Matthew Trueblood

The Cubs' starting first baseman enters his second full season in the big leagues, not merely trying to avoid a sophomore slump, but poised to take his game to the next level. Image courtesy of © Allan Henry-Imagn Images It's just spring training. The competition is extremely uneven, and everyone is tinkering with things. Michael Busch has been more eager than most to rack up early reps, but even he only has 19 plate appearances in the Cactus League so far. However, in those 19 trips to the dish, he's not only collected nine hits (with four going for extra bases) but limited his strikeouts, to two. Last year, of course, contact was the big drawback in an otherwise superb rookie campaign for Busch. He was really good, but he struck out 28.6% of the time, putting a bit of a ceiling on his overall production. He hits the ball hard consistently, but doesn't reach extremes in that regard. Last year, his maximum exit velocity was 109.3 miles per hour, even though 40% of his balls in play were at least 95 mph. Wrigley Field dampened his raw production, but so did the whiffs. Guys with a similar whiff rate to Busch's last year included Heliot Ramos, Salvador Perez, Jorge Soler, and teammate Ian Happ, but swinging and missing held them back less because they each had the ability to hit the ball much harder, at the high ends of their ranges. So far this spring, we haven't seen Busch hit any one ball harder than he did last season. at least in his tracked games. He has, however, continued to assail the ball consistently, with nine of his 11 batted balls topping 94 mph and four above 104. More importantly, perhaps, he's only swung and missed twice in 13 tracked swings. There are two ways Busch can be better in 2025 than he was in 2024: he can whiff less, or hit the ball harder when he makes contact. By showing up to camp with some good extra weight on his frame, he gave himself a chance to do the latter, and even if we don't have proof that it will work in the tiny sample so far this spring, it sure looks like he'll be able to do that. But the fact that he's not whiffing much at all so far is also encouraging. During his time in the Dodgers system, Busch moved around the field quite a bit, playing some second and some third. He needed to stay lean and athletic, and he's done so even since being traded to the Cubs. There are very few first basemen in the league who run or move as well as Busch, and he shows no signs of having really lost that this spring. However, he's taken advantage of the position change to add some strength, knowing he doesn't have as wide a range to cover as he might have at other spots. If that translates to more power, even if he does continue to swing and miss a lot, Busch has a chance to emerge as a star-caliber slugger at first base. He hit 21 home runs last year, but a bump all to 30 is well within reach. That would transform the Cubs' lineup, and it would also make Busch a more viable long-term piece of the team's puzzle. He's perfectly capable of slugging .500 this year, and not just because Wrigley Field figures to be more friendly to left-handed power than it was last season. View full article

Do the Cubs have a new backup option in center field? Saturday's box score would say yes! But your memories of the last two years are surely screaming no. But some of the player's fundamentals say yes! But... Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images The 2025 Cubs have a whole lot of talent. At the moment, the big question about their position-player group is not the amount of talent, but how to align it in a way that makes it fully functional. Craig Counsell is the creative problem solver tasked with finding answers to that question, and he test-drove his latest idea in that vein on Saturday. Seiya Suzuki took the field at Sloan Park in Mesa as the center fielder, continuing a spring of giving him reps in the outfield but pushing it to a new extreme. In a couple of games in right field, Suzuki has not looked noticeably better than he did in his first two-plus seasons with the Cubs. Even when he did make a couple of catches, they were more adventurous than they ought to have been, with last-second adjustments befitting a much more sharply hit ball on what should have been cans of corn, easily and smoothly caught. That was probably maddeningly familiar to Cubs fans, and to Counsell, who proactively moved Suzuki out of right field last year by sliding Cody Bellinger to right field as soon as the team's health permitted it. The sky is clearer and the sun sits at different angles in March in Arizona than for much of the season in Chicago. A few wrestling matches with the ballistic baseball in one place don't automatically augur ill for one's efforts to handle flies in the other. Still, Suzuki is at a point where he has to earn back the benefit of the doubt in right. He hasn't done it this spring. All along, though, the funny thing about Suzuki has been that he clearly possesses the raw tools to handle the outfield, and that he did so well enough over his career in Japan to win five Golden Glove Awards there. He's fast enough—his 28.3 feet-per-second Statcast Sprint Speed is virtually identical to that of Bellinger (28.4), and a half-step better than Ian Happ (27.9). He's much faster than Kyle Tucker (26.0, and only 26.6 even in 2023, if we want to give him grace for last year based on the shin fracture that halved his season). He has a stronger arm than Happ or Tucker, by a wide margin. We know Suzuki was a plus defender in NPB, and he's shown flashes of some defensive ability even since coming to the Cubs. He's just had far too many misreads, often seeming to stem from miscalculations of the wind or issues with the sun or stadium lights. He's seemed a bit shy of the wall at Wrigley Field, which can be a real problem for corner outfielders there; navigating the well in the right-field corner and going into the sidewall with confidence is essential to playing that position. For decades, too, right field at Wrigley has been infamous as one of the league's toughest sun fields. Given all that, the paradoxically plausible approach with Suzuki might be to play him only in center field. That Sprint Speed is just a hair below that of the median center fielder for 2024, so despite his hulking physique, he's not short on raw athleticism. The angles of hook or slice on batted balls and the effect of the wind on them is more predictable for the balls that come to a center fielder than for those played by guys in the corners. The sun is a bit less of an issue in center than in right (and lights are less of an issue in center than in either corner) at just about every ballpark in the league. At Wrigley, at least, the dimensions limit the range demands of the center fielder and don't pose the same difficult questions that corner outfielders have to deal with. He acquitted himself nicely Saturday, not only making the two fairly routine plays that the game offered him but making them look relatively easy. The first ball pushed him back and forced him to cope with the sun and the high sky, and he looked something less than perfectly comfortable, but he made a solid read and caught the ball without the last-second glove move or lunge that characterized so much of his work in right field over the last two years. The sun and the lights are a huge portion of Suzuki's defensive problem. That's been increasingly clear of late, and with a close look at the Central League of NPB, it's not hard to see why. Two of Suzuki's main opponents there play their home games in domes. One plays in a stadium that faces more or less due south, and two play in ones that face north. The home stadium of the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, Suzuki's own NPB team, is at a latitude similar to that of Phoenix, not that of Chicago, and it faces almost due east. Right field was almost never afflicted with a tough sun during Suzuki's time in Japan. So, is he a viable center fielder? Shockingly, it's possible. He'd need to be deployed very judiciously, shielded from days when the sun might be harsh in center, and if Pete Crow-Armstrong were to get hurt and miss a substantial amount of time, the Cubs would still call up Kevin Alcántara, rather than leaning on Suzuki. As an occasional stopgap and a way to turbo-boost the lineup against left-handed pitching, though, this wacky idea isn't necessarily all that wacky. Counsell was just getting Suzuki a few reps there in case an emergency situation arises, but he might evolve into a little (if only a very little) more than an emergency option there this season. If you buy that, what an offense the Cubs can field against southpaws. They'd be able to stash Crow-Armstrong on the bench, insert Justin Turner as the DH, and start the lineup with some combination of Nico Hoerner, Turner, Tucker, Happ, Suzuki, and Dansby Swanson. Michael Busch, a better lefty at handling lefties, could stay in the lineup, but he'd bat seventh, shielding him from the lefty starter a bit and making it harder for an opposing manager to find their way through the lower half of the order by bringing on a right-handed reliever later in the contest. It's just one more path the team could build itself from the start of a game to a winning finish. Suzuki is a linchpin of the team's offense, but if he can become a viable defensive piece on a part-time basis, it would take them to a new level. View full article

