Matthew Trueblood

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

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

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

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

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

In a perfect world, you could fly to the ballpark every day to watch your favorite team fire a perfect game against their chief rival. Your favorite pitcher would never give up a hit or a run, and you'd win every game by 18 runs. But that would be dreadfully boring, after no more than a week. I even think you'd get sick of flying. Gravity defines us as a species. So does adversity. Without pressure and difficulty, there would be no gratification in the grace and victory that make sports fun. Shota Imanaga is perfect, for this blessedly imperfect world. He's a fierce, intelligent, crafty competitor on the mound, but he never invites you to forget that baseball is difficult. He doesn't throw that hard. He gives up home runs in bunches at times. Last season, he struggled mightily down the stretch and was virtually unpitchable in the Division Series against the Brewers. He's back for 2026, but the Cubs (wisely) ensured that he would be no more than their fourth starter heading into the year. The Cactus League season has been no kinder to Imanaga, results-wise, than was the end of 2025. He racked up eight strikeouts against the Angels on Tuesday, but even that was no spotless outing. For the spring, he has a 4.85 ERA. He's given up five home runs, and though he's only walked one batter, the biggest worry for most Cubs fans—that opponents will tee off on Imanaga in a way that constantly seems to confirm supporters' secret dread that he's been figured out—has not been assuaged at all. To those fans most in crisis, I offer this consolation: Imanaga has some tricks up his sleeve. As has already been thoroughly documented here (and elsewhere), Imanaga is throwing harder this spring. That matters. As much as velocity has become overrated in the modern game, it's inarguably important, and Imanaga's heater is humming in at 92.5 MPH this spring. That's up by almost 2 MPH from last year, when it was clear (especially after the All-Star break) that he never really got right in the wake of an early-May hamstring strain. He's retained the ride on his heater, too, which is as important to his overall effectiveness as the sheer speed. Imanaga has also made a small but significant change in his starting point on the mound this spring. Last year, he worked from the far first-base edge of the rubber. That was designed to maximize the deceptiveness of his funky delivery, especially by making his splitter as it first began to diverge from his four-seam heater. However, that didn't always work, and it came with some negative side effects, anyway. Imanaga has great command, but for any pitcher with natural arm-side run on the fastball, the danger of starting on the arm side of the rubber is that the ball will too often run off the plate. Uk9HUjNfWGw0TUFRPT1fQmdGUlV3Y0hCUW9BV1ZJSEFnQUhWUTVTQUZnRVVsVUFBQWRVQWdFRFVBQmRBUXNG.mp4 The solution to that issue is as simple as you'd guess it is. This spring, Imanaga has moved to the middle of the rubber, as you can see clearly in this (otherwise grainy) screenshot from Tuesday's appearance. A good pitcher like Imanaga can manipulate their arm to get the ball where it needs to go from almost anywhere on the rubber, but there's a limit on how much of that manipulation one generally wants to do. The more you alter your delivery or force the ball to a given spot, the less widely you can vary your shapes and locations without giving yourself away. Instead of trying to stay where he was and change how he pitches, therefore, Imanaga moved to the center of the mound, where his stuff can play more naturally to all the places where he needs it to go. This is also going to benefit him in generating deception against right-handed batters. Compare these two 3-D animations of the trajectories of Imanaga's pitches, from the approximate vantage point of identical right-handed batters. The top image is from his appearance against Milwaukee last October; the bottom one is from Tuesday. Moving over makes it look less like the fastball in is coming right at the righty batter, but that's not a pitch Imanaga leans on, anyway. For the heater away, up or down, being closer to the center line of the lane from the plate to the mound creates more deception. The splitter plays off his fastball better, and his curveball can play to righties a bit, which it has rarely done during his time in the States. Imanaga still might run into homer trouble once the regular season begins. This adjustment isn't guaranteed to fix that issue, and in fact, the increased velocity is more important to that project, in terms of pitch shape and forcing less aggressive swings. However, another important goal is to minimize walks and avoid getting into unduly hitter-friendly counts. This move on the mound should help with that, and with getting some of the chases that Imanaga struggled to induce late in 2025.

