaps, as much as any team in baseball—it's a hard one to carry from year to year, especially as (mostly) a two-pitch reliever well into your mid-30s. The Cubs liked Keller's fit in their clubhouse in 2025. They liked the way he responded to their challenges and input after they signed him. In their high-level assessment of Kittredge and Keller for 2026, they came away with a strong preference for the latter. That doesn't mean they'll re-sign him. Keller could be in line for a handsome three-year deal this winter, and Chicago might prefer to redirect the money they've saved by moving Kittredge toward hitters or starting pitchers and go try to find the next Keller on the scrap heap. The decision to trade Kittredge will and should be judged on how they spend the money, the roster spot, and the high-leverage situations in relief they're choosing not to offer him. However, the deal decidedly increased the chances that they'll bring back Keller, and since they clearly believe Keller is the better bet of the two hurlers, there's a definite underlying sensibleness to it. View full article

Image courtesy of © Gregory Fisher-Imagn Images It's never been Jed Hoyer's style to pay top dollar for relievers—even great, relatively reliable ones. When Theo Epstein was still with the Cubs, they did sign Craig Kimbrel to a three-year deal in 2019, but those were special circumstances, and Hoyer isn't Epstein. Last winter, however, Hoyer did have a long flirtation with Tanner Scott. Though the hard-throwing lefty eventually signed with the Dodgers, the Cubs' offer was competitive. In fact, it had a greater net present value (after accounting for the deferrals in the deal he signed with Los Angeles) than any other team's highest bid. Hoyer is increasingly open to big moves like signing a top-flight reliever to a multi-year deal, and well he should be. The Cubs are very much entering a winning phase in their competitive cycle, and the affordability of young stars Pete Crow-Armstrong, Michael Busch and Cade Horton gives them some financial wiggle room this winter. This winter, there are a handful of hurlers at roughly the same tier as Scott who should be on the team's radar, including a couple who officially became free agents Monday. Here's a rundown. Edwin Díaz, RHP Díaz opted out of the final two years of his deal with the Mets Monday, leaving $38 million on the table. Because the Mets did not extend him a qualifying offer before signing him when he first hit free agency three years ago, they can do so now, which would dampen his market. He and his representatives clearly believe he can still get a third year on a new deal. They're right, too. It feels like he's been around for a long time, but Díaz is just 31 years old. He has a career strikeout rate a hair under 40%, and he doesn't walk an inordinate number of batters, either. His fastball sits 97 and still touches 100, with life. His slider plays off it viciously well, coming in around 90 miles per hour and looking like the heater until it's too late for the batter. He's likely to make another $80 million over four years, although the qualifying offer could bring that number down 10 percent or so. The Cubs will take an interest, but it's a longshot that they'd actually be the ones to land him. Robert Suarez, RHP By contrast, Suarez is much more natural a Hoyer target. He opted out of two more years with the Padres, but that deal was going to pay him much less than Díaz's would have. For multiple reasons, he's also less likely to receive a qualifying offer from San Diego. That would make him available without draft-pick compensation attached, which would increase his appeal to the Cubs. Cubs fans got a good look at Suarez during the team's triumph over San Diego in the Wild Card Series last month. He fills up the zone with a fastball that often hits triple digits, consistently limiting walks and damaging contact well. He struck out 27.9% of opposing batters this season, which would be a boost for the Cubs' pen. However, that's not elite bat-missing ability, by the standards of modern relievers. Nor will Suarez, who turns 35 next March, have the same chance to command a long-term deal that Díaz has. He's not quite as dominant as some of the other arms hitting the market are capable of being, but Suarez should land in a price range more comfortable for Chicago than some of the others. His age and skill set make him the type of arm some of the other big-market teams shy away from. He fits what the Cubs like to a tee, though, and could be their top target on this market. Devin Williams, RHP What a disaster his year in the Bronx was. Williams is probably craving an escape from that situation, and his struggles in New York forced the Yankees to trade for David Bednar in July, so they won't be giving Williams a qualifying offer on the way out the door. He worked a career-high 62 innings in his walk year, but his 4.79 ERA will keep the market for his services from heating up to the extent he surely imagined as recently as six months ago. Williams can be a mercurial clubhouse presence, which might turn off some would-be suitors. It makes the notion of a reunion with a manager who understood and accommodated him especially