Though it was already evident to most people, the Cubs announced Thursday that they wouldn't have their starting second baseman when they fly to Tokyo for the season opener. That leaves the door open for Craig Counsell to use the same lineup he wrote Thursday, come Opening Day. Image courtesy of © Allan Henry-Imagn Images When the Cubs took the field against the Angels at Sloan Park on Thursday, their batting order looked like this: Ian Happ - LF Kyle Tucker - RF Seiya Suzuki - DH Michael Busch - 1B Dansby Swanson - SS Pete Crow-Armstrong - CF Carson Kelly - C Jon Berti - 2B Nicky Lopez - 3B In the wake of the news that Nico Hoerner won't make the trip to Japan for the false-start opening series against the Dodgers, and under the shadow of the seemingly obvious truth that Matt Shaw won't be there either, this is one viable option for the team's Opening Day lineup. Berti has been viewed as the main backup for Shaw at third base, and that's accurate, but with Hoerner also sidelined to open the season, the team will need two shock troops on the infield, so they might exploit Berti's versatility. Not having Hoerner in tow when they travel to Asia (and presumably not having yet called up Shaw, officially) would allow the Cubs to roster not one or two of Gage Workman, Vidal Bruján and Nicky Lopez, but all three—if that's the way they choose to go. In any case, of course, the bench will need to include one extra catcher (be that Miguel Amaya or, if Amaya starts, Kelly) and bench bat Justin Turner. If two projected starters are on the shelf, though, Berti becomes a staple in the lineup, and the question becomes who else to slot in. To be fair, Bruján and Workman have both played a lot early in the Cactus League, and a day off for each doesn't demonstrate any faltering in the team's enthusiasm or faith in them. To keep either, they have to make the roster, whereas the Cubs can buy a bit more time with Lopez before the first buyout date in his minor-league deal. Nor is Lopez the only non-roster invitee who could grab the last spot on the team without Hoerner or Shaw being available. If Workman, Bruján and Berti constitute acceptable infield depth, in the eyes of the front office, then it could be Greg Allen who gets the spot until Hoerner or Shaw is ready. Allen is a right-handed hitter, a speedster on base, and a viable (if no longer superb) center field defender. Is it, then, Lopez vs. Allen for a final roster spot, in the fortnight left before the team needs to set its roster for Japan? That's possible. Should Lopez win the gig, though, he might end up in the Opening Day lineup—unexpected and (to some fans) unwelcome as that possibility could feel. Maybe there's solace, for some of those fans, in seeing where Counsell apparently intends to use Pete Crow-Armstrong. He batted even higher in the lineup when spring training games first got underway, but sixth is a nice, realistic spot for the speedy, streaky lefty batter. If the team can avoid burying him at the bottom of the order, they can get real value when he's going well—not only in the form of hits and alternating handedness reaching all the way down to the bottom of the lineup, but because sixth is a sneakily good place to slot in a great base-stealer to maximize their utility. Much could change between now and the actual Tokyo games. For now, though, Thursday feels a bit like a preview of how those two contests might look, given the need for some of the team's valued contributors to convalesce. Fans might not like all the signals Counsell and the team sent, but they're there, alright. View full article

"Presumably, the front office is not consciously working to build heavily white rosters, or to make their core of highly-paid stars predominantly white. Nonetheless, they have no person of color from North America set to make more than $1 million in 2025. They've traded two Black players who were already emerging as top prospects (Zyhir Hope and Cam Smith) in successive winters. Those trades brought back excellent players who can better help the Cubs in the short term, in Michael Busch and Kyle Tucker, and no one should argue that the team was wrong to make those deals just because those players are white and the centerpieces of the packages they sent out were not." It's all there for you, man. Just gotta read it all.