Seiya Suzuki suffered a sprain of the posterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, the Cubs announced this week. It's not great news, in that Suzuki has a tangible injury that will require recovery and a slight reset of his preparation for the regular season, but the diagnosis could be far worse. A sprained PCL is usually a fairly minor injury in a baseball player; the severe form of the injury usually involves a traumatic collision, like an awkward tackle on the football field. Kyle Schwarber tore both his ACL and his PCL in 2016, as fans might remember, but that was because he and Dexter Fowler collided so brutally in the outfield at Chase Field in Arizona. Suzuki suffered no such incident, and his sprain is considered mild. Before delving deeper into the prognosis for a player dealing with a PCL sprain, we should pause to make a clarification, because the Cubs ended up having to do the same on Tuesday. Initially, Suzuki's injury was reported as a strain of the PCL, which left anyone with substantial familiarity with sports medicine a bit confused. Sprains and strains are similar, but they're different. A strain is a stretching or tearing of either muscles or tendons—the latter being, as you might remember from high-school biology, the tissues that connect bones to muscles. Sprains, by contrast, are exclusive to ligaments, which connect bones to other bones and are the most important tissues in stabilizing joints. Because of their respective jobs, ligaments are a bit more likely to be stretched (and thus sprained) than tendons are to be strained. Any sudden roll or twist of your shoulder, ankle, elbow, wrist or knee is liable to produce a mild sprain of a ligament, and those can cause discomfort, lost range of motion, or weakness in the joint. Because they exist to absorb those stresses and keep joints functioning, though, ligaments handle mild sprains well, and recovery can be quick. By contrast, a strain of a tendon usually signifies a somewhat less natural or frequent movement. They're more likely to be overuse injuries. Muscle strains, of course, range from micro-tearing that merely allows our tissues to grow and strengthen to full ruptures, but they reflect the pushing of that muscle to a point of failure, whether through repetitive stress or an especially acute exertion of an unready tissue. No sports fans have been led into a deeper forest of confusion about these related injury types more than baseball lovers, because of the nature of elbow injuries in pitchers. The most infamous elbow injury is the torn ulnar collateral ligament, which you might think would begin as a sprain. Sometimes, it does. However, diagnoses of elbow sprains are relatively rare, compared to diagnoses of strains of the flexor tendon in the forearm or the muscles of the forearm or the biceps. Often, before a pitcher's UCL gives way, they're diagnosed with a strain, so when the UCL then tears and they undergo Tommy John surgery, 'strain' is still in the air around them. Fans attach that term to the injury that sent them to the surgeon's slab. In reality, because the combined forces applied to the arm throughout the pitching motion are so violent, most pitchers pitch with a sprained (frayed or stretched) UCL much of the time. Sometimes, it's the point at which the muscles and tendons around the ligament can no longer absorb the excess force when the UCL finally tears. What does all of this mean for Suzuki? Well, partially, it's just a good opportunity to clarify the terminology of injuries, There's certainly a real set of implications, though. It's a good thing that Suzuki doesn't have a strained hamstring or quad, or even damage to a tendon or the meniscus in his knee. A PCL sprain, in particular, is relatively easy to recover from for a rotational athlete like Suzuki. You'd rather have him dealing with this than with a muscle strain, and you'd rather it be the PCL (in the back of the knee) than the MCL or ACL. I combed through Baseball Prospectus's Recovery Dashboard to create a useful guide by which we can estimate when Suzuki will return to play. The dashboard allows you to isolate injuries to the knee and to search the keyword "sprain", but that still leaves a bit of pruning to do. I cut out players who suffered their injuries in September, October, or over the offseason; those muddy any understanding of real recovery time. I went through and, where possible, removed players who turned out to have full tears of their ligaments after initially being diagnosed with a sprain. (That happened, for instance, with Dexter Fowler in 2021.) I also removed players I could verify were dealing with ACL or MCL injuries, leaving all cases of PCL trouble and the ones that were never publicly specified that well. Finally, I took catchers out of the sample. Any catcher dealing with a knee issue has a different checklist for returning to play than do other players, especially outfielder/designated hitter types like Suzuki. Here are the relevant comps I was left with, going back to the start of the 2021 season. Obviously, every injury is unique, just as every human body is. It would be foolish to overfit this data onto Suzuki's experience. (It also feels like something bigger was going on with Richie Palacios, doesn't it? If you strip out his tragic experience with this injury, the median and mean tighten even more, to 21 and 23 days, respectively.) However, these are fairly direct comps to Suzuki, and they tell a pretty clear story. Suzuki got hurt on March 14. We should expect him to miss anywhere from 3 weeks to a month of action, and since the team is pushing a fairly optimistic tone, we can aim for the early end of that window. Suzuki probably won't be ready for Opening Day, but he could be back in the lineup as soon as the second week of April, without having obviously rushed anything. It feels like a good bet that he'll be the