Matthew Trueblood

PECOTA (111 DRA-, -0.1 WARP, 18.6% K, 34% GB) hates him, too, doesn't think he'll miss enough bats and that he'll give up too many fly balls. I think there's a case to be made that his pitch mix changes altered that even within this season, in a way the projections won't catch because of the noise created by older results info? But yeah. There's a chance I'm on an island here, or that me and Jason are, at least. Haha.

When we talk about what shapes the 2025 Cubs' starting rotation might take, there's one player we talk about far too infrequently. He should be higher on prospect lists already, and his stock could rise sharply this spring. Image courtesy of © Mattie Neretin / USA TODAY NETWORK After being a fifth-round pick in 2022 out of Texas Tech, Brandon Birdsell didn't officially make his debut in the Chicago Cubs farm system until 2023. Since doing so, though, he's done nothing but affirm the team's faith in him, and as they've counseled him on some ways to rebuild and adjust his repertoire, he's added polish. Birdsell has made 50 professional starts and pitched 243 innings, with a 3.41 ERA and solid strikeout (22.8%) and walk (6.2%) rates. He made 18 starts for High-A South Bend, then 20 for Double-A Tennessee (spanning 2023-24), and he took the ball 12 times for Triple-A Iowa to finish 2024. Birdsell's best stats came in the highest league, despite the hitter-friendly strike zone and ballparks of the International League. He's showed flashes of brilliance, touching 97 miles per hour seven times and comfortably sitting 95 even as he set a new personal high for innings pitched in a season. The fastball has an unusual shape, one the Cubs have partially effected: Rather than focused on riding, rising action, it's more of a cut-ride pitch, boring in on left-handed batters more than they expect such a hard pitch to do. It's a right-handed answer to Justin Steele's similar (but slower) heater. Birdsell also has a cutterish slider and a hard curveball, with the former offering sitting in the upper 80s with good vertical separation from the fastball and the latter down in the low 80s, with even more depth. He even sprinkled in a changeup with good arm-side run while with Iowa, though he doesn't command that pitch especially well. Think of the above graphic as being from the batter's perspective. Birdsell pitches from a fairly vanilla three-quarters slot, but uses a modestly deceptive short-arm delivery, so that fastball can be remarkably tough to distinguish from the slider and curve (shown above as a cutter and slider; I disagree with Brooks Baseball about their classifications in this case). Birdsell isn't yet especially consistent with his vertical release point, but he doesn't give away any of his offerings by changing his arm action or release point noticeably for one of them. I'm not here to tell you that Birdsell will run a 2.50 ERA and strike out 10 batters per game, or anything. For one thing, I'm not yet sold on the big-league utility of the changeup, and without that, he might need another pitch or a change in the relationship between speed and movement on that hard slider/cutter. A bit of a sweeper would be a good way to attack righties, but lefties could vex him if he doesn't corral the change, unless he can locate the heater to all quadrants and maintain enough velocity not to get hit hard when he uses the outer half with that pitch to set up the bigger breaking ball. However, I think Birdsell has upside few have properly grasped, and is very close to realizing it. He could yet be trade bait this winter, but assuming he's still around, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he got the call to the Cubs before fellow 2022 Draft prize Cade Horton. Birdsell will turn 25 in March. He's built up naturally and nicely, in terms of workload, and he's already spent almost half a season in Triple A. I think he can be a mid-rotation starter almost right away—certainly by the second half of 2025, should injuries or poor performance force him to be called upon. Birdsell's viability should give the Cubs extra confidence about trading any of Javier Assad, Jordan Wicks, Ben Brown, or Horton, if the right trade option is out there. Other teams are unlikely to value Birdsell the same way the Cubs (presumably) do, since they've got him throwing a set of pitch shapes that they love and several other teams hate. At least 10 other pitchers at various levels of the Cubs organization get more attention, but I think Birdsell could be the surprise impact guy for the coming season. View full article