It's something we should all want to see the team change. Alas, the Cubs are far from alone in this regard, in a game with a rich history of cultural exchange but an uncertain future. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images When the Cubs signed Justin Turner earlier this month, they designated outfielder Alexander Canario for assignment. It was a natural choice, given that Canario was already pinched by the roster crunch the team faced after earlier moves to add Jon Berti, Gage Workman, and Vidal Bruján to their mix of bench options. Still, it was notable, because the swap of Canario—a Black native of the Dominican Republic—for Turner, who is white, reduced the number of non-white players on the Cubs' 40-man roster to seven. Of the current 40, 32 are American-born, and only one person of color from the United States (reliever Tyson Miller) is in line to make the Opening Day roster. As Black History Month draws to a close, it's jarring to note that while the Cubs are unusually white, they are far from an outlier. Baseball draws as heavily as ever on international talent, especially as the flow of talented, accomplished pros from South Korea and Japan to the United States grows more robust, but despite the annual lip service the league pays to reaching out to people of color in the domestic pool of young talent, Black participation has not rebounded from the long slump into which it fell roughly 20 years ago. In 2023, just over 6% of the players on Opening Day rosters were Black. For the purposes of that survey, Black and Latino identities seemed to be held separate, when the reality is that many players from the Caribbean identify as Black, as well as Latino. Still, the league continues to fail in whatever efforts it's made to court African-American fans and find or empower African-American players, and the Cubs are among the worst in that regard. Like the country of which it is such a proud part, MLB has a long history of structural racism, including formal and informal segregation; clubhouse cliques, often drawn along racial lines; and layers of tension, based not only on the construct of race but on colorism, language, ethnicity, and even geographic background. Untold numbers of players, including not just long-forgotten ones but several still playing right now, have shared stories of abuse, alienation, or discrimination, by clubs, fans, opponents, teammates, and others. However, beginning even before Jackie Robinson and the abolition of the color line, the game has also long been a place where racial progress was won and barriers were challenged and (sometimes) torn down. Robinson's emergence with the Brooklyn Dodgers was one of the first landmark victories and galvanizing moments of the post-World War II Civil Rights movement. That some major progress made in the 50 years after Robinson's debut has since eroded, with the game growing whiter even as it leans more heavily on international talent and needs to reach more diverse a more diverse prospective fan base, is deeply worrisome. The Cubs are becoming the face of this problem, to the limited extent to which it's being recognized and discussed. It's not just that they have few players of color, but that of those they do have, the majority are role players or likely minor-leaguers. If Workman wins the bench spot over Bruján, they could be down to just six players of color on the 40-man, and of those, Miller, Daniel Palencia, and Miguel Amaya will all be in something less than a full-time, high-volume role. The only non-white stars on the team are Seiya Suzuki and Shota Imanaga. Presumably, the front office is not consciously working to build heavily white rosters, or to make their core of highly-paid stars predominantly white. Nonetheless, they have no person of color from North America set to make more than $1 million in 2025. They've traded two Black players who were already emerging as top prospects (Zyhir Hope and Cam Smith) in successive winters. Those trades brought back excellent players who can better help the Cubs in the short term, in Michael Busch and Kyle Tucker, and no one should argue that the team was wrong to make those deals just because those players are white and the centerpieces of the packages they sent out were not. However, Smith is one of just two players of color the team has taken in the first round since 2013. The other, Ed Howard, has fizzled in the Chicago farm system. They've struggled to develop their top international free agent signees (nearly all of whom are people of color) from promising talents into genuine contributors. While there's no evidence of systemic prejudice in the Cubs operation (at least beyond that which seems to be much too powerful in the sport as a whole), they unequivocally need to do better when it comes to acquiring and developing star-caliber players who aren't white Americans. Sammy Sosa is a fascinating character to see back in Cubs camp, at a moment when this trend is emerging for the franchise. His own relationship with the media was always tinged by his race and nationality, and while he's responsible for many of his own choices over the years, he left the sport feeling so exposed to the friction and frustration of racism that he underwent treatments designed to lighten his own skin tone. Sosa wore No. 21 during his time with the Cubs in honor of Roberto Clemente, the Black Puerto Rican hero of so many mid-century players and fans of all races. Clemente, too, felt deeply mistreated and disrespected by local and national baseball media, and by many fans, even at the peak of his great fame and widespread adulation. Racism has always been a part of baseball, even as Black players and the cultures of the sport in the Caribbean, Mexico, and the Pacific Rim have been vital to its growth and survival. The Cubs can't instantly fix this troubling trend toward whiteness, even within their own clubhouse—let alone throughout the league. Nonetheless, the team photo this spring will be a good opportunity for everyone to reflect on the need for both local and widespread change, to make the game more accessible and appealing to a broader swath of a very diverse, global fan base. View full article