appealing, so this could be one way that Craig Counsell delivers value to his new team based on the work he did for his old one. The most intriguing thing about him, though, is that despite the bad vibes and the ugly surface-level numbers during his stint with the Yankees, Williams still has good stuff. He ran into a few more barrels this year, and his 34.7% strikeout rate was a career-worst mark—but it would be the career-best for many guys. He also walked fewer batters than usual, dipping under 10% for the first time since his rookie campaign. Luke Weaver, RHP The former Cardinals prospect became a bit of a bust with the Diamondbacks, but when he moved to the bullpen in subsequent stops, he unlocked something impressive. For the last two years, he's been a co-ace in the Yankees bullpen, running an aggregate strikeout rate around 30% while limiting walks well. He has a high arm slot, a high-riding four-seamer, and a great changeup that plays against both lefties and righties (with the odd cutter to keep righties off of it a bit). He's also below the QO threshold, which should result in a robust market; he weathered heavy usage in the 2024 postseason well and was pretty much the same guy in 2025. Pete Fairbanks, RHP We haven't yet heard what the Rays intend to do with Fairbanks, on whom they hold an $11-million option with a $1-million buyout for 2026. That would be a lot of money for Tampa to spend on a reliever, though, so even if they pick up the option, he'll be on the trade market. He's the same age as Díaz and throws just as hard, but he doesn't have the devastating secondary pitch to go with it. His strikeout rate since the start of 2024 is just 24%, which makes him decidedly less than an elite arm at this point. However, he also keeps the bases relatively clear, and he can still be overwhelming in the right matchups or on the right days. José Alvarado, LHP The Phillies hold a relatively affordable $9-million option on Alvarado for 2026, but we haven't yet heard whether they'll exercise it. He was unavailable to them in October due to a suspension for PEDs that also cut a big chunk out of his season. However, when he's on the mound, few relievers can match Alvarado for sheer nastiness. His sinker sits 99 and touches 102, and the hard cutter he throws off of it induces whiffs at an exceptional rate. Conditioning and mechanical work helped him dramatically reduce his walk rate in 2025. If the Phillies let him walk or are open to trading him, the Cubs are likely to be among the interested parties. In addition to that sextet, the Cubs have to weigh whether or not to bring back incumbent high-leverage relievers Brad Keller or Andrew Kittredge. In the next two days, we'll hear which choice they make about Kittredge, on whom they hold a $9-million option for 2026. Keller is a free agent, though, so if they don't bring him back, they have to replace him. One way or another, Hoyer is likely to spend more than usual on the bullpen this winter. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images The offseason begins the moment the World Series ends, and even though the 2025 World Series ended in spectacular, exhausting fashion, teams have to start making choices immediately. The Chicago Cubs, for instance, have until Thursday to decide whether to exercise their club options on Colin Rea and Andrew Kittredge. We broke down those choices and their implications late last month. They also have one side of a mutual option with Justin Turner. Chicago also has to decide whether to trigger their three-year, $57-million option on Shota Imanaga. As we discussed in the wake of his last appearance in Game 2 of the NLDS, the team will not pick that up. Once they inform Imanaga of that (a step they'll take right away), the lefty has to decide on a $15-million option of his own, which also comes with another one for 2027. Imanaga is likely to exercise that option, but if he doesn't, it leaves Chicago with another dilemma. If Imanaga elects free agency over the promise of at least $30 million over two years, Chicago can give him a qualifying offer worth $22.025 million. They have the same choice to make about Kyle Tucker, of course, and technically, about out-of-nowhere relief ace Brad Keller. They certainly won't make that offer to Keller, and sources indicate they won't do so with Imanaga, either, should it come to that. They will extend one to Tucker, though. All of the qualifying offer calls also have to be made by Thursday, which is when free agency opens for real. Until then, players can only negotiate with their own teams. Starting then, though, they can sign elsewhere, and the landscape will be better-defined. Players (including Tucker) have until Nov. 18 to accept or decline the qualifying offer. For Tucker, that deadline doesn't matter. He'll officially decline the offer right away, and the Cubs will be eligible for a pick after the second round when he signs elsewhere—although, of course, that signing is unlikely to happen until some time in December or January. For other players, that two-week window will be much more like limbo. If, for instance, the Cubs surprise everyone by extending an offer to Imanaga, he'll have to weigh the likely impact on his market and the security of that significant payday against the theoretical upside of a deeper foray into free agency. Some players on the margins prefer to get deals done by that deadline, electing to accept the offer unless they can hammer out a multi-year guarantee elsewhere. Despite the lack of games, November has become a busy month on the baseball calendar. The Cubs' offseason plans will come into focus over the next four weeks; they have a lot of work to do. With labor unrest looming next winter, this could be a deep-freeze winter, but Chicago doesn't have the luxury of remaining inactive for long. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rhona Wise-Imagn Images Though neither Kazuma Okamoto nor Munetaka Murakami qualified for the batting title in Japan this year, if you bring down the required number of plate appearances to 200, they sit atop the leaderboard for offensive production. Okamoto, 29, batted an eye-popping .327/.416/.598 in 69 games and 293 plate appearances. Murakami, 25, finished fifth in NPB in home runs (22), despite playing just 56 games. Overall, he hit .273/.379/.663 in 224 trips to the plate. Obviously, both sluggers will be in high demand this winter, but it's likely to be at two different levels. Murakami has been a bigger name in American baseball circles for the last several years, because he flashed prodigious power at a young age and because it's long been known that he had interest in coming to the States. In 2022, he hit 56 home runs, proving his pop to be not just good, but potentially elite, and he's always demonstrated good plate discipline. Since he'll come to MLB at age 26, there's a good chance he'll make over $200 million on a long-term deal. Okamoto doesn't have the same buzz. He'll turn 30 next June, and has been a regular in NPB for eight seasons. He's always hit well, with a career line of .277/.361/.521, but he'd never demonstrated the ability to dominate quite the way he did when he was on the field in 2025. He did hit at least 30 home runs in every season from 2018 through 2023, but that dipped to 27 in 2024 and to 15 (albeit only because of injury) in 2025. Projections for his earning power this winter have come in closer to the deals signed by Seiya Suzuki (5 years, $85 million) and Masataka Yoshida (5 years, $90 million) when they came over in successive offseasons. Okamoto is older than either of those two were when they made the move, too, so he's likely to sign an even shorter-term deal. However, for multiple reasons, the Cubs should take a greater interest in Okamoto. He's the better fit for their roster, their home park, and their competitive window—and he might just be the better player, anyway. Okamoto bats right-handed, whereas Murakami bats lefty. As we've discussed here recently, the Cubs already have Michael Busch, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Ian Happ, Owen Caissie and Moisés Ballesteros to hurt right-handed pitchers from the left side, and they need to emphasize righty power instead. It's also important to note that, while Murakami's ceiling appears to be higher, Okamoto is the one with the more obviously translatable skill set. Murakami has struck out over 28% of the time in three straight seasons and whiffs on more than 30% of his swings, even in NPB. Okamoto, by contrast, struck out in just 11.3% of his plate appearances this year and hasn't struck out at a rate of 20% or higher since 2019. He makes contact on roughly 80% of his swings in Japan. Both players are patient, but Murakami's swing rate spiked in his interrupted season in 2025; Okamoto's has been steady. When they each played for Samurai Japan in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Okamoto was the standout. In 27 plate appearances, he batted .333, hit two home runs, and drew eight walks against four strikeouts. Among players with at least 20 trips to the plate in that tournament, only Randy Arozarena, Trea Turner, Shohei Ohtani and Anthony Santander had a higher OPS than Okamoto's 1.278. Both Murakami and Okamoto are third basemen who have been splitting their time and moving over to first base at times over their last few years in Japan; both are expected to play more first base in the States. Each is a good size (Okamoto: 6-foot-1, 220 pounds; Murakami: 6-foot-2, 213), but a bit slow. Of the two, Okamoto is the better defender right now, and he's even been shifted into the outfield for fistfuls of games over the last few years. In the medium-term future, one should bet on Murakami to have more defensive value, because he's considerably younger, but Okamoto will be more useful as a four-corners player in 2026. Okamoto is just a much better fit for the Cubs, who have every chance to win now and need a right-handed slugger to slot into their lineup to make the most of that opportunity. He can platoon with Busch at first base and play plenty of third base against righties, but also mix in at designated hitter as Suzuki (likely) moves back to right field on something close to a full-time basis. A lineup against righties could go: Nico Hoerner - 2B Michael Busch - 1B Seiya Suzuki - RF Ian Happ - LF Kazuma Okamoto - 3B Moisés Ballesteros - DH Dansby Swanson - SS Miguel Amaya - C Pete Crow-Armstrong - CF Against lefties, they could switch that to: Nico Hoerner - 2B Seiya Suzuki - DH Ian Happ - LF Kazuma Okamoto - 1B Dansby Swanson - SS Matt Shaw - 3B Kevin Alcántara - RF Carson Kelly - C Pete Crow-Armstrong - CF Craig Counsell would have the luxury of mixing and matching within that group, swapping Alcántara into center to spell Crow-Armstrong against some lefties; leaving Busch in against some southpaws while sliding Okamoto to DH; or even spelling Hoerner by using Shaw at the keystone. That assumes that none of Shaw, Ballesteros or Alcántara are traded, but a major offensive addition like Okamoto would make it easier to do just that if the situation demanded it, thereby opening up the starting pitching market for Chicago. The inroads the team has made in Japan through their signings of Suzuki and Shota Imanaga (among others) make the Cubs a frequent subject of rumors when stars come over from NPB. That won't change this winter, and it shouldn't. Starting pitcher Tatsuya Imai is another name that will be linked with the team often in the weeks ahead. There's a good case to be made for simply directing their spending toward Imai. When it comes to the dilemma between the top two power hitters coming Stateside, though, the clear preference should be for Okamoto. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images Three years ago, in early 2023, there were several Cubs storylines attached to the World Baseball Classic. Though an oblique strain sidelined Seiya Suzuki for the tournament, it was poignant to see his jersey hanging in the dugout for Samurai Japan throughout their run to the championship. Meanwhile, for Team México, Javier Assad showed up and shoved; it was a thrilling glimpse of the intensity his stuff could achieve in short bursts. Then-Cub Marcus Stroman made two strong starts for Team Puerto Rico. Then-prospects BJ Murray (Great Britain), Matt Mervis (Israel), Jared Young and Owen Caissie (Canada) each played in the tournament, too, with Caissie giving confirmation of his prospect status by holding his own in a high-level international competition. Only Caissie remains a relevant Cubs concern with the 2026 tournament on the horizon, but in addition to him, Suzuki and Assad, there are several players now attached to the organization who could very well be involved come March. Third baseman Matt Shaw played for Team USA in the Premier 12 tournament in Japan in November 2024, leading into his rookie campaign with the Cubs. He's far from the top of the United States's likely depth chart for this higher-profile tournament, but he could be a candidate to get a call from manager Mark DeRosa as the former Cub seeks to round out his infield. Three other young Cubs position players might be even more likely to hear from DeRosa, though. After his breakout season, Pete Crow-Armstrong is arguably the most famous American center fielder. The injuries that disrupted Jackson Merrill's sophomore season with the Padres and the ones that have plagued the career of Twins star Byron Buxton make each of them unlikely to don the stars and stripes for a preseason tournament next spring, and the days of Aaron Judge roaming center field in any high-level competition are over. Crow-Armstrong would be a big get for DeRosa, with a chance to burnish his resume as the game's premier defender in center and to get some more concretely valuable offensive reps in preparation for the season. This seems like a fairly likely assignment, on balance. It's less likely that Nico Hoerner draws the call to play second base for DeRosa's squad, but it's certainly not out of the question. Hoerner's Fielding Bible Award-winning season at the keystone and his superb second half at the plate caught the attention of much of the league. That free agents Bo Bichette and Alex Bregman might be discouraged from playing in the WBC by their new teams could leave more room than would normally be there for the likes of Shaw or Hoerner to filter into the infield equation for Team USA. Speaking of that same variable, longtime Team USA slugger Pete Alonso is also a free agent-to-be, which could make him less likely to participate. Former Captain America Paul Goldschmidt still wants to play in 2026, but at his advanced age, he's not going to be a first-choice guy for DeRosa. Matt Olson, Nick Kurtz, Bryce Harper and Freddie Freeman are all candidates to play first base for the U.S., but there's some chance that Michael Busch is now on that radar, too. After hitting 34 regular-season homers and four more in the postseason, Busch is firmly in the mix for the title of best-hitting American first baseman right now. If age or injury leads to hesitation by the veterans who might otherwise be interested, DeRosa could tab Busch. The Cubs also have a bevy of lesser stars who might be asked to play by their smaller home countries. Miguel Amaya and Daniel Palencia will be in consideration for the Team Venezuela roster. Shota Imanaga (presumably, still a Cub next year, although on what contract terms is still in question) could be in line to play a key role again for Samurai Japan. That's not to mention any of the prospects with foreign attachments, like Venezuelan catcher Moisés Ballesteros and Dominican outfielder Kevin Alcántara. Something like five or six Cubs could be involved in the WBC next year, before accounting for guys (like potential trade targets Pablo López or Joe Ryan, or potential signees via the NPB-to-MLB posting system Tatsuya Imai, Munetaka Murakami or Kazuma Okamoto) who aren't currently in the organization but might be by then. It should be fun, once again, to track their contributions to the buzz and wonder of the tournament. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images The list of comparable phenomena in the history of sports is short. Shohei Ohtani is the best baseball player ever, without a close or serious rival, and the way he's swept up the sport—advancing it as a global interest while simultaneously wrapping the whole apparatus around himself, becoming the center of its attention and the source of its gravity—has very few precedents. In whichever order you care to consider them, the people who have had a similarly profound impact on their sport to the one Ohtani is having on baseball right now are: Babe Ruth Tiger Woods Michael Jordan Pelé Simone Biles If we acknowledge the fundamental and irreconcilable differences between team and individual sports, we can cull that list down to Ruth, Jordan, and Pelé, and thus have a more serious conversation. Ohtani is transcending his sport in a way no one but those three has ever done, and in a way few are ever likely to do again. His latest trick, of course, was becoming the first player since 1906 to notch four extra-base hits in a World Series game—which he did in the first seven innings of Game 3, thereafter drawing a record five walks in the Dodgers' 18-inning triumph. He reached base nine times, and although the Blue Jays refused to let him be the one who sank the dagger into them, their inability to get him out (and unwillingness to even try, once he forced the game to final at-bat leverage with his game-tying seventh-inning home run) eventually led to Los Angeles's win. His next trick will be taking the ball to start Game 4 of the Series on the mound. Baseball is not a game one can take over as completely as is possible in basketball. The Jays had a mechanism to work around Ohtani that is much more robust than the double-team defense teams could sometimes run at Jordan at the peak of his powers. Ohtani, however, stretches baseball to its breaking point. He's far more impactful than Ruth was, even at his best. By being both a dominant pitcher and such an otherworldly offensive weapon, he's become more of an all-around force than any soccer player can consistently be. Jordan is the only real comparator—and it's becoming a more apt one almost by the day. Michael Jordan had a great career in the world's second-best basketball league before being drafted by the Chicago Bulls; he was a star in NCAA for the North Carolina Tar Heels. Jordan won a national title and was the National Player of the Year during his college years. He then won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1985, and he won the NBA MVP Award in his fourth season in the league. Shohei Ohtani had a great career in the world's second-best baseball league, before coming over to the United States. With the Nippon Ham Fighters, he won a Japan Series and was the Pacific League MVP in 2016. He then won the Rookie of the Year Award in 2018, and won his first MVP Award in his fourth season in the American League. Each player also achieved international glory. Jordan was on the 1984 Gold Medal-winning Team USA basketball team at the Seoul Olympics. Ohtani closed the championship game of the 2023 World Baseball Classic. However, each was driven—at first bemusedly, then furiously—by the desire to win the championship of the world's best league in their respective sport. Neither felt complete without it, even as each did things their sport had never seen before and achieved fame and wealth that sport had never before afforded to anyone. In their seventh seasons in those top leagues, each finally made it to the mountaintop. Jordan's victory, of course, felt more like the culmination of a long climb, whereas Ohtani seemed to take a running start and fly to the peak, but the result was the same. Each had quieted any possible (at least any halfway serious) critics, but neither was remotely satisfied. In fact, each came back (if anything) more driven the following year, and somehow got even better. In Ohtani's case, it was by sustaining the new level of offensive brilliance he'd reached in 2024 while returning to the mound. In Jordan's, it was by conserving his energy better during the regular season so he could explode for 34.5 points in over 41 minutes per game during the 1992 Playoffs. Ohtani won't be able to singlehandedly carry his team to a second straight title, as Jordan sometimes seemed to do. However, he won the NLCS MVP Award by finishing off the Brewers with the best single-game performance in baseball history. Now, in the first three games of his second World Series, he's batting .500/.667/1.417. He's relentlessly dominant. Even when they go miles out of their way to stop him from landing the killing blow, the opponents can't stop him from pushing his team to the