Tuesday brought the release of Baseball Prospectus's 2025 Top 101 Prospects, an annual source of intrigue for those who love tracking the progress of the farm system. This year's will both excite and frustrate some fans. The two highest-ranking prospects with Cubs ties here are Zyhir Hope (No. 8 ) and Cam Smith (No. 20), whom the team traded for Michael Busch and Kyle Tucker, respectively. Then again, BP is going to end up much higher on Hope (and a bit higher on Smith) than anyone else, and the good news begins thereafter. Matt Shaw comes in at No. 25, making him the highest-ranking prospect on this list to be penciled into the Cubs lineup for a coming season in recent memory. It's a good reminder that he's a legitimately excellent prospect and a solid choice for third base. After that, three Cubs cluster into the back quarter of the list: Moises Ballesteros, No. 73 Owen Caissie, No. 77 Cade Horton, No. 85 These guys are lower here than on some other lists you've likely seen recently, but the rankings feel fair. At the same time, they're obviously not gospel. FanGraphs's list of the top Cubs prospects lists Kevin Alcánatara second, behind only Shaw, which is a good reminder of the volatility and room for debate around all of these players. The Cubs don't have an elite farm system, but they sure do have a collection of intriguing players in the uppermost levels of the minors. View full rumor

The crew here at North Side Baseball is always trying to serve you content, even beyond our written work. Here's a roundup of three recent podcasts on the state of the Cubs at this critical juncture of the winter. Image courtesy of Matt Trueblood via Spotify for Podcasters Firstly, late last week, three-fourths of the crew of the This is Not a Rebuild Cubs podcast convened to discuss the team's oddly eventful week, albeit at a frustratingly unclear moment in the progress of the hot stove season. It began as a rumination on the possibilities for how they can still upgrade the roster, and why the offseason in MLB works so differently from that of the NBA and NFL. After the random Cub of the week, though, it veered into a new direction: a lament about this organization's maddening failure to establish long-term competitiveness. When will it change?! On Sunday night, I also recorded an appearance with Paul "Crawly" Dzien for 670 The Score's "Fly the W" podcast. Crawly and I talked about the nuances of the team's payroll situation, why they haven't yet made that second big move this winter, and why I remain firm in my expectation that they will. The pull quote, though, is one of the last things I said: "If the team doesn't make another big move before Opening Day, then, yes, they have failed you, as Cubs fans." Finally, check out the latest episode of Bricks Behind the Ivy, from our very own @CandidCubs. This week, he brought on Brewer Fanatic writer Jake McKibbin, to study and dissect the ways the Cubs currently match up with the two-time defending champions from Milwaukee. It's a jam-packed episode. It's the deepest part of the winter, and we can sometimes get lost in the sauce when we sit and mull and type and read, all with our eyes alone. It's good to get some human voices involved in the conversation at this complex stage of things; digest one or two of these and keep yourself grounded and warm while you await that next big Cubs move. View full article

