Matthew Trueblood

When the Cubs decided to trade their prospective right fielder for a much better one, they knew it would mean accepting more risk at another position. As things are panning out, their 2025 fortunes could hinge on whether or not they also got better at third base in the process. Image courtesy of © Cody Scanlan/The Register / USA TODAY NETWORK Because of the (needlessly confining) payroll limits placed on the front office by the Ricketts family, the Chicago Cubs knew they would need to trade Cody Bellinger after they acquired Kyle Tucker. In truth, Bellinger would have been a fairly poor fit for the roster after Tucker's arrival, anyway, but because the front office entered the winter determined to make substantial upgrades to the pitching staff and had a smaller budget with which to work than they enjoyed the year before, they were left without much choice but to move Bellinger for pitching depth as part of the maneuver by which they acquired a superstar for the first time in Jed Hoyer's tenure. To get Tucker, they gave up top draft pick Cam Smith and intriguing hurler Hayden Wesneski, but they also sent the Astros Isaac Paredes, whom they had just acquired in July, ahead of the 2024 MLB trade deadline. Giving up Paredes meant installing Matt Shaw at third base, and ever since the two-step move of trading for Tucker and offloading Bellinger to the Yankees was completed, we've been slowly acclimating to the idea: Shaw is The Plan for this season at the hot corner. Hoyer did agree to sign Jon Berti for infield depth Wednesday night, and there's always a chance of some other unexpected move, but Berti is very much a bench piece; he's not meant to truly buffet the risk of Shaw not being able to hit the ground running in the majors. While the Cubs got markedly better in right field, then, the key question about this trade might turn out to be: How well will it turn out to facilitate the installation and empowerment of the Cubs' young hitters? In short: Can Shaw outperform Paredes? At first blush, that seems to be asking a lot—maybe too much. The Steamer projections for Paredes are .244/.346/.439, with 25 home runs. Specifically, that system expects Paredes to be about 17 runs better than an average hitter. It also marks him as a below-average baserunner (giving back two of those runs) and a good-not-great defender (0 runs above or below), but still, the former All-Star is very much in his prime and being 15 runs above average at a position is tough to improve upon. Shaw's projections aren't bad, by any means. Steamer forecasts .250/.319/.410, with 15 home runs in under 500 plate appearances. For a guy who has never played a day in the majors, that's an ambitious projection. It's only good for about 4 more runs than an average hitter in the same playing time, though, and the system thinks he'll be more or less average both on the bases and in the field. There are reasons, though, to believe Shaw can be a bit better than this—and, for that matter, to expect Paredes to be a bit worse. He was not the same player for the final four months of 2024 that he had been over the previous two years, and while players are allowed to slump, his unique profile led to extra layers of worry when he ran into trouble. We could easily imagine, I think, Shaw closing the gap between them on offense to about five runs, by making adjustments quickly and claiming more playing time than expected, while Paredes continues a slight regression. Then, we turn to baserunning and defense. I think it's plausible—maybe even probable—that Shaw returns a lot more value in those areas than a projection system is going to project him to. I'm on the record as a moderate skeptic of Shaw's bat, at least in his rookie season, but he has talked a blue streak about his own dedication to third base this winter, and he looked plenty good there in the high minors last year, playing over 550 innings. With his athleticism, I think he's probably five runs better than Paredes on the dirt, and you could bid me up from there. Shaw was also very aggressive on the bases in 2024, swiping 31 bases in 42 tries. That success rate is discouraging, but I'm a big believer in the two Yankees staffers (Jose Javier and Matt Talarico) the Cubs hired away this winter, who specialize in baserunning and helping players rack up steals. I think Shaw could be five runs better than Paredes on the bases, too, if he's on often enough. If all this sounds too good to be true, keep in mind: it could be. The tough adjustments the majors will require of Shaw (who is used to using a very high leg kick to generate power and is likely to be forced into something different mechanically against the best pitchers in the world) are very real. Still, on balance, there are good reasons to think Shaw might be 12-15 runs better than an average player this season, and if that's the case, the team probably got better at third in the Tucker trade, in addition to adding one of the game's best right fielders. View full article

Step 1: Develop your underused third or fourth pitch. Step 2: Be brave. Throw it when no one's expecting it. Image courtesy of © David Richard-Imagn Images The Cubs signed Matthew Boyd knowing he would be unlikely to deliver a full 30-start share in their 2025 rotation, and that he has historically been extremely vulnerable to home runs, limiting his ceiling. He earned his two-year, $29-million deal by evolving impressively in 2024, though, including steadily increased usage of steadily improving tertiary weapons. He's long had an exceptional slider and a lively four-seam fastball, but he relied more heavily on his changeup (against right-handed batters) and his sinker (against lefties) in 2024, under the guidance of a pitching development team in Cleveland that shares much organizational DNA with the Cubs. It's nearly always a good thing to boost one's usage of solid secondary pitches, and indeed, Boyd kept opposing hitters in the park (2.4% of opponent plate appearances ended in a home run, a career-low mark for any season in which he pitched any meaningful amount) and piled up strikeouts (27.7% strikeout rate, the second-highest of his career) without walking any more batters than usual (7.8%, right in line with his career average). He was an impressively complete pitcher, with five usable pitches and good command of each. Boyd's slider found more depth and more sweep in 2024; I've placed the three dots representing the months in which he pitched in 2024 in a box to distinguish them from all the other months of his career. More depth on the breaking ball and (thanks to the change and sinker becoming more prominent) less need for it is a potent combination; it vaulted Boyd to new heights last year. There's even more to the story, though. Boyd didn't just use his changeup more in 2024. He also used it better, by taking advantage of hitters who tried to sit on his fastball in hitter-friendly counts. Here's a chart showing Boyd's pitch usage by count for 2022 and 2023. Now, here's the same chart for 2024. Despite a deeper and more balanced arsenal overall, note that Boyd actually got more fastball-heavy at the front ends of at-bats last year. When he fell behind, however, he started sharply violating hitters' expectations. In 1-1, 2-0, and 2-1 counts (especially the latter two), he leaned hard on the changeup. Not only did he not throw the fastball in fastball counts, but he got hitters primed for that and then gave them the very pitch that subverted those expectations. As a result, his Run Value was better in those three counts in 2024 than in any of the other four seasons since 2019 in which he pitched more than a handful of innings. He didn't exactly pitch backward; he was out there establishing the fastball and getting ahead early in counts. But he refused to give in when he fell behind, and predictably, hitters struggled to adjust. There will have to be a next wave of adjustments, even for Boyd, a wily veteran heading into his mid-30s. Once hitters know you might be apt to throw them slop in a meatball count, they'll alter their approach and force you to alter yours. With batters feeling him out, Boyd's early-count fastball-forwardness didn't hurt him last year, as hitters only swung at 41.1% of the heaters they saw within the first two pitches of an at-bat. That number was 45.8% just one year earlier, though, and you can expect it to spike again in 2025, forcing Boyd to reshuffle his cards just to get to those counts where he can unleash the unexpected changeup. All told, though, this is a sketch of a pitcher getting comfortable in his own pitching skin almost for the first time, a decade into his career. Boyd will probably spend some time on the injured list, but when he's healthy enough to take the mound, the Cubs expect bigger things from him than most fans do—and they have good reasons, big and small, to hold those expectations. View full article

FWIW, the only way the Cubs will land Yates is if he fails a physical with the Dodgers and his price falls precipitously. They weren't even really in for him at the end.