Show me a billionaire who doesn't like a tax loophole, and I'll show you a liar. Show me one who uses their windfall to spread wealth or joy, and I'll show you a con man. Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Remember back in mid-September, when the Cubs announced an increase in season-ticket prices for 2025? It got plenty of attention at the time, because the team was then wrapping up a second straight disappointing 83-win season and because they hadn't made the playoffs (in a real way, playing more than one postseason game after a full season of games) since 2017. The team's rejoinder, though, was that they had to make up for lost revenue from the two games they won't get to host at Wrigley Field in 2025. Because they'll be the home team for both contests against the Dodgers in Tokyo next month, the Cubs will only play 79 regular-season contests at the Friendly Confines this season. That was the talking point the team used to justify the increase in per-game prices; season ticket-holders were just having their investments spread over fewer dates. No one really bought that at the time, but let's specifically debunk the idea for good, now. The Cubs aren't losing any revenue as a result of playing in these games. In fact, they come out ahead, even before they dig deeper into the pockets of customers for the balance of their games. Here's the language from the current collective bargaining agreement about how the league will handle revenue lost via games played outside the United States as parts of showcases like this one: In other words, since the Cubs are the home game for both teams, they will get a replacement check from the Commissioner's Office that matches their typical revenue for two home games—and, that (small, but not insignificant) slice of their revenue pie will not be counted toward their shareable revenue, so they get to keep it all. Normally, they'd have to pay 48% of that money into the league's revenue-sharing pool, less the amount they would stand to get back as the league redistributes its pooled funds evenly throughout the league. This is a major financial break for the Cubs, but the Ricketts family didn't pass along any of the projected increase in profits. They haven't spent nearly enough money this winter, full stop. No, this is not about Cody Bellinger, whose play and continued struggles to stay healthy made him a poor fit for the 2025 Cubs, anyway. The Cubs said they would reinvest the $25 million they saved when they dealt Bellinger to the Yankees, and they have. Since that trade, they've spent: $8.5 million on Ryan Pressly $5.75 million on Carson Kelly $6 million on Justin Turner $5 million on Colin Rea $3 million on Jon Berti $2.75 million on Caleb Thielbar That's $31 million, and it'll end up being more, as some of those guys hit certain incentives and some minor-league signees make the team and earn small but non-zero amounts of money above the league minimum. Still, right now, the team only has a projected 40-man payroll of $192.9 million and a CBT number of roughly $213 million. In their defense, they did try fairly hard to spend more than that. We know they made offers to Tanner Scott and Alex Bregman that significantly exceeded the net present value of the deals they actually signed. They had at least two trades die at the medical review stage this winter, each of which would have increased their payroll for 2025. They might yet spend a bit more, for seasons beyond this one, by extending one of their young players and securing longer-term control of them at a good price. Depending on the shape of any such spring extension, maybe we'll find their budget justifiable by Opening Day. Right now, though, the team's payroll is not bumping up at all against the competitive-balance tax threshold or sitting anywhere close to their real spending from 2024. Those two things should not be true, given not only the huge revenues they collected even during a disappointing season, but the fact that they'll get a nice little tax-free payday this year to further bolster their income for 2025. Ownership continues to privatize profits and socialize losses for their customers, the fans. View full article

And would absolutely do so. Don't think of farming either of them out as a viable possibility; it isn't one.

Hodge is a lock, for me. But with Pressly and Brasier in town now, I don't think Pearson *is* in line for that same role, right away. That could change, of course, but he'll have to pitch his way into a high-leverage job by establishing consistency in command and release points.

Yeah, Wicks will be in the I-Cubs rotation, barring injuries (plural).