DH for a bit as he returns, though. He'll be able to get back into the lineup faster if he doesn't push himself to be ready to play right field regularly before doing so. Besides, Michael Conforto looks likely to make the team, so he can play right field while Suzuki is unavailable. If Suzuki does come back primarily as a DH, it will cramp the Cubs' style a bit when it comes to Moisés Ballesteros. This injury might end up nudging Ballesteros to Triple-A Iowa to begin the season, where he can soak up reps as a catcher and prepare to play that role for the parent club either later in this season or in ones to come. In the meantime, the Opening Day roster could include Conforto, the winner of the Dylan Carlson-Chas McCormick battle, and even Kevin Alcántara. When Suzuki returns, Alcántara could go back to Iowa, and once Suzuki is ready to resume active duty in the outfield, the team could jettison either Conforto or the Carlson/McCormick victor, calling up Ballesteros. That arrangement would come with an ancillary benefit for the Cubs. If Ballesteros spends about 45 days in the minors this year, he'll come up short of a full year of service time by the end of the season, and the team will retain control of his services for 2033. It sounds like a small thing, but an extra year of team control is always a serious consideration for a team handling a top prospect. Suzuki won't be out an especially long time. It's just a sprain, and a mild one. His trajectory for the first six weeks of the season has been altered, though, and so might the Cubs' roster plans be.

No pitcher in baseball last season produced as much horizontal separation between their four-seam fastball and their changeup as did Cubs righthander Cade Horton. What he calls a four-seamer (but which, in fairness, Pitch Info tags as a hard cutter) is a pitch with an extreme amount of relative cut for a fastball, which is part of the equation. Still, the 13.1 inches of difference between the lateral movement of his fastball and his offspeed pitch paced the league. In fact, only a handful of pitchers even come close. Freddy Peralta (then of the Brewers, now of the Mets) achieves a solid foot of separation, thanks to a much lower arm slot than Horton's and the ability to generate more sheer run on the changeup. That has led Peralta, who functionally lacked a changeup until 2021, to use the pitch more each season since, until it became his most reliable complement for the fastball last year. There's a simple reason for that: a changeup that can even vaguely mimic the fastball out of the hand but move that much is bound to end up generating lots of whiffs, and lots of weak contact even when the batter connects. That's why, as his rookie campaign unfolded, Horton, too, went to his change more and more often. By season's end, over 47% of swings against it had resulted in whiffs. Like Peralta, Horton was late in developing the changeup. When he entered pro ball, the headliners were his fastball and his slider, with a sharp curveball coming along for the ride. He's tightened his command and comprehension of each of those pitches, but it's the changeup that has transformed him. As he prepares for his first full season in the majors, he's a dark-horse candidate for the NL Cy Young Award, for the same reason why Paul Skenes exploded into that caliber of pitcher sooner and more completely than pundits predicted: because great players find unexpected ways to improve. Skenes added a splinker that changed his scouting report for the better, even after being the first overall pick in 2023. Because of injuries (and a bit less raw talent), it took longer for Horton to unlock his game-changing new weapon, but his changeup is just that. Yankees lefty Max Fried does technically have more separation between his changeup and his primary fastball (a cutter, and more of a true cutter than Horton's, with less ride on it) than does Horton. He has an even deeper arsenal than Horton's burgeoning five-pitch mix, too. Horton, however, uses his change much more than Fried does, akin to the amount that Peralta uses it. After he laid waste to the Guardians with the pitch in his penultimate spring tuneup Monday night, we might see his reliance on that offering rise even more this year. Note, too, that Horton's so-called four-seamer is two miles per hour harder than Fried's cutter, so hitters have less time to react to the gulf between his heater and his changeup than they do with Fried. More similar in their relative usages and plans are Horton and Twins righty David Festa, who operates with a higher-carry four-seamer but gets lots of depth on the change. Festa's ability to do that, though, reflects the motor preference of his arm, which generates so much arm-side movement and allows him to command a two-seamer but doesn't allow him to move the ball to the glove side very much. Horton, more like Fried and Peralta, can move the ball all the way from east to west. Unlike Peralta, though, he does it from a high arm slot where the horizontal movement on both his sweeper/slider and his changeup surprise the batter more, and unlike Fried, he has two-plane separation between his heater and his changeup, because he gets more carry on his fastball than Fried does on his cutter. In short, Horton's changeup has turned him into a unicorn. He won't strike out 10 batters very often, because his stuff is geared more toward outs than toward whiffs. He's still unlikely to win the Cy Young Award this year; Skenes and Logan Webb are early favorites. However, this development—this ability to make the last pitch he brought along (save his little-used sinker) his best one, even though it works opposite the movement pattern that comes most naturally to him—has unlocked the next level of success for him. Don't be surprised if Horton is the Cubs' ace this season, letting his former fourth pitch emerge as his signature weapon.