win. Intentional walks to Ohtani led to the pivotal runs in Game 4 of the NLDS and Game 1 of the NLCS. Teams could double- and triple-team Jordan, but he still created scoring chances for the Bulls in ways they couldn't neutralize—and he still played shutdown defense, at times, taking the opponent's offense out of its rhythm. Ohtani is the only team-sport athlete who has matched Jordan narrative beat for narrative beat, and who can also match his all-around flair. Yes, LeBron James is a better basketball player than Jordan was. But he didn't have the chance to reinvent the game; Jordan had already invented a version of it that will last as long as the sport does. He also couldn't match the competitive ferocity or the results that Jordan produced. Similarly, no baseball player can now reinvent the game in any real sense. Ohtani has cracked it open and created whole new swaths of possibility. Nor, apparently, can an Ohtani surrounded by sufficient talent be stopped—because he's showing the same dangerously indomitable will Jordan had. It's a unique pleasure to watch the heir to Air Jordan's legacy at work. He's not as charismatic as Jordan could be, at least to English-speaking audiences, but it's clear that he has every bit of the ambition that set Jordan apart from lots of other extraordinarily talented people. He's on the precipice of his second straight World Series ring. Maybe another one (or four) awaits after that. Maybe, even after this long season, he'll go fight to win a second World Baseball Classic next spring, the same way Jordan went and won a second medal in Barcelona on the heels of his second NBA Finals. Maybe injury or the vagaries of the game will rob Ohtani of some of the glory Jordan achieved. By now, though, there's no more question that he's that same combination of freakish talent and utterly unwavering commitment to winning. It's almost psychotic. It's not the attitude of a perfectly well-adjusted person. It is, however, what the very best athletes are made of. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Frerker-Imagn Images The offseason is right around the corner, and Miguel Amaya is poised to enter it with 2 years, 130 days of MLB service. That's very close to the cutoff for Super Two eligibility for arbitration in recent years, but according to a review of the players who make up the pool of candidates for that status, it's likely to fall roughly five days short of the line for 2025-26. Amaya, 26, is still an out-of-options player coming off an injury-shortened campaign, but he had a strong season and will be easy to bring back as half the projected catching corps for the 2026 Cubs. All players with between three and six years of MLB service time qualify for salary arbitration each winter. Amaya fell about six weeks shy of a full year of service (172 days on an active roster) in 2023, though, so although he's been credited with full service years in 2024 and 2025, he's not yet at three years. However, of all players with between two and three years of service who accrued at least half a season (86 days) in the foregoing year, 22% are made eligible for arbitration each winter, giving them a fourth year in that progressive system before they hit free agency. We don't yet have official confirmation of the cutoff, but a careful review of the nearly 180 players who fall into that service bracket (about 160 of whom amassed enough service time in 2025 to be eligible for the early entry into the arbitration ladder) suggests that this year's line will fall around 2 years, 135 days. That could break either way, by a few days, but it was 2 years, 132 days last fall and it looks as though it will slightly rise this time around. That leaves Amaya out in the cold, but makes the Cubs' life easier. They don't even have to make a decision about him as an arbitration-eligible earner. It would have been a pretty easy decision, anyway, but assuming he does come up short of the line, he won't even have to be tendered a contract ahead of the non-tender deadline next month. The Cubs can renew his contract at any salary north of the league minimum. They're likely to pay him around $800,000, which is roughly $650,000 less than the estimate of his arbitration earnings (should he qualify), according to Cot's Contracts. A bit over half a million dollars sounds like small potatoes for a big-market team like the Cubs, because it is. However, there are a couple of other considerations that make it more valuable than it sounds to them if he has to wait another year to start making seven-figure money. First, reaching arbitration a year early means boosting the platform for earnings in each subsequent year of arbitration. Amaya not being Super Two-eligible will save the team less than $700,000 in 2026, but that could easily be $3 million or more if he plays well and the Cubs end up wanting to keep him for the full term of his team control. It would just spread out across those years. Saving that much on Amaya also gives the team more leeway to bolster their catching depth organizationally, by signing a player to a split contract or a minor-league deal. They retained Reese McGuire on that kind of contract in 2025, which paid huge dividends when Amaya