The roster crunch is on in Cubs camp, but it's only affecting one half of the team. Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images It's beginning to feel inevitable that the Cubs will lose someone they really like from the pitching staff by the end of camp. They'll do everything they can to cultivate and maintain depth, because injuries will intrude, and being able to pivot to desirable fallback plans depends on having held on to as many such hurlers as possible. Right now, though, they have 11 pitchers who look likely to start the season healthy and are locks to make the roster if they do: Starting Rotation: Justin Steele Shota Imanaga Jameson Taillon Matthew Boyd Colin Rea Bullpen Ryan Pressly Porter Hodge Ryan Brasier Caleb Thielbar Julian Merryweather Tyson Miller That only leaves two open slots, although the roster rules surrounding the team's trip to Tokyo to open the regular season will give them a few weeks to fudge it and hold onto as many as five candidates for those jobs. Even if we assume that Javier Assad will begin the year on the injured list and be handled carefully while he nurses an oblique strain, the list of pitchers trying to make a claim on those two jobs is almost 20 players long. Keegan Thompson Brad Keller Phil Bickford Ben Brown Cody Poteet Nate Pearson Eli Morgan Luke Little Daniel Palencia Jack Neely Caleb Kilian Ethan Roberts Gavin Hollowell Ben Heller Brooks Kriske Trevor Richards Brandon Hughes A few weeks ago, I would have said Pearson and Morgan were virtual locks to make the team, and neither has really done anything to hurt their stock this spring. It's just that, for instance, Keller showed up pumping 96 snd touching 98 with his fastball, and the Cubs can't keep him if they don't add him to the team right away. The same will be true for Thompson or Bickford, so the team will have to give them at least some small tiebreaker if everyone keeps pitching well—and that's mostly what's happened, over the first six games of Cactus League play. There's some chance Thompson would clear waivers, so he might be the one the team tries to sneak through if it comes to that. The Much Less Heated Competition to Be Bench Player No. 4 Tuesday was a good day for Vidal Bruján, who turned on a ball and crushed a no-doubt game-tying home run in the fifth inning. The slightly Sammy Sosa-esque hop and skip out of the batter's box is a nice touch, since Bruján was seen on camera talking to Sosa in the dugout before the long ball. It's a strange but wonderful thing, seeing Sosa in that setting already, giving tips aplenty to hitters between at-bats, and while not even he is going to turn Bruján into a true slugger, there might be something important to unlock here. In 551 swings tracked by Statcast since the middle of 2023, Bruján only has one that exceeded 76.1 miles per hour of bat speed—one, and, not really. That one seems to have been misread, because it's 6 mph faster than his max otherwise and it doesn't look anything like that on video. Having one of the lowest average swing speeds in the majors is one thing. Not even being able (or willing?) to cut it loose and get to the dangerous bands of swing speed when the situation dictates it is quite another. Compare Bruján to Sal Frelick and Brice Turang, of the Brewers—two of the game's slower swingers, on average, each slower than Bruján by a bit—and you can see the difference. Bruján might simply be short on the strength or athletic explosiveness required to swing any faster than he has, but given his former prospect sheen and his age, that feels unlikely. If (whether through a rejiggered offseason regimen, training and instruction from the Cubs, or one magical conversation with Sosa) he can tap into even that slice of Turang's and Frelick's bat speed that exists out to the right end of his current distribution, his value proposition changes in a hurry. We don't have Statcast data for the homer Tuesday, but whenever Bruján plays in Statcast-covered games, watch his bat speeds. It looks like he's found some. Gage Workman is Bruján's competition for the final bench spot, though they could both start the season on the roster now that Matt Shaw's oblique has created some uncertainty about him for the early going. He's flashed plenty of tools already, but it was a subtler skill that stood out Tuesday. Workman stayed back nicely on an offspeed 1-2 pitch and pulled a sharp grounder through the hole between the second baseman and the bag. With his frame, his recent performance record (he slugged .550 after Jul. 1 last season) and the little we've already seen this spring, it's safe to say that he'll hit for power—if he hits at all. Because he's run big, scary strikeout numbers in the minors, the big, scary question for him centers much more on the hit tool. That single was a neat demonstration of his ability to adjust and adapt. He muddied the signal a bit, shortly afterward, by getting an atrocious jump and being caught stealing, but it was just one attempt. It seems as though either Bruján or Workman would be the best defensive third baseman on the roster, should they make it, and both should be able to accumulate some steals. Workman has to prove he can make enough contact to consistently get on base. Bruján has to prove he can generate some power. In that regard, each player had a very good game Tuesday. Owen Caissie's Effect on the Cubs Offseason Shaw's injury has eased whatever degree of logjam the team faced when camp started. Even before that, another injury (or two?) had a major effect moving in the same direction. A few days ago, I wrote about the team bringing Travis Jankowski and Greg Allen to camp, and about how they were replacing Owen Caissie, more than truly vying for the backup job to Pete Crow-Armstrong. Caissie is still not close to starting competitive action, as he deals with a groin strain. Belatedly, we learned that Caissie had core surgery in the early stages of the offseason. Multiple league sources confirmed to North Side Baseball that Caissie's medicals killed "at least one" significant trade for the Cubs this winter, so the effect of that ill-timed injury has had a profound effect on the organization. Not only did the team not accomplish the trade in which they were prepared to send out Caissie, but (to whatever extent their own confidence in his ability to recover and reach his ceiling) they had a tougher decision on their hands whenever potential suitors asked about Kevin Alcántara. The 2025 Cubs would look somewhat different—and perhaps have people meaningfully more excited, even if the extra improvement came at a long-term cost—if Caissie were fully healthy, or even had a currently encouraging prognosis. His health will be worth tracking for the next few months, no matter what, but right now, it's almost inarguable that Alcántara has surpassed him as a likely long-term outfield piece for the team—for good reasons, and bad ones. View full article

At some point, the calendar math just doesn't work. We're getting very near that point for the Cubs' top prospect—if we aren't already there. Image courtesy of © Cody Scanlan/The Register / USA TODAY NETWORK Matt Shaw continues his recovery process from a mild oblique strain that sidelined him before Cactus League games could even begin. He's hitting in the cage and doing "normal" defensive drills, the team shared Tuesday. By no means is his arrival in the team's lineup for live spring training games imminent, though, and with less than three weeks left until the club leaves for Japan and their season-opening two-game series with the Dodgers in Tokyo, the writing is on the wall: Shaw won't be the Cubs' Opening Day third baseman. Bizarre, complicated roster rules govern international play at the front end of a season, so the Cubs could still plan for Shaw to be in the lineup when they play their first Stateside regular-season game, Mar. 27. Holding off on activating him will even come with multiple advantages. Shaw isn't on the 40-man roster yet, so he can be reassigned to minor-league camp without any real effect. Recalling him later (be that at the end of March, or in the middle of April) wouldn't cost them anything. In fact, because the team can still have 29 players in big-league camp when they start their season (not counting guys who begin the year on the major-league injured list, as Javier Assad is likely to do, for instance), not adding Shaw will buy them all the time they would otherwise have had to decide between Vidal Bruján and Gage Workman for the final spot on the bench. A New Dilemma At a certain point we certainly have not reached quite yet, the Cubs will have to consider just sending Shaw to Triple-A Iowa to begin the season—not to manipulate his service time, exactly, but because his untimely injury makes it so hard to tell how soon they could expect him to perform at full strength. There's still time for Shaw to avoid that fate, but the decision is more real now than it felt a few weeks ago. Under the new collective bargaining agreement, the Cubs can get a compensatory draft pick if they allow Shaw to accrue a full year of service time in 2025, and then he proceeds to win the Rookie of the Year or place highly in the voting for that award or the MVP within three years. That rule is meant to dissuade teams from cravenly stashing top prospects for the first fortnight of a season to extend their team control over the player by a year, but it's a speculative sort of incentive, and the benefit of withholding the player's debut is still very concrete. Shaw's age-29 season in 2031 has plenty of value, and the team can secure it quite easily from here. The possibility of an extra draft pick somewhere in the 2026-28 window is obviously preferable, if they believe it's coming, because that would both represent an earlier payoff for the decision and mean that Shaw had panned out nicely. Until we see him on the field and he demonstrates his restored health by handling some high-quality pitchers well, though, it's hard to feel confident that that payoff is forthcoming. Meanwhile, controlling Shaw through 2031 is guaranteed, if he's in Des Moines come Tax Day. Again, the injury is almost a blessing in disguise. The Cubs don't have to decide on this until at least Mar. 27, and really, it could be when they open their home schedule, Apr. 4 against the Padres. If he's with them by then, he'll still qualify for a prospect promotion incentive (PPI) pick, and the Cubs will have bought a bunch of time to decide between Bruján and Workman. They just didn't want to have to grapple with this particular question. View full article