Daniel Palencia has pitched seven scoreless innings this spring. The first three were virtually meaningless Cactus League warmups. The last four have been some of the biggest games of his life, serving as the closer for Team Venezuela in its first-ever run to the finals of the World Baseball Classic. He closed down wins for his country in both the quarterfinals against Japan on Saturday and the semifinals against Italy on Monday. Now, there's a tough question at hand. Relievers don't work three times in four days during March. That simply doesn't happen. It's not even something rubber-armed guys do to get ready for that pattern when it arises during the regular season; it's viewed as a greater risk than it's worth. However, Palencia has pitched twice in the last three days, including Monday night. If Venezuela has a late lead it needs to protect, will he be available to pitch? The answer isn't clear. Team USA closer Mason Miller is in a similar situation, having pitched both Thursday and Saturday, but he has an extra day of rest in his would-be three-appearance window—and still, neither he nor the team is yet committing to him being able to go. Miller did need a combined 40 pitches to get through his outings Thursday and Saturday, though. Palencia has yet to throw more than 17 pitches in a WBC game, and only needed 13 and 15 to mow down Japan and Italy, respectively. With hard throwers, in particular, a heavy early workload feels risky. There's no getting around the fact that Cubs fans have divided allegiances, because for many of them, the top priority is having Palencia healthy for the full regular season and (they hope) postseason ahead. Indeed, realistically, that's the nature of the relationship between MLB and international baseball right now: the latter is subservient to the former. Major League Baseball puts on the WBC; the event has little hope of real independence from the league. In my opinion, though, if the right moment comes, Palencia has to be on that mound. The Cubs should contact Venezuelan manager Omar López expressly to tell him that he has their blessing to go to his closer. This could easily be the biggest baseball moment of Palencia's life—even bigger than winning a World Series in the States. He deserves the opportunity, and international baseball needs that boost in legitimacy. Players take extended breaks from the top soccer clubs in the world several times each season to reunite with their national teams for various competitions and qualifiers. Sometimes, guys get hurt during international duty, as happened to Seiya Suzuki in the quarterfinals of the WBC. Other times, when a player needed a true break, playing for their country further wears them out instead, and they need to be lightly used for a period after returning from abroad. It's never fun when these things happen, but there's little expectation from fans that clubs will exercise power over the player or some national federation to prevent them from playing. That's the culture we need to pursue with baseball. If players want to play winter ball in Australia or in the Caribbean, they shouldn't need their MLB team's permission. When players join their national teams for the WBC or the Olympics, they shouldn't be constrained in usage by the dictates of their home club. We can move forward, toward a less MLB-centric baseball world. It can be a more vibrant world, and a more immersive one. Injury risk is a part of the game, but it should be a shared burden, and letting players and lesser leagues have more power to decide when and how players are used would do that—while also fostering the growth of shared benefits, like a game with greater global popularity and a more year-round calendar. It's clear that pitching for Venezuela is important to Palencia. He looks strong. He's been efficient. He has a chance to create the memory of a lifetime Tuesday night, if the right situation arises. If that happens, López should give him that chance, and the Cubs and their fans should be rooting unreservedly for a showdown between Palencia and Alex Bregman or Pete Crow-Armstrong with everything on the line.