The Cubs agreed to one addition to their roster Wednesday night, but more of them loom. With their roster full, how will they make room for the right guys? Image courtesy of © Rafael Suanes-Imagn Images Jon Berti hasn't officially signed with the Cubs yet, but he'll become their utility infielder when that deal gets formally signed in the coming days. That will have to mean removing someone from the 40-man roster. Then, in the middle of March, the team will have to add Matt Shaw to their 40-man group, en route to installing him as their regular third baseman; that means jettisoning someone else. That's one dimension of the roster crunch facing the team, as they try to further round out a team that can win the NL Central and make a credible showing in the postseason. Another is having enough flexibility to keep good players who provide much-needed depth in the minors, while optimizing the talent on the 26-man roster. That means managing the roster carefully with regard to minor-league options, and some of the players at the fringes are out of them. We've surveyed that group already this winter, but now is a good time to do so again; more moves are forthcoming. Position Players Gage Workman is a Rule 5 pick who will have to stick on the active roster in order to remain with the team; that gives him a leg up in the competition for the final bench spot. Alexander Canario is out of options, so he, too, has to make the roster in order to stay in the organization, but he's less athletic than Workman, and the last proactive choice the Cubs made to affirm their faith in Canario was acquiring him in the first place, three and a half years ago. Workman is more versatile and the team just brought him in. The catching corps is set, with Miguel Amaya and Carson Kelly, but the team has also reinforced it well with minor-league deals, signing (first) Carlos Pérez and (Wednesday) Reese McGuire. Mix in Moises Ballesteros, who doesn't yet have to be on the 40-man, and you have a robust cadre of upper-level catching. In fact, there just might be room for the team to consider trading Amaya (or Ballesteros) in the right trade over the next few weeks. The Padres need a catcher, and are a promising trade partner. Eventually, of course, McGuire would have to be added to the 40-man if Amaya were traded, but that would work just fine. Vidal Bruján is the most likely casualty of the Berti signing. It's his role Berti most clearly makes redundant, and like Canario, he's out of options. He could be cut immediately, or he could survive a round, but he's now very unlikely to last the winter. Pitchers Whereas there's some chance (if a small one) that Berti is the last addition to the position-player group, we know for sure there will be more pitchers coming in. Whether that be via free agency, trade, or both, the hurler or hurlers added are unlikely to have options remaining, and that will apply some new pressure. The team has five starters and three relievers fully locked into the roster—both lacking options and indispensable to the pitching staff, anyway: Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, Matthew Boyd, Colin Rea, Tyson Miller, Caleb Thielbar, and Julian Merryweather. Javier Assad can still be sent to the minors, and so can Tyson Miller, Nate Pearson, and Eli Morgan. Each of those guys is also an important part of the mix right now, but that could change with the right moves or the wrong kind of spring training. You can all but say goodbye to Rob Zastryzny now. He's a lefty, made redundant by the presence of both Thielbar and Luke Little ahead of him on the depth chart and without options remaining. Keegan Thompson and Matt Festa aren't much better off, since they each lack options, too. Caleb Kilian and Ethan Roberts form a class above Thompson, Festa and Zastryzny in roster value, but below the one occupied by (deep intake of breath) Jordan Wicks, Ben Brown, Cody Poteet, Daniel Palencia, Jack Neely, Gavin Hollowell, and Little. All nine of those guys have options left, but the latter seven are clearly better than the first two. That matters, too, because at the moment, it seems likely that one or two roster spots will have to be created by the time the team flies to Japan to open the season against the Dodgers. Trevor Richards recently joined Ben Heller, Brooks Kriske and Phil Bickford as high-profile non-roster invitees to spring training who could contribute to the bullpen. The question with each is their opt-out date, because that could influence whether and when the team adds any of them to the roster. With Imanaga, Steele, Taillon, Boyd, Rea, Assad, Wicks, Brown and Poteet in line for chances to start, it would be a shock if either Cade Horton or Brandon Birdsell were called upon early in the season, and neither is yet on the 40-man roster, but each is a consideration for mid-season promotion as needed. In such a case, another 40-man spot would have to be opened up. More so than on the positional side, there's a lot of good depth here. As we've talked about at length, the need is for a better back end of the bullpen, or a high-end starter. That could be costly and come with its own logistical problems, but it probably actually stands to solve some of the team's roster-crunch problems; it should involve some natural consolidation. A trade could send two players out the door and bring back just one, with more upside. The Padres, who have six open spots on their 40-man roster, again look like a great match. The Cubs have plenty of work left to do this winter, even after signing Berti. Each move will displace someone, but that's alright. That's what this roster is designed for, at the moment. View full article

With Nico Hoerner's status for Opening Day much in doubt, one thing the Cubs wanted to do as they rounded out their roster was sign a capable second baseman who could stand in for him over the first few weeks. Wednesday night, they did so. Image courtesy of © Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images The Chicago Cubs signed utility man Jon Berti to a one-year deal Wednesday night, a source confirmed. Robert Murray of FanSided was the first to break the news. Berti, who turned 35 Wednesday, will make $2 million on the one-year deal. He's a .269/.337/.366 career hitter, and hit .268.335/.368 since the start of 2022. He remains one of the fastest players in baseball, even at this advanced age, and is 62-for-74 stealing bases over that same three-year span. His Statcast sprint speed for 2024 was 29.0 feet per second, an impressive number even before accounting for the facts of his age and his injury issues; he lost much of last year to groin and calf strains. Obviously, this is a quintessential bench piece, a guy whom you slot in only when a primary option is unavailable. His price reflects that, though, and the good news is twofold: Berti, unlike other versions of this player type the Cubs have tried in recent years, has a track record of getting on base, where the ability to run so well can make a real difference. Nick Madrigal (.304) and Miles Mastrobuoni (.283) never ran OBPs that allowed their other skills to have much value. Berti should. It's clear that the Cubs expect to run early and often in 2025. They're going to get aggressive. Berti fits that approach, not only because he's so fast, but because he's spent last season in the Yankees organization, from which the Cubs just hired baserunning gurus Jose Javier and Matt Talarico. Presumably, Berti will be able to act as a player conduit for the unique base-stealing ideas those two coaches bring to the organization. By signing Berti on such a cheap deal, one might fairly hope, the Cubs gain the option of spending more freely to upgrade the pitching staff than they otherwise would. Whether that turns out to be true will determine how good anyone should feel about Berti's arrival, but given the pressing need for infield reinforcements and the frustration of watching Madrigal and Mastrobuoni fail to clear the low offensive bar for that role over the last few seasons, this is a perfectly sensible signing. It's not a needle-mover, but it does improve the team. View full article

They absolutely should and probably will trade or DFA Canario, anyway. He's out of options, he can't make enough contact to get to his power, and he can't play center field.