The burly veteran righthander came to camp on a minor-league deal, but he has looked like an unquestionably big-league arm in his first two Cactus League appearances. Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images If you were disposed to skepticism, you might not have bought into the velocity readings Brad Keller put up in his first appearance of spring training, last week against the Dodgers in Glendale, Ariz. He sat at 96 miles per hour and touched 98 in a five-out appearance, which represented a bump of more than 2 mph from his average in 2024. Even knowing that he'd spent a chunk of his offseason at training and development hub Maven Baseball Lab, that was such a surge that it seemed a bit incredible. In his second outing, though, Keller did more or less the exact same thing, so now, we need to have a different conversation. He was perfect in two innings against the Padres, with one strikeout, but the most noteworthy thing was that his fastball stayed right at that same level. Two Statcast systems in a row can't be wrong. Keller is really, truly throwing harder five months shy of his 30th birthday than he ever has before: I broke things down by month, just to be sure, but Keller's velocity so far in spring camp would be the highest of any period even that long in his career, let alone a season. Since he was clearly active this winter learning how to generate this velocity, it's a safe bet that: He'll gain less velocity than other pitchers might in the time between late February and late March, let alone between February and June; and He'll either run out of steam altogether long before October, or need to be shelved for a while on the injured list, in what the modern argot terms a "de-load" phase. It's not yet popular to think that way, but we're right around the corner from it. The baseball season has stretched until it lasts from Valentine's Day to Halloween, and with the Cubs going to Tokyo to open the regular season in mid-March this year, they're getting an even earlier start than most. That means that all teams—and especially the Cubs—need to keep in mind the almost inevitable need for a shift change in their pitching staff sometime during the summer, even as they amass enough depth to be strong over the first two months of the season. Last year, they missed the playoffs largely because they got the former right, but had already fallen too far behind because of their failure to do the latter. Keller has an opt-out at the end of spring training, a team source confirmed, so if he doesn't make the team, the Cubs will lose him to free agency. They shouldn't let that happen. As I wrote back in November when I tabbed Keller as a good target for the team on this kind of deal, Keller has the unique, cutterish fastball shape the Cubs prize; that's why Brooks Baseball now codes his heater as a cutter. At 93 or 94, that pitch works reasonably well, given good location. At 96, he's throwing something very much like Porter Hodge's fastball; it's an overpowering offering. Keller already had a solid slider, and it will only play up when it's humming in at 87-88 mph, as it has so far this spring. His sinker has generally been hit hard, but the extra couple of ticks help it, too. His profile levels up with this bump, in a way not every pitcher's can. Keller should be penciled in as the long man for the Cubs' bullpen to start the season. Javier Assad is virtually sure to start the campaign on the injured list with an oblique strain, even though he seems to have come through it without much disruption. That's fine. Ben Brown, Cody Poteet, and other candidates for similar roles can all start the season at Triple-A Iowa without missing a beat. So far, Brown's velocity is down a tick from where he was last year, anyway. Again, that's only to be expected; he's coming back from an injury. Since not rostering Keller would mean losing him, though, and since there's so little to lose by managing and restricting usage for younger pitchers early on, it's a no-brainer. The hard-throwing version of Keller still doesn't have a Hodge-like breaking pitch to set everything off, but he can throw strikes and limit opponents' quality of contact more than well enough to give the Cubs great work through the cold, pitcher-friendly early segment of the season at Wrigley Field. He's not destined to be part of this team if they make a run in the postseason, but (despite and because of that) he should be in their plans for Opening Day. It's the logical way to piece together a good pitching staff for the whole of an overlong season. View full article