The numbers aren't pretty. Corbin Martin has allowed seven hits, four walks and six runs this spring, and he's only gotten 17 outs. He wasn't in pole position for a spot in the Opening Day bullpen, anyway, but it now seems nearly certain that he'll start the season at Triple-A Iowa. Some of those numbers are the results of a multi-layered effort to change his profile on the mound, though. When the time comes—as it always does, for the Cubs, usually by around Memorial Day—Martin could be the guy who's ready to step in and fill vital middle-relief innings for them. First of all, Martin has moved over on the mound this spring. His arm slot is little altered from last season with the Orioles, but whereas he started on the third-base side of the rubber in 2025, he's on the first-base side this spring: One reason for that change: Martin is also working to add a sinker to his pitch mix. His natural fastball is a hard cutter, with plenty of ride but considerable glove-side movement relative to most heaters. That shape is unchanged, but Martin is trying to complement it with a sinker that runs much more to his arm side. Moving to the first-base side makes room for that pitch to move across the plate and still be a strike. His changeup also moves a lot in that direction, so two pitches can benefit from the shift in mound position. When Martin signed, I noted that his best complements for the fastball were a cutter (a more breaking ball-flavored one, which Statcast tagged as a slider at around 91 MPH) and a 12-to-6 curveball to which he switched midseason last year. Interestingly, this spring, he's gone away from that cutter/slider, and back to a slower sweeper-like offering. The curveball is still there, but it's not as sharp as it was last summer. Keeping that sweeper on the plate from his new place on the mound will be tough. If he can locate the fastball well and tunnel the sweeper off it, he should get a good number of hopeless chases from right-handed batters, but looking at all this, it's not hard to see why Martin has struggled during Cactus League play. He's reinventing himself on the mound, in pursuit of a more complete arsenal that can generate sustainable success in the majors. All of it could be scrapped, if it doesn't work. Martin could move back to the other side of the slab and pare his mix back down, if erratic outings like Sunday's (0.2 IP, 3 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 2 SO) continue. However, if he and the team are seeing the progress they want from these changes, Martin might simply need more time to prepare himself for an important summertime contribution.

Michael Busch has only challenged two calls this spring under the new ABS system, but he's won both times. Just as importantly, he's mounted them, even though (based on the array of pitches he's seen and taken) Statcast's model for predicting how many challenges each hitter would utilize only expects him to have challenged 0.8 pitches—and to have won 0.5 of those 0.8. Meanwhile, only one challenge has been issued against him, and it was lost. Obviously, the data set is far to small to say for certain that Busch has a skill when it comes to challenging. Besides, the magnitude of added value we're talking about here is quite small. Busch flipped called strikes on an 0-1 and a 1-1 pitch to balls, and saw one 2-1 pitch stay a ball despite a challenge. The total number of added calls in his favor, relative to the model's expectation, is 3.5, which isn't a big deal, unless the calls in question are hugely high-leverage. There's a bit of bonus value in taking away one of the other team's challenges by getting them to challenge in error, but that, too, is a small thing. So, why is this worth discussing? Firstly, it seems virtually certain that someone will benefit significantly from the ABS system this year, both at a team level and at an individual one. Last season, Triple-A players successfully overturned 4,628 calls, which is a lot of accumulated impact, even if it came in tiny increments. The value of those changes will accrue unevenly, based on good plate discipline for batters, good command by pitchers, and (yes, still) good framing by catchers, plus great gameplanning and strategic communication by teams and their coaches. Secondly, though, there's some reason to believe that Busch will be uniquely good at utilizing this system. First, he's 5-foot-11, which appears to be an advantage in a world with an ABS system. Pitchers will go through an adjustment period to recalibrate the top of the zone, but it's lower under ABS than it often was before that system went into effect, and for shorter hitters, that will include an especially apparent shift. Furthermore, though, Busch has a particular combination of stance and movement in the batter's box that could make the system very valuable to him. Though it's subtle, Busch hits from a moderate crouch. (See the first image above, on the left.) That won't determine where his strike zone stops and starts, as it would have in the past—ABS sets an identical zone based on height for each batter. It does, however, set the pitcher's sights a bit, and it's still likely to influence the umpire somewhat. Once Busch gets moving, an even more pronounced effect happens. Though he's not a huge leg-kick guy and starts with his feet only moderately far apart, he takes a longish stride. By his contact point (see the middle image), the center of his front foot is over 3 1/2 feet in front of the center of his back foot. Combine the crouch and the length of his stride, and Busch gets very deep into his legs. Again, refer to that center image, and note how low his left shin gets to the ground. That's part of his natural stroke, but it sets a low bottom rail for his