Jed Hoyer intends to upgrade the Cubs' bench before spring training begins next month. One of the best ways he could do so would be to sign a former center-field stalwart for the team's chief rivals. Image courtesy of © Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images Now a few years into the peripatetic phase of his career, Harrison Bader had a fine but forgettable 2024 campaign with the New York Mets. In 437 plate appearances, he batted .236/.284/.373, with 12 home runs and 17 stolen bases. That's as underwhelming as it sounds, even if you give him more credit than defensive metrics did last year for his defensive chops in center field. The very fact that Bader, 30, can acquit himself in center has to count for something. The Cubs need a strong backup and potential platoon partner for Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Bader still seems able to be that guy. His numbers were disastrous against lefties in 2024, but for his career, he's a .249/.315/.461 hitter against southpaws. He's never really been a platoon guy—the 35% of his plate appearances that came against lefties in 2024 was the highest share of his career—and it's possible that the reason he's still a free agent is a belief and hope that he'll find a full-time job somewhere. He won't. Whenever he becomes more amenable to a part-time role, you could see the Cubs pounce, because Bader would be a great fit as the fourth outfielder behind a group that includes two lefty hitters (Crow-Armstrong and Kyle Tucker) and a switch-hitter (Ian Happ) who has generally been much better against righties during his career. Bader also has some upside, yet, and should one of the starters go down for a prolonged period, he could capably handle stepping into a full-time job for a stretch. In such a scenario, the Cubs might prefer to give an extended look to one of Owen Caissie or Kevin Alcántara, but Bader would give them insurance, matchup value, and flexibility, especially in case the need for a replacement comes earlier in the season than they care to promote either of their top outfield prospects. Right now, I'm working on a parallel plane, on a piece about the relationship between swing speed, swing acceleration (i.e., how quickly one can get the bat up to that final speed), and swing length, for Baseball Prospectus. In the process, I searched for hitters who showed the ability to generate very high swing speeds with short swings, even a handful of times, in 2024. Bader is one such player. He had five swings with a speed of at least 75 miles per hour and a swing length under 6.5 feet, showing that his bat speed hasn't yet faded in any meaningful way. Happ had the most such swings by a Cub, at seven, and that was in far more playing time than Bader got. I also developed a way to estimate the swing acceleration we would expect based on a hitter's swing speed, and Bader was in the top quartile of the league (right next to Seiya Suzuki), with swing acceleration about 25 feet per second per second better than we would have expected based on his swing speed. He needs to make better swing decisions, but one thing I discovered is that good accelerators usually can do that, because their ability to get the bat up to speed faster lets them start a hair later without losing the ability to hit the ball hard. With good coaching, Bader is a candidate to improve substantially at the plate in 2025. Investing in the bench makes sense for this team, because they have so much youth in their projected lineup. With Matt Shaw, Miguel Amaya, Michael Busch and Crow-Armstrong set to start most days, the team is embracing some risk that these players' development will prove the wrong kind of non-linear, and a player with a track record and a balanced skill set like Bader's can be especially helpful. It would be just one small move in what still needs to be a series of them, but the team should try to bring in Bader. View full article

Tuesday evening will bring the results of the 2025 National Baseball Hall of Fame BBWAA election. Before that happens, here are my 10 selections from the annual ballot, and the reasons why I chose each—and why I excluded some other candidates. Image courtesy of © Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images I hew to a few key principles when considering who I think deserves to enter the National Baseball Hall of Fame. It doesn't really matter, of course, because I don't have a vote, but I go through some version of the exercise each year, because I can't evaluate the choices made by the tenured members of the Baseball Writers Association of America without coming to my own conclusions about who should go in and why. Here are my main thoughts about the ballot as it exists these days, in no particular order: By and large, I'm a "big Hall" guy. There are, for my money, more important and wonderful players on the outside of Cooperstown looking in than guys who have plaques but didn't exactly merit them. Off-field matters notwithstanding, I tend to err on the side of letting in players who don't check all of some old-fashioned voters' boxes but who brightened the field with their presence over long careers. I'll usually favor peak over longevity, but I think some public discourse has run too far in that direction. We ought to value the desire, dedication, and adaptability to stay helpful for more than a decade, even if a player had a truly elite seven- or eight-year peak. I'm unwilling to exclude a player for using performance-enhancing drugs. I do discount players' numbers slightly if we know that they used, but the problem was huge and systemic and while each person bears personal responsibility for the choices they made about how to seek competitive edges during that era, I don't feel that using those drugs (or, in Carlos Beltrán's case, being the focal point of the investigation into the Astros' sign-stealing scandal) should keep a deserving player out of the Hall. On the other hand, I'm something of a hardliner when it comes to more egregious and (in my opinion) serious failures of character. This is the highest honor that can be conferred on a member of this profession, and it's my feeling that we should deny that honor to people who (most especially) inflict violence on family members, intimate partners, or any other group, especially if they were repeat offenders. That also goes for people who espouse hateful things (no Curt Schilling for me, when he was eligible) and those who drink and drive and don't learn from the egregious, wantonly dangerous misdeed (no Todd Helton for me, either, though I lost that argument). That should give you some clues as to whose names are about to appear below. Without further ado, here we go. CC Sabathia A no-brainer. Sabathia pitched 19 seasons as a workhorse, and not just an innings-eater, but an ace. He was, arguably, the last great pitcher of his kind, a threat to go eight innings every time he toed the rubber. Sabathia made 134 starts in which he went at least 7 1/3, which is not only the fifth-most since 1995, but 22 more than the most by any active hurler. (Justin Verlander sits at 112.) I heartily recommend his memoir, Till The End, which documents not only his career, but his long battle with alcohol dependence. He was larger than life on the mound, a great postseason pitcher, and late in his career, a big enough man to admit that he was hurting a great many people he loved by destroying himself. His journey to sobriety is as inspiring to many as his incredible talent and phenomenal performances. Ichiro Suzuki The most singular player in modern baseball history. Suzuki didn't even come to the States until he was 27, which hid some of his greatest brilliance from us, and yet, no one who ever watched him doubted he was a Hall of Famer. His feel for contact—especially the ability to hit the ball deep enough to the left side of the infield to secure a single almost every time, even if the shortstop managed to keep it on the dirt—was breathtaking, and his arm in right field was the most entertaining of his generation. That was true not only because he threw so well, but because he did it with such a whipsaw grace, from a small frame, and because he augmented the utility of his sheer arm strength by charging every single with fluid speed and confidence. He's one of the 25 best baseball players