The veteran fourth starter is healthy and hoping to enter this season with a full head of steam. His first Cactus League outing was an eye-opening one, for those watching his Statcast readout. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images In two scoreless innings of work Monday in Arizona, Matthew Boyd struck out two and sat just over 92 miles per hour with his fastball, which is what that pitch averaged in 2024. It was an excellent first outing in that regard for Boyd, 34, who signed a two-year deal in the fall worth $29 million. Even more interesting than the early heat on that four-seamer, though, was a change to the pitch that has been Boyd's signature for much of his career—perhaps in response to the fact that it wasn't his best weapon last year. Here's a visualization of Boyd's pitch movement in a fairly typical start from 2024, on Sept. 6 against the Dodgers. As is his wont, Boyd utilized a four-seamer with average ride but more armside run than most such offerings; a diving changeup, including a variant with a bit of relative cut to it; and a big, roundhouse kind of slider, not quite a sweeper (it has too much depth for that), but not at all a hard, gyro-style offering. It averaged just under 80 mph last season, making an ample contrast with the low-90s heat because of the huge difference in the movement of the two pitches. Boyd was very good that day, and he had a strong season overall. He even carried over that excellence into October. When he took the mound against the Padres in Peoria, Ariz. on Monday, though, things looked different. Without a noticeable change in arm angle (the caveat here being that spring training camera angles are a nightmare), Boyd found a touch more ride on his four-seamer, and his curveball became a huge, bending thing that figures to really lock up opposing batters. By far the easiest difference to spot, however, is that slider. This version is an almost perfect gyro slider. Not pictured is the velocity difference: Boyd sat north of 83 miles per hour with the slider Monday. The old version of Boyd's slider was working just fine. He did reduce his usage of it against righties last season, though, favoring his changeup instead. That change will still be a vital part of his repertoire, but with this version of the slider in the mix, he could theoretically attack righties more aggressively with four different pitches. Now, let's not get carried away. Boyd threw exactly four of these Monday. It's possible (though highly unlikely) that he simply couldn't find the usual depth and sweep of his bigger, slower slider. It's possible (and much, much more likely) that he was tinkering with something he might never bring into a game that counts. Monday was an interesting glimpse of another club he could add to his bag, though. A version of Boyd who could throw that slider and his usual one, for instance, might be especially lethal—if it could be done without the pitches blending together and getting worse, which is always a tough tightrope to walk. Little though they sometimes mean, early indicators of possible changes to a player's skill set or approach are one of the most interesting aspects of spring training. Boyd showed a willingness to try something new Monday, and it might turn out to be an important development for him down the road. If it turns out to be something he's especially committed to, it will be doubly fascinating, since it would represent a wholesale change to a pitch that has facilitated a highly accomplished career. View full article

The Cubs' superstar outfielder is in line for a huge payday after this season. But is it as huge as has been casually claimed? Image courtesy of © Troy Taormina-Imagn Images When Juan Soto signed an eye-popping 15-year, $765-million contract with the New York Mets in December, it seemed to confirm what many had already begun to assume about salaries at the top end of the free-agent market in MLB: that there's almost no ceiling, and that a superstar's floor is quickly pushing toward $400 million. It altered all the conversations around players set to hit free agency at anywhere near that talent level, including Kyle Tucker, who will hit that market this fall. The sheer mass of that deal—the gravity of it, as an anchor in negotiations around players like these—is enormous. Length is one thing, but Soto got $51 million per year, which becomes a new touchstone for stars trying to achieve the highest salary possible. In an information environment already a bit polluted by confusion around Shohei Ohtani's heavily deferred 10-year deal from last winter, the Soto payday fell like a boulder into a pond. Now that the ripples have smoothed, though, we can see that the entry of that boulder has not fundamentally changed the pond, and the degree to which it raised the water level is so small as to be imperceptible—unless you're hunting for it, hungry-eyed, in which case you're likely to see even what isn't there. In the run-up to Soto's free agency, there was plenty of talk about what makes him so exceptional, and why he got this much money, but too many people failed to take it all to heart. Here's the thing: Juan Soto is not worth $51 million per year for the next 15 years. That's true however you read it: He's not worth a total of $765 million; and He's not going to be worth a steady $51 million annually over the life of the deal. That's not at all to denigrate Soto, but it's important to understand it. What happened was this: An elite free agent at a uniquely young age hit the market at precisely the right moment. He's the best free agent of his age since Alex Rodriguez—better and more consistent than Bryce Harper, even if he hasn't won an MVP the way Harper did before getting to the market. He was coming off a season with one of the three richest teams in baseball, having just helped them to their first World Series in 15 years—which they didn't even win, leaving ownership hungry for more. He also stepped right into the gaze of the richest team in the league, funded by an extraordinarily wealthy owner in the same market. Those were the ingredients for an irrational bidding war, and that's exactly what developed. So, even more than most desirable free agents, Soto got more than his sterling performance record and age really dictated. Whereas a superstar with a robust market in a good winter might typically expect to get one extra year and $3 million more per year than is rational, Soto got, perhaps, three extra years and $6 million more per year. Instead of getting something like $50 million as a superstar premium over the life of a deal, he got anywhere from $150 million to $250 million. That was, yes, because of the market dynamics named there, but let's also tackle the age thing. Soto won't be overpaid at the front end of this deal. In fact, he'll be underpaid. Given his projected production (since he's unlikely to even start to decline until Year 4 of this deal); the Mets' market and its potential; and the novelty of a star joining a team for the long haul, selling jerseys and season tickets left and right, Soto will be worth a solid $100 million per year to his new club from 2025 through 2027. That's how astronomically valuable getting a guy like this at 26 (instead of, say, 29) is. Soto will lose value starting somewhere between 2028 and 2030, but over the very long life of this deal, so will the dollar. Inflation comes into play all the time in these conversations, not just when there are technically deferrals in a deal. If you think of the even structure of the deal as a gentle deferral, then, and of Soto's first three years as being worth $300 million by themselves, it makes sense to think of his market value from age 29 on as 12 years, $450 million. That's only $37.5 million per year. That's the right place to start talking about Kyle Tucker's market value for 2026 and beyond. If he has a very strong season this year (I roughed out one in which he hits .285/.377/.529 in a full season of plate appearances, with 30 homers), he'll hit the market with a career .277/.355/.519 career slash line. That's tremendous, but it's certainly not on par with Soto, Harper, or Prince Fielder, the only other hitters of this caliber to hit free agency before 30 since 2010. He's a balanced lefty slugger and a better defender than Soto, but we saw him slow down significantly over his final two years with Houston; he doesn't project to be a valuable fielder even over the first half of whatever new deal he signs next winter. We suffer from a lack of direct comps for Tucker, because players generally like him (Ryan Braun, Andrew McCutchen, Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, Ronald Acuña Jr., Mookie Betts) have tended to sign extensions, usually long before they could have become free agents. He's as good as most of those guys, unless you focus on one of those players' very best seasons and acknowledge that no campaign from Tucker can match it, but they all took at least a little less (and all but Betts and Yelich took considerably less) than they were worth to avoid the risks associated with going all the way to free agency. The guys roughly like him who did go to free agency were so much younger that they can't be compared to him, because those three years of age gap make an enormous difference and they're also (if only marginally) better than Tucker. It will sound shockingly low, because of Soto's and Ohtani's deals, but I expect the net present value of the deal Tucker signs to cover 2026 and beyond to be under $400 million. Ten years and $380 million is a good benchmark. If he goes elsewhere, he'll probably get some deferrals and the vanity of a deal worth more than $400 million. If he stays with the Cubs, it will be right around that number. The bad news for the Cubs is that there's probably no discount available. This is one place where I'm compelled to accuse the players of being a little bit irrational. Lately, superstars (and even stars, just pretending at super) don't seem to be mentally accounting for the risk of waiting and going all the way to market properly. We saw that most vividly with the Pete Alonso situation this winter, but Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant were in the same boat several years ago. Neither maximized their career earnings, precisely because they assumed the best way to do so was to go to free agency (in Rizzo's case, at the end of an initial extension, but it comes to the same thing) and they were very wrong. No numbers have emerged, yet, from the negotiations between Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the Blue Jays, and he's a bit more within his rights to roll the dice, since he's going to be another exceptionally young free agent, but I suspect he, too, erred by not taking the deal. I doubt Tucker would sign for 10 years and $380 million (or even a bit more, to bring the total commitment from the Cubs for 2025-2035 up to $400 million) today, but he probably should. Only a truly transcendent season would push him into the stratosphere some are already imagining him to be in, and a bad or injury-marred one could cost him $75 million or so. If the Cubs don't make the offer, they'll never know, and they probably won't make the offer. Should they do so, though, Tucker should take the money. His ceiling and his floor are both lower than they seem, because despite the warm afterglow of that Soto deal, the market is not going to get as rabid about Tucker—especially now that Guerrero looks likely to be there with him. View full article