got hurt. It would be a further boon to the team to have such a player around in 2026, not only to give the team however much cover it needs to keep Moisés Ballesteros in the minors so he can develop as a catcher, but to fill in for Amaya should he go down again. Though he had an admirable overall season, Carson Kelly wore down once the lion's share of the catching duties passed to him. He had long stretches of unproductive at-bats at the plate; he's much better as Catcher 1-B in a tandem. As the main backstop, he's a bit underwhelming. Kelly also received $500,000 in performance bonuses from the team this year: $250,000 apiece for 81 and 91 games started. He would stand to do the same in 2026, so if the team can shift him into a smaller role, it will save them another modest but noticeable chunk of change—and they'll probably get better play out of him, to boot. Amaya is very likely to miss out on arbitration. One teammate with one day more service time—righty reliever Ethan Roberts—is guaranteed to do so. Roberts didn't get 86 days of service time in 2025, so even if the Super Two cutoff turns out to be 130 days or lower, it will be without having factored in Roberts, and he won't be eligible to go to arbitration. Unlike Amaya, Roberts has one minor-league option year remaining. He can still be sent to the minors when the team deems him not to be one of their best 13 pitchers at any given time in 2026, and since he'll be making the league minimum and have roster flexibility, Roberts might (improbably) survive yet another winter on the 40-man roster. He might be jettisoned right away, just to make room for the needed early moves (like re-adding players who finished the year on the 60-day injured list or adding players to shield them from the Rule 5 Draft in December). If he survives that, though, Roberts might sail right through the winter. Teams love optionable pitching depth. Small roster rules like these rarely make the entire decision on a given player for a team. They just nudge things a bit in one direction or another. For the Cubs, Amaya missing out on Super Two status looks like a money saver and a small squirt of grease for the wheels of their offseason. Roberts being disenfranchised by that wrinkle in the rules also makes him easier to keep. The Cubs will pay plenty of extra money and lose a bit of team control this fall, in good ways, but there will also be small wins in the early days of the offseason, like Amaya being as cheap as possible to retain and promote. View full article

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images For Cubs fans of a certain age, there are a host of haunting 'what-if' scenarios attached to the team's 2003 season. On the whole, that was a great year, featuring the team's first division title in 14 years and almost as many postseason games (12) as they'd played from 1945 through 2002 (13). It was the last season of Sammy Sosa's prime, although also the start of his fall from grace. It was the peak season for Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. It felt like the beginning of something, and indeed, the franchise has 14 winning seasons in the 22 full campaigns beginning with that year. Yet, they also fell just shy of winning the team's first pennant in 58 years. The core they thought they were building around—Prior, Wood, Carlos Zambrano, Corey Patterson and Hee-Seop Choi—turned out to be much less robust than they'd hoped. They were right on the verge of a curse-breaking bit of magic, but instead, the season ended in heartbreak. Thanks both to what happened that year and what came afterward, Patterson became perhaps the best emblem of their not-quite-breakthrough. For much of the first half, Patterson looked like he was turning the corner toward stardom. He'd played a full season in 2002, but it had been a bumpy rookie ride. The extremely free-swinging lefty drew just 19 walks against 142 strikeouts, and his 49 extra-base hits didn't really make up for the lack of plate discipline—especially in the power-happy context of the league at that time. His athleticism made him fun to watch, when he could get anything going at the plate, but the slumps outnumbered the streaks. Though he played great defense in center field, Patterson entered 2003 as an enigma: the team needed a lot from him but wasn't sure what it could actually expect. All of that changed in 2003. New manager Dusty Baker took some pressure off Patterson by batting him in the lower third of the order early in the season, and that helped the youngster tap into his talent more fully. By June, he was often batting third, because he'd come on like a house afire. On July 6, he was batting .298/.329/.511. In 347 plate appearances, he was striking out as often as ever, but he'd roughly doubled his walk rate, with 15 of them in 347 plate appearances. He also had a whopping 37 extra-base hits during that half-season of breakout performance. Then, in a gasp and a sudden silence, he tore his ACL beating out an infield single and was lost for the balance of that season. When he came back the next year, it wasn't the same. Patterson was fine in 2004, but would never again be the kind of player he was in the first half of 2003. By 