ever, if we widen our lens to remember that his skill set probably peaked during his final few years in Japan. If you've never looked up his NPB numbers, do so. His lowest full-season average there was .342, and he left after batting .387/.460/.539 in 2000. Alex Rodríguez Is he truly likable? No. Is he obnoxious on FOX broadcasts now? Yes. Did he use steroids, even after testing went into effect and everyone understood them to be taboo? Absolutely. But unlike (say) Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, Rodríguez was never accused of being violent or criminally inappropriate toward women, and while he might have had a vague reputation as a self-satisfied jerk off the field, his sins outside the lines are relatively tame. They don't remotely erase the fact that, along with Bonds and Willie Mays and Henry Aaron, Rodríguez has a very strong case as the best player of all time. His pwoer and speed were incredible, but some players could loosely match those tools. What no one ever matched was the way he blended those loud tools with subtle but equally valuable refined skills, from an intelligent and adaptable approach at the plate to clever and dazzling defense. Carlos Beltrán I mentally bin Beltrán with Scott Rolen. While they were different in several obvious ways, both were extremely well-rounded—so much so that it was sometimes regrettably easy to overlook their greatest strengths in favor of marveling at their lack of weaknesses. Beltrán's raw numbers are slightly diminished by the mix of parks and league run environments he encountered over the years, and even so, they're gaudy. He was also, throughout his 20s, one of the best defensive center fielders of his generation, which often got lumped in and treated like an afterthought, given the balanced offensive dynamism he offered as a switch-hitter. That he helped engineer the banging scheme in 2017 is a shame, but not a dark enough mark on his record to make me think twice about wanting to see him enter the Hall. He found so many ways to be good late in his career, and was so respected by teammates throughout that career, that I'm more inclined to give him bonus points for baseball character than to strike him from the list for cheating in his senescence. Félix Hernández I think that, because he came up so young and was thus in decline by his age-30 season, people remember Hernández's peak as shorter than it really was. From 2009-15, Hernández made six All-Star teams, won a Cy Young Award, finished twice two other times and was in the top 10 for the honor thrice more. He averaged 228 innings and 221 strikeouts per season and had a 2.83 ERA. If those seven years were his whole peak, this would be a thorny conversation. In reality, though, he had come up in the middle of 2005 and had three full, perfectly solid campaigns before really hitting his stride in that 2009 campaign. He also pitched with personality, and was a bit of a throwback: he didn't have to strike you out for you to feel as though you had no chance when he was done with you. Andy Pettitte Yes, he used HGH, and yes, I hold that against him—almost more than I do for hitters, because one of the chief challenges for pitchers is to stay healthy and I consider things that artificially reduce that risk an especially egregious sin against the game. Pettitte was an emblem of an era, though. Every October, you'd turn on the TV, and he would be there, with the cap pulled so low over his eyes that his face was just a black abyss behind his glove. He'd be coming off a strong regular season, but there would be questions about him—and then he'd answer them with a resounding performance that helped vault his teams to one World Series after another. Pitchers deserve some extra credit for holding up under the hot lights, and for achieving longevity even when piling up extra innings after lots of their counterparts had gone home each fall. Chase Utley Like Beltrán, Utley was a winner, because he did everything well and sought the edge everywhere it could be found. He bordered on dirty, but if the rest of the league were as dedicated to playing the game ferociously as he was, they wouldn't have been in any danger from him. He was ruthless, and he was everywhere. During his peak, he hit for average, drew walks, stole bases more efficiently than anyone else in baseball, and played better defense at second base than anyone else in baseball. The thing people overlooked too often, because he tended to hit more doubles than homers, was his power. He averaged 27 homers and 67 total extra-base hits per year from 2005-10, and he also perfected the art of being hit by pitches. The second half of his career was underwhelming, but he should have won two MVPs (which, in a testament to him, went to teammtes instead) before that decline began. Billy Wagner I love the story of Wagner breaking his right arm playing hat football when he was a kid, and thus becoming an accidental lefty. It speaks not only to his resourcefulness, but to his passion for the sport; he couldn't be without baseball long enough to let an injury heal all the way. He just switched arms and kept hucking it. You'd like to see more volume, even from a reliever, to put them in. Yet, Wagner had more strikeouts than either Trevor Hoffman or Mariano Rivera, even though they had roughly 180 and 350 more career innings than he did, respectively. You'd like to see a better postseason track record, too. But the fact is that Wagner struck out 33.2% of opposing batters for his career, which would be an elite rate for a single season even now—and that was at a time when the baseline for strikeouts was about 20% lower than it is now. When he came in to close out a game against your team, you knew he was a Hall of Famer. Russell Martin For me, this is not as controversial as some have made it. Martin was a unique athlete who could have stuck on the infield if he'd insisted upon it, but instead, he made himself a great catcher—one of the best defenders at the most important non-pitching position on the field, in an era full of great defensive catchers. That so much of his value comes from pitch framing inevitably dings him for many, but I love framing and believe its value is real and should be acknowledged. Martin also brought a modicum of power and unusual speed to the position, and you didn't have to make the big tradeoffs that so many catchers force their teams to make. He was well-rounded, an average-plus hitter and a terrific run preventer, as well as a beloved teammate whose teams were a truly wild 212 games over .500 when he started during his career. In 11 different seasons, his team was at least 11 games to the good. Ben Zobrist This one, admittedly, is a fringy case. I'd like to see Zobrist stick around on the ballot, as much as I'd like to see him actually inducted. He's the guy who probably did have too short a career to make a compelling Hall case, but from 2009-16, he defined an evolving role for the whole league, playing all over the diamond (and being above-average at each spot) and hitting .271/.366/.439, despite a lot of those seasons being fallow ones for offense throughout the league. I also give him some extra credit for being instrumental in two straight World Series runs by teams he was on, the 2015 Royals and the 2016 Cubs. Excluded here, but worth a quick mention, are the following: Bobby Abreu makes a very strong case, and once Beltrán gets in, I think it will be easier to fairly judge him and for some voters to find room for him on their ballots. Andruw Jones, Manny Ramírez, Francisco Rodríguez, and Omar Vizquel were not considered, as I consider all of them to have been disqualifyingly violent and/or cruel away from the field. Dustin Pedroia is very close to Utley as a candidate, and probably could have gotten his slot. I'll certainly be taking another close look at him next year. Brian McCann is a similar candidate to Martin, but I want to advocate Martin first. David Wright and Troy Tulowitzki were clearly Hall of Fame talents. I'm not yet sure I can get them over the line, based on how truncated by injuries their careers were, but they're legitimate candidates. There's my ballot. It's imperfect; all ballots are. It was fun to put it together, though, and I'd love to hear what you think of it, as well as whom you would support. View full article