The Cubs signed two speedy, light-hitting outfielders to minor-league deals late this week, and brought them to big-league camp. They cushion the blow of some rough recent injury news, but can they do any more than that? Image courtesy of © Tommy Gilligan-Imagn Images The Cubs signed outfielders Greg Allen and Travis Jankowski to minor-league deals Friday, and both players are reporting to big-league camp. Both are 30-something guys with very little power and ample speed. Jankowski, who will turn 34 in June, hit an appalling .200/.266/.242 in 2024 and became a non-entity for the not-so-defending champion Rangers. For his career, however, he's a more palatable .236/.319/.305 hitter, getting most of his value from good outfield defense and baserunning. Every two or three years, he's been a useful hitter with a plus OBP, even if it still comes with virtually no power. Allen, who will turn 32 in March, didn't even play in the majors last year. He's batted .231/.300/.340 for his career, in less than half as much playing time as Jankowski has scraped together, but other than that bit more power and less plate discipline, he's largely the same player. Both guys have lots of baserunning utility. Jankowski has 30 steals and has been caught just twice since the start of 2023, while Allen has 43 swipes in 47 tries—but with almost all of those coming in the minors. The two might look vaguely like candidates to back up Pete Crow-Armstrong in center field, but in fact, they've each spent most of their big-league time the last few years in corner spots (most often left). Neither has any real value in that spot in the majors, except as emergency backups. Surely, the reasons why each of them were willing to sign with the Cubs had to do with the lack of an obvious backup to Crow-Armstrong out there, but the reasons why the Cubs wanted them seem a bit less encouraging. Outfielder Owen Caissie will be shut down for a little while yet, as he deals with a groin strain. After Caissie underwent core surgery last October, his trade value was dinged all offseason, constraining the Cubs at times as they sought trade avenues to upgrade their prospective 2025 roster. If the opt-outs in Jankowski and Allen's deals aren't too early for it, they probably figure to start in the outfield in Iowa this spring, trying to establish position and be ready should the team need a replacement for multiple outfielders at once. Short of that, it's unlikely that either player makes it to the Cubs, because even early in camp, Kevin Alcánatara is making big waves. He's likely to be the team's de facto backup center fielder, though he, too, will begin the season in Iowa. The team's goal might be to develop him patiently, so perhaps an early injury and solid performance from one of the veterans could prompt them to call upon them instead of Alcántara. By midseason, though, they'll be hoping that Alcántara is forcing his way to the bigs, and only a spate of injuries figures to be capable of vaulting Jankowski or Allen to the big leagues at that point. There's nothing wrong with depth moves like these. They're bad news, because at least one of the two would be in some other camp right now if Caissie were healthy—just as Chris Flexen would be elsewhere if Brandon Birdsell weren't dealing with a shoulder problem. Once injuries like those crop up, a team has to deal with them, and the Cubs are working hard to keep some viable options in play, should they be left suddenly without one of their key contributors. Their dedication to depth this winter continues into the spring. View full article