zone, visually. Though his knees are bound to be lower than those of the towering Oneil Cruz, when you compare a composite animation of those two players' swings, you can immediately see that more than height separates them. The umpire isn't consciously looking at the way Busch's body moves into his hitting position when they decide whether the pitch is at the knees or below them, but there's a sense impression happening even in that instant of ball reaching mitt and a call needing to be made. This hasn't been a huge problem for Busch, but because he also dips that back leg and sinks into his hitting position even on takes (see the image on the right, above), he sometimes gets balls called strikes just below the zone. akQ5ZVpfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0JWUlJYUUlNQlFzQUFGQUhYd0FIVkZJRUFBTURWRmtBQ3dCWFV3Y05Vd1pkVmxFSA==.mp4 This year, Busch will get a chance to challenge those. On the rare occasions when an umpire is fooled, the sharp-eyed Busch can rectify the problem, knowing his own zone and what distortion might have led to a bad call. On the other hand, the catcher is in position to get fooled more than the umpire—which could be great for the Cubs. It's not a natural thing to think of much in terms of the ramifications of implementing this system, but Busch took 109 pitches for balls along the bottom edges of the zone last year that were actually balls, but not by much. He has a patient approach and a good feel for that part of the zone. He could frustrate opposing pitchers and catchers, though, because they often thought they deserved a strike, even when they didn't. NHlNNU9fWGw0TUFRPT1fQndNQVhBQldYMWNBV1ZzSFZBQUhWQVJRQUZsWFZ3SUFWQUZVVkZVRlZGSlZVbE5m.mp4 Some of that is just Busch's great approach, but another piece is the way he stands in the box and moves toward the ball, even on non-swings. He's going to draw a higher-than-average number of mistaken challenges this year, and each lost challenge by an opponent has big value for the team. Even one such loss forces the other side to get more conservative in their challenges, and a second one robs them of the right to challenge at all the rest of the way. We've only really talked about the bottom of the zone, because the effects at the top of the zone seem fairly straightforward. There, too, though, Busch will get the benefit of some calls, because he strides so low that even more pitches look high than actually are. He might draw some bad challenges that way, too, since (again) the top of the ABS zone is a ball's width or so lower than most players are used to. The Cubs have to be good at the little things this year. Winning more challenges and/or inducing bad challenges by opponents will be one way to carve out the advantages they need. Busch looks like one of the players best positioned to do just that.

When healthy, Hunter Harvey has consistently demonstrated the ability to dominate big-league batters. He has a 3.11 career ERA and has struck out 26.8% of the hitters he's faced. However, good health never seems to last long for him, which made him available relatively cheaply this winter. The Cubs pounced, signing him to a deal worth $6 million in guaranteed money and up to $1.375 million more in incentives. It wasn't a minor deal; that's a significant outlay for a team that rarely ponies up for relievers. Harvey didn't allow an earned run in any of his 12 appearances last year, but making only 12 appearances tells the story. Strains of his teres major (a back/shoulder muscle) and adductor (groin) cost him all but about a month in the middle of the season. They also cut into his raw stuff a bit. Harvey hit 98 miles per hour or higher on the radar gun 60 times in a much healthier 2024; he didn't get there at all in 2025. This spring, the fully healthy version of Harvey has reported for duty. On Wednesday, he averaged 98.1 miles per hour with his heater, and threw four of his six heaters at 98 or higher. That much velocity makes him a nightmare for opposing batters. To be fair, Wednesday's game was Harvey's first time on a Cactus League mound since Mar. 1. He'd been working in side sessions in between, but the long layoff probably helped him ramp up the velocity the way he did. Nor is his splitter showing the depth that makes it a bat-misser so far. His slider has been solid, but not spectacular. If he can sustain anything close to this kind of heat, though, he's going to be the dominant setup man to closer Daniel Palencia for as much of the season as he can hold up for. If Harvey can stay healthy and maintain this velocity over a substantial chunk of the season, he'll probably meet most of the incentive thresholds in his contract—because that version of Harvey would also get plenty of chances to close games as the season wears on. For now, it's only wise to modulate expectations. Harvey is healthy and firing on all cylinders right now, but that can change at a moment's notice. On balance, we should still expect Phil Maton to be the best setup man on the team, despite Harvey's demonstrated upside. However, spring is about optimistic stories like this. It's not just velocity. Harvey's fastball has impressive shape, too, with rising action and a bit less run than it showed last year. His secondaries still have to fall into line, and he has to pass the daily test of availability over a long season. If he were a good bet to do that, given the stuff he's flashing already in mid-March, he would not have been available at anywhere near as good a price as the Cubs got on him. Still, the proof of concept represented by an outing like Wednesday's is cause for celebration. The Cubs' bullpen will be a key to their efforts to topple the mighty Milwaukeeans in the NL Central; Harvey looks ready to lead the charge.