The Chicago Bears hired Ben Johnson as their new head coach Monday afternoon. It's a good reminder to Cubs fans that they also have a much-prized leader in their dugout, and that the team's ceiling might be set in part by a reshaped coaching staff, in addition to their raw talent. Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images It's not apples-to-apples, of course. Neither a manager nor a hitting coach nor a pitching coach can have as great a direct and easily traceable impact on a team's efficacy in baseball as can a head coach or coordinator in football. When the Cubs hired Craig Counsell 14 months ago, though, their hope was that he would engender better performances from his players than David Ross had from his, and that the team could pair continued increases in talent with improvements that go a bit beyond baseline talent level. Even when a manager and coaching staff have such an impact, it's harder to see in baseball than in football, and it's hard to say whether Counsell and his slapdash group did so in 2024. They rebuilt a portion of that staff this winter, though, and it's fairly clear that they believe the changes are for the better. While they've also augmented the roster and will continue to do so, they want to see players outperform their projections, too, and some of that depends on great coaches. Hence the investment they've made, not only in Counsell, but in new faces Quintin Berry, Jose Javier, and last year's top adds, Ryan Flaherty and Mark Strittmatter. They promoted Casey Jacobson from the player-development group to join that field staff, but have backfilled there by hiring Tyler Zombro, and they've also added key voices Matt Talarico and Jerry Weinstein to the front office as player development specialists. The common thread—with Berry, Javier, Talarico, and Weinstein, especially—is not a relationship with Counsell, but an emphasis on excellent execution of the little things. These hires reflect a new dedication to being better at positioning defenders, especially in the outfield; running the bases, especially taking advantage of the rules changes that happened in 2023; and pitch framing. Meanwhile, replacing the departed Daniel Moskos with Jacobson as the lieutenant to Tommy Hottovy is designed to ensure that the team continues to get a bit more out of seemingly low-ceiling pitchers than the numbers forecast. Is any of this an excuse not to spend money, or for the Cubs not to further improve their roster via trades or free agency in the next month? By no means. Because the Ricketts family sets too tight a budget for the front office to bring in sufficient talent to dominate the division or threaten the Mets or Dodgers, though, they do need to be more than the sum of their parts—or at least, more than the apparent sum based on uncertain evaluations of each individual part. That's an important thing to keep in mind in the weeks ahead. We know that the team hired Javier and Talarico to port the Yankees' innovations in base-stealing to a younger, faster club, and that tells us that if they can get Pete Crow-Armstrong on base a bit more, they're going to ask him to steal more than 50 bases. Crow-Armstrong and Miguel Amaya were last year's most obvious wins for the trio of hitting coaches (Dustin Kelly, Juan Cabreja, and John Mallee), but not the only ones, and that group will also be tasked with smoothing out the transition for Matt Shaw as he joins the big-league team. Amaya and Carson Kelly will be expected to improve and excel defensively, not only because Kelly has a reputation as a strong defender anyway, but because Strittmatter and Weinstein are in the fold specifically to upgrade their infrastructure in that department. Counsell, Hottovy and Jacobson will be asked to sift quickly through a ton of options for their pitching staff this spring, and then to position high-upside hurlers like Ben Brown and Nate Pearson to have the greatest possible impact. The Brewers have beaten the Cubs out for two straight division titles, and have been the most successful team in the NL Central over the last seven years. Most of that was under Counsell, and none of it was because they had the most raw talent in the division. On the contrary, Milwaukee dominated partially through superb coaching. Their hitting department is underrated. Pitching coach Chris Hook has enjoyed a good tenure with trusted lieutenants, just like Hottovy, and his staffs have overachieved. They were, arguably, the best team in baseball at teaching pitch framing and at positioning defenders over the last several campaigns. The Cubs needed to close that gap, just as they needed to close the one between the two teams in talent in 2021 and 2022. By hiring Counsell away and bolstering his staff this winter, they've done much of that work. We'll see whether that shows up on the field in 2025, but it will be harder to judge it than it will be to tell whether the front office gave them good enough players to work with in the first place. View full article

We've talked about the Cubs being near their limit for sheer depth options at the fringes of their bullpen, but apparently, they're not quite there yet. On Monday afternoon, they agreed to bring aboard a high-slot changeup specialist who could fit into a situational role near the bottom of their depth chart. Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images This move won't make anyone less hungry for a true relief ace, but as the Cubs try hard to avoid the depth shortfalls that exposed and cost them in the first half of 2024, they took another small step toward safety Monday by signing right-handed reliever Trevor Richards. Aram Leighton of Just Baseball broke the news. Richards's fastball is a fairly pedestrian offering, averaging 92 miles per hour. It has a lot of carry at the top of the zone, but from his overhand slot, it doesn't generate much deception or induce many swings and misses. The key to his two-pitch attack, though, is that changeup, with lots of depth and a bit of run to the arm side, to boot. When he's going well, Richards does pile up strikeouts, because the changeup is a swing-and-miss pitch. He nearly always walks more batters than you'd like, though, and of his seven big-league seasons, only 2021 saw him actually run a good ERA and consistently get hitters out. He's a limited pitcher who must be used carefully, but he does have reverse platoon splits, somewhat like erstwhile Cubs middle reliever Mark Leiter Jr. They're funky splits, though. Here are his career numbers: vs. RHH: .248/.320/.432, 26.5% K, 9.2% BB vs. LHH: .221/.315/.372, 24.1% K, 11.8% BB In other words, across samples of more than 1,000 batters faced from each side, Richards has been reliably better against lefties—but he's struck out more and walked fewer against righties. It's only against lefties that he seems able to limit quality of contact. That's bizarre, and helps explain why he's struggled more than he's thrived throughout his career. If Richards makes the roster, he could eventually be some version of what Leiter was for the Cubs, but the ceiling feels lower. In the meantime, he faces a long climb to make the team at all. This is a nice pickup and camp check-in, lest the team can unlock something for him the way they did with Leiter. It's not the big addition they still need to make to their bullpen, though. It only further crowds the competition for the final spot or two on the Opening Day roster. View full article