2006, he was an Oriole. Ever since, it's been almost impossible to answer the aching question: How would things have gone if Patterson hadn't gone down that summer? Was there yet another level of brilliance, just one more pivotal adjustment away? Could he have learned and grown in a way that would have paid dividends for the balance of his career? In short: did that injury scupper his push toward stardom, or was that dream doomed all along? The answer was probably always the sad, boring, unsatisfying one: Patterson swung too much, and was swinging too much even in his great half-season. He never learned to stop swinging so much, and was probably never going to learn to stop swinging so much. He didn't have the right people in his ear at the right ages, helping him understand how to handle big-league pitching and organize his strike zone. He probably would have run into trouble during the second half of that campaign. The Cubs traded for Kenny Lofton to replace Patterson, and he would post a .381 OBP for them. The 2003 team was almost certainly better for Patterson having gotten hurt, and his career probably wasn't that much altered. Pete Crow-Armstrong stayed healthy, and maybe the 2025 Cubs were worse for it. Crow-Armstrong was hitting .270/.308/.563 in late June, when he hit a bit of a skid until the week before the All-Star break. He bobbed back up coming out of the break, and was hitting .272/.309/.559 at the end of July. Thereafter, he batted an execrable .188/.237/.295 in 200 regular-season plate appearances, and was somehow even worse (.185/.214/.185) in 29 plate appearances in the playoffs. Crow-Armstrong is an even better fielder than Patterson was, but his glove didn't make up for the horrendousness of his stick late in the season; the Cubs would have been better off giving the job to Kevin Alcántara or trading for even a low-wattage replacement in August and September. The fascinating questions we're left with, then, center on the different fortunes of these two very similar young players at crucial moments in their careers. Crow-Armstrong swings too much, just like Patterson did. Did this midstream failure, with no physical externality to blame it on, teach him something important? Is his makeup better than Patterson's, to a sufficient extent to make him capable of adjusting where Patterson failed to? Will he get better instruction than Patterson did? Though the 2025 Cubs might have made it further or had an easier final stretch without him, will the team and the player be better off in the long run because he stayed healthy long enough to have his breakout season turn sour? It feels like a soft argument, but there's a decent case for it. Crow-Armstrong will probably always be overly aggressive at the plate. His swing rate certainly seems to be (at least partly) a matter of disposition; he hums with aggressiveness whenever he's on the field. However, he got ample chances to learn hard lessons in 2025. He didn't hit well in the postseason, but he did come up with a couple of clutch hits, one of which came directly as a result of a good plate appearance in which he demonstrated some patience; perhaps that reinforced good habits. His confidence should benefit from that small course correction. Sometimes, it also helps to get embarrassed. On the back-breaking home runs in the Brewers' Game 2 and Game 5 wins (by Jackson Chourio and Brice Turang, respectively), Crow-Armstrong raced back to the wall at Uecker Field in Milwaukee and leaped heroically—for balls that flew far over the wall and left Crow-Armstrong looking desperate and helpless and foolish at the base thereof. WU9xZzdfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X1VBRlpVVndGQWxjQVdnTUJBQUFIQmxRRUFBQUJWZ1FBVjFjSEJBQU1BZ0FHVkFGUQ==.mp4 Whatever pride Crow-Armstrong stored for himself in his defense amid a brutal stretch at the plate, it had to be bruised by the end of the NLDS. He didn't even play well in the field in that series. It's very possible he was worn out, after a very long year and one of the league's heaviest all-around individual workloads. Still, he got a ton of chances to feel the flush of humiliation under a national spotlight, and even before that, he went through a humbling period of prolonged helplessness at the plate. Every player is different. Every person processes success and failure in their own ways. Crow-Armstrong might not benefit from what he just went through; maybe it would have been exactly what Patterson needed. However, despite the pain and ugliness of it, the best bet is that Crow-Armstrong will come out better for having stayed on the field throughout a miserable two-plus months to end 2025. It feels, by extension, like Patterson would have benefited from that, too. The 2003 Cubs might not have gone as far if he'd stayed on the field, and the 2025 Cubs might have been better with less Crow-Armstrong down the stretch. In the long run, though, it's going to be better for this version of the team that Crow-Armstrong had to wade hip-deep through the muck of that second half. They got lucky, in a funny little way, by having their most exciting young player fall flat on his face (almost literally) at the end of his breakout season. View full article