This has been a very tricky spring for forecasting the Chicago Cubs' Opening Day roster—and even (since that exercise is a bit of rosterbation, really, and not an especially vital question) the broader utility plan for the team's positional corps. With two key players away from the team to participate in the World Baseball Classic and another having been severely delayed in reporting to camp, there have been variables for which Craig Counsell has had to account when filling out Cactus League lineup cards that wouldn't exist most springs, let alone during the regular season. There are also a greater-than-usual number of veterans vying for a roster spot, and often, the evaluation of such candidates goes far beyond what we can see on the field each day. Rather than make any overconfident predictions, then, let's pause today to ask some questions. Here are five things the Cubs need to know by the time they head north, but which (even if they have a strong inkling) fans don't yet have much clue about with two weeks to go. 1. Will Moisés Ballesteros Be on the Roster? This one is very important, because it has implications for other questions we'll consider, too. Ballesteros reported to camp late due to visa issues beyond his control, but has hit the ground running at the plate. In 65 pitches seen, he's been patient (44.6% swing rate), hit the ball hard (105.9 MPH 90th-percentile exit velocity) and made lots of contact (17.3% whiff rate). If he's destined to be the team's primary designated hitter, he'll have no trouble being ready for the season, despite the late start. However, of his six Cactus League games, he's been behind the plate for five of them. Surprisingly, it looks like Ballesteros might be a viable catcher after all, which changes a lot of things for the team. Firstly, they already have two veteran, roster-locked catchers. Secondly, if Ballesteros is showing them enough to be seriously considered as a backstop, he probably needs a bit more seasoning at the position at Triple-A Iowa, anyway. It's not terribly hard to imagine a scenario in which he's farmed out to begin the year, at this point. He could come up in the event of an injury to either another option at DH or one of the incumbent catchers, or (if everyone is healthy and Ballesteros forces the issue) in the wake of a trade of either Miguel Amaya or Carson Kelly fairly early in the season. That's pure speculation—but the chance of that trip to Des Moines for Ballesteros looks very real right now. 2. Is Michael Conforto Going to Make the Team? This could not be tied any more closely to the first question. Conforto signed a minor-league deal with the Cubs late last month, coming in as an additional option from the left side in the DH equation. He's also an outfielder, but a litany of injuries has turned him from a plus defender in the corners to a nearly untenable one. He can't, in other words, be the team's fourth outfielder, and given how much time Matt Shaw has spent in the outfield so far, he was never likely to be that guy for this team, anyway. However, if Ballesteros is out of the mix to begin the year, Conforto could fit nicely as a DH and occasional right fielder against right-handed pitchers. He's not having an especially encouraging spring in terms of performance. He's swung at 46.9% of the pitches he's seen, but whiffed on a hideous 36.9% of those swings. When he does connect, he's only generating a 90th-percentile exit velocity a bit north of 101 MPH—not what you want from a bat-first player whose profile leans on power. Again, though, he's the type of player the team might evaluate as much on work in the cage or on data not available to the public as on even pitch-by-pitch results in Cactus League action. If you need proof that he's using a different process than he would in the regular season, look no further than the fact that he's never swung at a 46.9% rate in a big-league season. 3. Who'll Win That Fourth Outfielder Job? The fight for the right to back up Pete Crow-Armstrong in center field and provide defensive support in the corners began as a four-man fracas. It's now down to three, with one of them being a new entrant and two of the original combatants having been eliminated. Justin Dean and Kevin Alcántara are both optionable, and will be sent down—assuming they aren't traded (a possibility for Alcántara) or designated for assignment when a roster spot is needed for a non-roster player. That leaves Chas McCormick and Dylan Carlson leading the roster battle, with Shaw having jumped into the fray, as well. Shaw was always likely to make the team, but what role he has within it will determine the makeup of the rest of the bench. If he's a solid center fielder, there's at least some chance that neither