Sunday's news was a double whammy for the Cubs, who wanted Tanner Scott as the anchor of their bullpen and had built a portion of their spending plan for the balance of the winter around him. Do they still have good ways to use financial flexibility to get better? Image courtesy of © Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images It's always important to remember that spending money is not an end unto itself, unless you're trying to get rid of many so people stop asking you hard questions. (Hello, Marlins and A's.) The Cubs won't throw money around just to say they did so, but they're far below the budget number Tom Ricketts gave Jed Hoyer for 2025, and if they get to Opening Day without using the significant amount of money still available to them to improve the club, it will mean that Hoyer has failed miserably. Luckily, there are still several ways in which the team can leverage their spending power to better position the team to win the NL Central this season. Here are 10 of them, ranked from most to least desirable, so you can understand (at least from my imperfect vantage point) which moves to hope for. Please note, though, that for simplicity's sake, I've taken the relievers discussed yesterday (mostly) out of the equation here. 1. Dylan Cease (and Robert Suarez), Padres RHP(s) I wrote a good bit about Suarez in my piece yesterday, ranking the best ways the Cubs could pivot and land a relief ace after losing the bidding war on Scott. I also laid out the reasons why a one-stop shopping trip to snare both Cease and Suarez could make sense for the team, weeks ago. The Padres are in a pickle. Internecine fights over the future of their ownership group, some foreseeable trouble stemming from committing to several huge contracts in a very small market, and an urgent desire to stay in contention have A.J. Preller attempting a very tricky two-step. The Cubs have pieces (Owen Caissie, Kevin Alcántara, Moises Ballesteros, Javier Assad, Ben Brown, and more) who would have strong appeal for San Diego, addressing some of their key needs, and they'd happily take on the roughly $25 million owed to the pair of Cease and Suarez. This move would give the Cubs one of the five best pitching staffs in the National League and set them up as prohibitive division favorites, although they'd have to cough up a bit of long-term value. 2. Brandon Lowe, Rays 2B/1B The Rays are climate refugees in 2025, and who knows for how long after that. Neither their ownership group nor their municipality seems all that interested in holding onto them, and it will be hard to find excited buyers or viable places to move, if it comes to that. They're already 29th in projected payroll for this season, but they'd like to get even cheaper. Lowe, 30, is owed $10.5 million this year and would make $11.5 million on a club option in 2026. They'd be willing to move him. While Nico Hoerner convalesces, Lowe could be an everyday second baseman. He'd then slide into more of a rotational role, filling in for Hoerner some days, Dansby Swanson (via Hoerner sliding to shortstop) on others, and Michael Busch on still others, including to picking up the odd assignment at DH. He's a reliable 20-homer bat even in a slightly platoon-protected role, and he accepts his walks. His bat speed is terrific, and it's unlikely to fade in the way that gets dangerous for hitters until well after his team control runs out. 3. Yandy Díaz, Rays 1B/3B Lowe's teammate would almost be an even better fit, because (unlike Lowe) Díaz has played a good amount of third base in the majors over the years. He's no longer playable there on more than an emergency basis, but he is a lefty-killing right-handed hitter, making him a good platoon partner for Busch and a fine complement to the DH rotation. Days on which the Cubs face tough left-handed starters could find any of Busch, Ian Happ or even Kyle Tucker getting a day off, with Seiya Suzuki going to the outfield if needed and Díaz at either first base or DH. He'd also be a strong hedge against a sophomore slump by Busch, although the Cubs surely hope that Busch's strong rookie campaign was the beginning of something consistently good. Note the similar overall swing speed and the similar shapes of the distributions for Díaz and Lowe. The Rays very much have a type, and it's one the Cubs could use. These guys generate hard contact (if not always hard contact in the air), putting pressure on the defense and posing a constant threat. Díaz is due $10 million in 2025 and would get another $1 million (paid by the Cubs) if he's dealt; he also has a $12-million option for 2026. It's a high price for the role Díaz would fill, but he'd fill it singularly well. 4. Luis Castillo, Mariners RHP Some of these potential moves complement one another, rather than competing. Acquiring Castillo (who's owed $68.25 million over the next three years, with a complicated but ultimately team-friendly option for 2028) would mean giving up both a young player or two and Hoerner, so it would make the team more expensive and upgrade the rotation, but at the expense of the lineup. However, such a trade would also pave the way for a trade for (say) Lowe, and while the team would end up $25 million more expensive and down some long-term depth, they would get markedly better on both sides of the runs ledger. That said, the fact that it would almost necessitate a second move slides Castillo down to this placement on the rankings, despite his terrific talent and durability in the middle or front end of rotations over the years. 5. Ryan McMahon, Rockies 3B/2B Trading for a hitter from Colorado is always a fraught thought. but McMahon, 30, would be a more comfortable acquisition than most such players. He's a plus-plus defender at third base, and above-average at second. He could start the season standing in for Hoerner, then become a roving platoon partner for both Hoerner and Matt Shaw, bringing good defense in each spot. Signed to a long-term deal that guarantees him $44 million over the next three years, McMahon would be a safe, medium-term, medium-value investment. The risk, of course, lies in his bat. Predicting how any non-elite Rockies hitter will do when removed from both the benefits and the difficulties of playing half their games at elevation is nigh impossible. Yes, their numbers get padded by 81 games in the thin air at Coors Field, but it's also harder to adjust to and hit good stuff when not playing at elevation. To wit, looking only at fastballs with plus or better vertical movement, McMahon had a .408 expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) in 2024 at home—where would-be rising fastballs flatten out because there's less air to catch the backspinning seams—but a .280 mark on the road. It's probably unfair to treat either of those numbers as more telling than the other, but the gap between the two illustrates the problem. Betting $44 million and a prospect or two on such an opaque thing is rarely a great idea. 6. Nolan Arenado, Cardinals 3B Ok, wait. Wait. Slow down. Regulate your breathing. Yes, I know Arenado is in decline, and yes, I know whatever you sent the Cardinals would be an unwelcome loss, because the player in question would go to the team's archrivals. I also know the very idea sounds preposterous. Here's the thing: it wouldn't be so bad, and it isn't so crazy. The Cardinals are being transparent and forthright about their desire—even their need—to trade Arenado. It's almost all they even want to do this offseason, which is getting close to its end anyway. Arenado is owed $59 million over the final two years of his long-term deal, but as we all know, no one is taking on all of that. Instead, any deal would involve a minimal return for St. Louis and anywhere from $14 million to $20 million being sent along to defray the costs. That just leaves the biggest question: Can Arenado still be any good, really? And does he fit with the Cubs? I would argue that he does, although imperfectly. Trading Hoerner for pitching could open second base for Shaw, but another, simpler approach would be to simply have Arenado step in as the regular third baseman and let Shaw start the season at second, in Hoerner's absence. Once Hoerner gets healthy, things get a bit messier, but it's likely that plenty of playing time would still open up somewhere. Arenado has also said he would be willing to play some first base for a contending team, so he can act as a platoon mate for Busch in addition to delivering his signature defensive value at third. After a campaign in which he batted just .275/.321/.394, the key question is whether that was a reversible dip or the latest inflection point in an inexorable and accelerating decline. 7. Alex Bregman, Free Agent 3B It's not a great sign that we're down at No. 7 before we encounter a free agent who can be acquired for just money, but that's the situation here. Were Bregman open to short-term deals structured like last winter's Cody Bellinger and Matt Chapman contracts, as was briefly reported, he'd be higher on this list, but he seems to be focused on longer-term possibilities. That makes him a poor fit, because while he's to be commended for his good swing decisions and feel for contact, he stands right at the edge of the swing speed aging cliff, and he can't afford to lose that bat speed if he's going to generate any meaningful amount of power. On a short-term deal, you joyfully embrace the risks he comes with. On a six-year deal, with Shaw in place as an alternative, it's not necessary. 8. Jack Flaherty, Free Agent RHP Indisputably, Flaherty brings more upside to a starting rotation than do Javier Assad, Colin Rea or Matthew Boyd. Beyond the concerns about his medicals that a few teams have raised, though, there are questions of performance volatility surrounding Flaherty. When he's going right, his slider misses bats at a tremendous rate and he can rack up strikeouts. When he's diminished (which seems to be often), he can get hit hard. If I expected those worries to be accurately priced into his eventual deal, I'd have him a few rungs higher on this list. As it is, though, I expect him to sign either a short-term deal worth $20 million per year or a deal similar to Jameson Taillon's four-year, $68-million pact. On neither term would he be a good use of resources for the Cubs, given the (regrettable) constraints placed upon them by ownership. They have other boxes to check, and spending that much on Flaherty would make it too hard to check them. 9. Spencer Turnbull, Free Agent RHP The price is more likely to be right, but Turnbull's ceiling is lower than Flaherty's, too. He does have a fascinating arsenal, with a cut-ride fastball the Cubs would surely love; two or three breaking balls; and the ability to work to the arm side, all from a low arm slot. In this case, his ceiling is set not by his skills, but by his very ugly injury history. It's unlikely you get even the 120ish innings the Cubs want to get from Boyd out of Turnbull, which makes him a tough fit for this roster, which already has Boyd, Brown, Cade Horton, and some equally exciting but fragile relievers around whom to work. 10. Nick Pivetta, Free Agent RHP At this stage, I wouldn't be surprised if Pivetta takes a one-year deal just north of the qualifying offer's value, or a two-year deal with an opt-out, a la Jordan Montgomery. He's fairly durable, with 623 innings pitched since the start of 2021, and his strikeout rate over that span (26.9%) is also impressive. He just gets hit hard all the time, though, and that's sadly unsurprising. He's a high-slot righty with a dead-zone fastball; those guys give up lots of power. I'd still rank Pivetta ahead of Flaherty or Turnbull, in some other universes, but he would cost the Cubs draft capital, too, because he received a qualifying offer in November. Since those guys wouldn't, they get a slight edge. The need in the rotation just isn't pronounced enough to put any of them especially high on this list. There are even more options than these, but the Cubs need to figure out a good means of turning money into on-field value, and soon. The final month of the offseason is upon us, and the Chicago roster is incomplete. They need to change that soon. View full article

There's no avoiding the bitter disappointment of the latest free-agent news. The Cubs had a clear-cut top target on whom they were ready to extend themselves. Now that they've lost out on him, which is the best of their alternatives? Image courtesy of © Brett Davis-Imagn Images All winter, I've exhorted readers not to get anxious or angry too soon. The Cubs have already added Kyle Tucker, Matthew Boyd, Colin Rea, Caleb Thielbar, Eli Morgan and Carson Kelly, and they fully intend to spend more money and add more talent this winter. However, the team has to come in for some mild but meaningful criticism now, after allowing the Dodgers to outbid them on Tanner Scott at four years and $72 million. As I reported early Sunday, the Cubs made an offer very much in that vein, and they have legitimate reasons for not having wanted to go any further. Still, it marks a failure of imagination and recruitment that they allowed themselves to be beaten out for Scott, who multiple members of the front office coveted. Worse, we're now reaching the stage where the number of good ways to get better is genuinely dwindling. To this point, especially after the Tucker trade, my refrain has been to exercise emotional restraint in responding to each signing or trade that sent a talented player somewhere else, because it's not possible for any team to simply bend players or other clubs to their will, and because there were still other options available to Jed Hoyer and company. That is becoming less true now, both in terms of spending the money and prospect capital they still have at the ready and in terms of meeting their highest stated priority the rest of the winter: upgrading a bullpen that lacks a true closer. Tomorrow, we'll discuss the best ways the team could spend the money "freed up" (if so we choose to think of it) by not landing Scott. For now, let's consider the relievers they could bring in to lead their bullpen, giving that unit much-needed stability and consistency. In fact, to clarify how I'm viewing their predicament, I'll rank the remaining options—by desirability, not likelihood. 1. Jhoan Durán, Twins RHP By no means is Durán unavailable. He's at a similar career stage and hits a similar balance point between value and famousness to Luis Arraez, whom the team traded just two winters ago to acquire now-ace starter Pablo López. Like Arraez (whose skill set makes him delightful and appealing to fans, but whose limitations make him less than a premium player in the eyes of most front offices), Durán is a player who will get expensive quickly via the arbitration process, and whom the team feels they can readily replace. They signed Durán to a one-year, $4.125-million deal to avoid arbitration, but that's just the first season of three for which he'll be eligible. Meanwhile, Griffin Jax (who's at the same point in his service-time progression but has not racked up as many saves, working mostly as Durán's setup man over the last two years) signed for $2.635 million and might be the better pitcher, anyway. Minnesota traded Arraez at a time when they faced no particular payroll pressure, and in fact, they signed López to a meaty four-year extension shortly after acquiring him. Now, however, they're scrambling to trim some money and/or supplement a roster that slouched to the finish in 2024 under a restrictive ownership-imposed budgetary cutback. Moving Durán wouldn't make them much cheaper, but he would command a tremendous package of talent in a trade—or, alternatively, they could look to attach the $7.25 million they owe to Chris Paddack to Durán, still getting solid young players back and clearing about $11.5 million to deploy another way. The Cubs should pounce on Durán, if at all possible. He's not perfect, with a fastball shape that favors armside run over any kind of lift, and he still needs to figure out what he wants to do, exactly, with the pitch he calls a "splinker" a splitter/sinker that hums in at 97 miles per hour but doesn't fall off the table like a splitter. Whatever issues one might take with the heater's shape, though, they mostly smooth out when you sit 100 and touch 103 with that pitch. Even better, Durán's curveball is a filthy power breaker that preys upon hitters' need to gear up for the triple-digit fastball, resulting in whiffs on well over 40% of opposing batters' swings. All told, despite occasional hiccups and the lurking worry about velocity loss or injury that comes with any high-octane reliever, Durán has a career 2.59 ERA, with a 31.9% strikeout rate and 7.5% walk rate. The Cubs would have to give up someone like Kevin Alcántara and a young arm like Jordan Wicks or Brandon Birdsell to get him, but if the Twins are open to it, that should be the first course they pursue. It would leave them money to spend on other things, and give them three years of a fearsome, varied back end of the bullpen. 