Carlson nor McCormick makes the team. So far, Carlson has been the best of the three on the field. He's swung at just 43.3% of the pitches he's seen and whiffed on just 17.2% of those swings. His 90th-percentile exit velocity is around 105 MPH. Counsell has spread the former top Cardinals prospect's work evenly around the outfield, and he's moving well. McCormick, meanwhile, has been much more anxious to make an impression, with mixed results. He's swinging freely (62.5% of pitches seen), and whiffing often (36.9% of swings). His 90th-percentile exit velocity is nearly identical to Carlson's, but given the other key indicators, it's less impressive. However, once more, the team might be judging these guys based more on defense, baserunning and factors that don't show up in Cactus League Statcast metrics than on those numbers, so it's too early to call the race. For what it's worth, McCormick has only gotten one start in center field, the most important position to cover for whoever wins the battle. 4. Where Will Nico Hoerner Hit This Season? Counsell has generally preferred to keep his star second baseman lower in the batting order than most fans would like. Hoerner batted leadoff 65 times in 2024, but that was largely because of a paucity of good options. He batted first or second just 28 times last year, while slotting in sixth 52 times; seventh 37 times; and eighth 26 times. This spring, all seven of Hoerner's starts have come in the first two spots in the batting order. The signal in that data is masked by the noise of other priorities during spring training, like veteran players wanting to get done for the day as soon as possible—and like the absence of Alex Bregman for the last two weeks. Still, it's an interesting development. It's easy to imagine Hoerner leading off against left-handed starters for this team. It would be much more surprising if he hit first (or, more likely, second) against righties, but you can certainly make the case for him, based on the way he finished 2025. That version of the lineup might go: Michael Busch - 1b Nico Hoerner - 2b Alex Bregman - 3b Pete Crow-Armstrong - cf Seiya Suzuki - rf Ian Happ - lf Miguel Amaya - c Michael Conforto - dh Dansby Swanson - ss It's a bit funky, pushing a guy who's in the lineup just to hit down to No. 8 and leaving Happ out of the top five from what is traditionally his stronger side. All seven times Happ has been in the lineup, he's batted third, so maybe a more realistic permutation would be: Busch Hoerner Happ Bregman Suzuki Crow-Armstrong Amaya Conforto Swanson Either way, moving Hoerner up would highlight how deep the addition of Bregman has made the Cubs lineup. It would also be a big bet on Hoerner's anachronistic skill set to keep playing near the top of its range of outcomes, though. Seeing him slide back down in the lineup against righties feels more likely. 5. Will Anyone Be Ready to Back Up Busch? When the Cubs signed Tyler Austin this winter, it appeared that they had a platoon partner in place again for their slugging left-handed first baseman—even as Counsell insisted that he intends to play Busch every day this season. Now, with Austin down, it looks like the sincerity of that pledge will be more sternly tested. Busch has started against three lefties already this spring, and seems likely to be the true everyday guy at the cold corner when the season begins. The question, really, is what the contingency plan will look like. The diminutive Shaw is the team's utility infielder, and makes a poor candidate to play first base. Neither Kelly nor Amaya has ever appeared in a big-league game at first. Nor has Conforto. If the season began today, the Cubs might be inclined to keep Ballesteros, after all—letting him be the backup first baseman, as well as the part-time DH and occasional catcher. That solution is far from optimal, too. Ballesteros is even shorter than Shaw, and not especially mobile. He bats left-handed, so he doesn't shield the team from platoon issues for Busch—only from an injury to him. Austin and Jonathon Long both getting hurt has left the team with an interesting hole in the corner areas of the bench. At this moment, if I had to bet, I would guess that Shaw, Conforto, Carlson and Ballesteros will all make the team when the Cubs break camp. It wouldn't be an exceptionally efficient roster. It's very hard to get Conforto and Ballesteros into any of the same lineups, and they don't complement each other especially well in terms of matchup play. However, all the questions above carry big ramifications, and none of them have clear answers right now. Much could change in the final two weeks of spring training. For a team with division title aspirations, the stakes of that potential change are very high.