2. Kyle Finnegan, Free Agent RHP I wrote at length about the path Finnegan took to being non-tendered by the Nationals, last month. He's a hard thrower, but not quite at the premium velocity level where Durán sits, and his fastball has that same lack of rise—although it, too, runs fairly well to the arm side. He hasn't been bad, but arbitration rewards saves so much that he would have been unduly expensive, in the Nationals' view. The good news is, in addition to that high-90s fastball and a splitter on which he leans heavily, he has a slider just waiting to be unlocked. He reshaped it in 2024. Now, he just needs to throw it more—much more—to make it harder for hitters to sit on either his heat or the splitter. Sources said Finnegan's asking price and skill set hit the sweet spot for the Cubs, and that he would be the most likely direction for them to pivot after losing their bid for Scott. It's likely to be a multi-year deal, but nothing close to the term or the salary Scott ultimately extracted from the Dodgers. 3. Carlos Estévez, Free Agent RHP The hulking Estévez landed with the Phillies at the trade deadline, after several years in the Rockies pen and a year and a half as the Angels' closer. He throws 97, with a good, hard slider that has major movement variation from his heater and comes in just under 90 miles per hour. Few pitchers make it harder, in terms of release point, velocity and movement, for a right-handed batter to distinguish the fastball from the slider. That's the good news. The bad news is, you can't get the guy to throw his slider as much as a modern reliever should. In almost all counts, he not only favors the fastball (that much is ok), but throws it something like two-thirds of the time. Of the 186 pitchers who threw at least 200 sliders in 2024, Estévez had the sixth-highest called strike probability (based on the location of each offering) on the pitch. He can throw the breaking ball for strikes, and if he threw it more often and the fastball less so, hitters would be consistently stumped. Yet, he's never really done so. The Cubs have already been in contact with Estévez, and figure to stay in close contact with him with Scott off the board. It's pretty clear how he can become a better version of himself. The concerns are his age, the fact that he would be changing his approach somewhat at a late juncture of his career, and the likelihood that his proven closer status pushes his price tag higher than that of Finnegan. 4. Robert Suarez, Padres RHP This one can be covered in a bit more depth tomorrow, because taking on Suarez and his complicated, player-friendly contract would be a way to both improve the bullpen and spend some of the team's available money without giving up as much young talent as someone like Durán would cost. Like all three of the above, Suarez throws very hard, averaging 99 miles per hour with his fastball. He's a natural pronator, with a sinker and changeup as the only real complements to his four-seam heat, but he stays behind the ball well and achieves good carry on it. It would be interesting to see if Tyler Zombro and the Cubs pitching development infrastructure could help Suarez find a "death ball"-like breaking ball to round out his repertoire, but even without that, his power profile can bully hitters, making him a very good back-end option in the pen. He and Porter Hodge would make a great duo, because their shapes and looks are so different that Craig Counsell could almost play matchups with them in the ninth innings, based on which pocket of an opposing order was coming up. 5. Kirby Yates, Free Agent RHP This one might be lower than many would place him, and indeed, there's a case to be made for Yates to slide ahead of anyone on this list, except Durán. However, his market is well-developed, and the price tag is not to the Cubs' liking. If Yates does settle for a one-year deal, it's likely to be for more than $15 million. He also has a chance of landing a two-year deal, which is an extraordinary risk to take on a pitcher with a checkered health history and a birthday in March 1987. (I'm no happier than you are that that birth date makes a player dangerously old, but that's where we are.) If Yates does sign a straight one-year deal with a salary south of Scott's AAV of $18 million and no escalators, the Cubs will be rightfully interested, but he might not, which has to move him down the list. 6. Tommy Kahnle, Free Agent RHP A famous changeup monster, Kahnle is that rare and fun pitcher whose change thrives not on actually changing up from the fastball (or any other pitch), but by its sheer nastiness. He throws the pitch three-quarters of the time, shamelessly spanning hitters with a pitch that dives and runs more than most pitches and to which no amount of familiarity makes hitters truly accustomed. Kahnle isn't even playing at making the changeup a ghost of the fastball. His release point on the pitch is markedly, noticeably different than on his heater or his pedestrian slider. He just teases hitters with it, inviting them to try to adjust enough and watching them fail to do so. In this graphic (from behind the pitcher, perspective-wise), look at how far his changeup (in green) deviates from his other offerings, right out of the hand. Still, batters whiffed on the pitch 39% of the time, and when they did make contact, it tended to be soft and on the ground. The downside with Kahnle is obvious, though. At 35, he's already relying largely on a trick pitch, and the difficulty of commanding it means he tends to walk over 10% of opponents. That's no recipe for sustained success. Instead, it's a recipe for a lot of late-game heartburn, even if he'll usually get himself out of any trouble he gets into. 7. Pete Fairbanks, Rays RHP Not long ago, it would have been crazy to place Fairbanks this low on a list including the other names here. Now, though, he's due $3.67 million in 2025, with easily reachable incentives that could push that past $5 million even if he isn't very good—and, much more importantly, there are some signs he's heading in that direction. Fairbanks's fastball used to sit near 100 miles per hour, but it dipped over 1.5 MPH last season. His overhand breaking ball has lost much of its deception, popping out of the hand as he struggles to keep that release point high and immediately looking different to a hitter than the fastball does. He got very little chase on that pitch in 2024, and is having a harder time elevating the fastball with each passing campaign. The Rays would be happy to move him in the right deal, but if the Rays would be happy to move someone, be somewhat suspicious of them. 8. Colin Poche, Free Agent LHP For my money, this is the floor. This is as low as the Cubs can go while defensibly expecting to have a stronger bullpen throughout 2025 than they had early in 2024. Poche throws just 91-92 MPH, but his fastball has freakish cut-ride action from an extremely high arm slot. He specializes in throwing that pitch at the top of the zone, inducing maddening, lazy fly balls from hitters and setting them up to get them out with a good-not-great slider. Shoulder trouble sidelined Poche for part of 2024, though, and it's best to be especially wary of shoulder trouble from a pitcher who comes so directly over the top. When he came back, his velocity was down a tick, and if that pattern held, he would quickly become a mediocre middle reliever. Indeed, the Rays non-tendered him, which should tell you something. He's the guy you pick up if you have big plans for the other segments of the roster, yet. It's good to have options. It's better to have solutions. The Cubs have the former, but not yet the latter, when it comes to finishing off a roster that can win the division and push the titans of the NL come October. These eight hurlers would all move them in the right direction, but Scott was a preferable option to all of them. Now, it's about staying opportunistic, so they don't miss out on any more important chances. View full article

Welp. Hope you didn't let your hopes rise too high. Just a few hours after I reported that the Cubs had made a push to land Tanner Scott on a multi-year deal, the Dodgers did what the Dodgers do. This will not make you feel even one iota better, I imagine, but for whatever it's worth to you, the offer the Cubs made was very competitive with this one. Without any further information about opt-outs, deferrals, or other aspects, it's safe to say that Scott basically chose between the two teams based on factors other than money—though, of course, the Cubs may have stopped bidding when it became clear that the Dodgers would match or exceed whatever they offered. View full rumor

This might be the most TomTheBombadil comment ever. Five parentheticals! FIVE! 😄