The news trickled out throughout Monday afternoon, and despite some confusion that lingered into the evening, the hammer eventually fell. The Cubs lost out to the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, and Toronto Blue Jays for the burgeoning ace righty. Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-Imagn Images All along, we've known that it was a longshot that the Cubs would reel in Roki Sasaki. He's as hotly in demand as any free agent in baseball history, with his price artificially suppressed in a way that amplifies his value to whichever team signs him in a way disproportionate even to his immense talent. The Cubs hung around longer (although only by a few hours) than the Giants, Yankees, Mets, or Rangers, all of whom also found out Monday that they would not be signing Sasaki. It makes no real difference, though. Ultimately, they fell well short of successfully recruiting him. Now, the team's attention can turn fully to where some of it already had been. There are several remaining ways in which they can upgrade their pitching staff as much as Sasaki would have upgraded it, in the short term, but the costs of those options are all much higher. The only good news is that, to whatever extent they were reserving some of their energy in pursuit of those deals to chase Sasaki, they can now pivot more actively. That two of the three remaining contenders for Sasaki are in the National League underscores the pressure on the Cubs, here. They already trail the Dodgers, Padres, Phillies, Mets, and the team from suburban Atlanta in any credible projection for 2025, and one of those clubs is likely to land Sasaki as a booster to their roster. Then there are the Giants, Diamondbacks, upstart Nationals, and intradivisional threats from the Brewers, Reds, and maybe even Pirates. To separate themselves at all from that thicket and to push themselves into serious contention with the Big Five of the NL, the Cubs have to find those last couple of major improvements. Breaking them down in depth is tomorrow's work, though. For now, we have to settle in with the idea that another marquee target has eluded the Cubs, and that they remain a serious but flawed contender, with the number of ways they can achieve the needed step up shrinking daily. I've been more circumspect in my projections of how Sasaki would change things for 2025 than just about anyone else, and I stand by that, but it's clear that the organization wanted him badly, and they came up far short. Now, they can pursue players (Jack Flaherty? Tanner Scott? Kirby Yates? Alex Bregman? Ha-Seong Kim? Dylan Cease? Ryan Feltner? Ryan McMahon? Taylor Ward? Kyle Finnegan?) who might actually be better in 2025 than Sasaki, but the stakes of their efforts to acquire any of them have ratcheted up significantly. View full article

Other people can and do treat pitching that way, but I think you've read enough of my work to know I think they're wrong to do so. Volume matters, to me, and it matters to the Cubs—although I think the Cubs would *gleefully* bring him along slowly in this case, because of the special circumstances that are his stuff and his availability at this ludicrously low price. Not EVERYONE thinks of pitching as purely a per-pound exercise, although (for instance) the Dodgers certainly do, which makes him that much more appealing for them. It's also a much more viable plan if you're willing to spend $320-350 million per year, instead of $220-250 million per year. The Dodgers paid Glasnow and Yamamoto [how much?] for [how many?] innings in 2024, but it worked for them because they had enough other very expensive talent to make up for the shortfalls. You and I and everyone we know thinks the Rickettses should spend their $320-350 million a year, and if they did, I would (begrudgingly) talk a little less about getting meaningful numbers of innings from starting pitchers, but since you and I and everyone we know knows they won't do that, I insist that it does matter whether a dude can post, whether he can work six innings even every six days, etc.

Not saying he's not! He is, in fact, a generational free agent—but some of that does come from his market limitations. I know he's young, but he's been a pro for several years, and he's never topped 20 starts or reached 130 innings in a season. That's noteworthy. You can tell yourself a story about the odometer being low, but it's not due to careful handling; it's because he keeps getting hurt. That does matter, a great deal, even if it doesn't remotely diminish the fact that he should be sought-after by everyone whose advances he'll listen to.

The depth of the Cubs' rotation and bullpen have each improved substantially this offseason. Now, the question is whether it will be enough—and what shape their capstone might take. Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images The Chicago Cubs made their signing of Colin Rea official on Monday, adding him to their already-full 40-man roster and designating righthander Michael Arias for assignment to accommodate him. The news of Rea's agreement to join the team's pitching mix broke on Friday, and we knew there would need to be a concomitant move. Arias makes plenty of sense, as he becomes the annual Guy The Cubs Added As An Upside Play When They Were Rule 5-Eligible, But Who Didn't Work Out At All. (We'll try to come up with a pithier title.) Arias came after Ryan Jensen, in a parade of hurlers on whose upside the team sells itself each November, but who never even gain a big-league foothold with the team. He was one of several candidates to get this treatment when the Rea deal was made official, along with players you forgot were on the roster at all, like Gavin Hollowell and Ethan Roberts; veterans floating through for what might just be offseason stays before returning to the waiver wire, Rob Zastryzny and Matt Festa; and projects on whom the team will have to cut bait fairly soon, Caleb Kilian and Keegan Thompson. There remains a slurry of mostly unhelpful (if, in various ways, still viable) pitching talent at the edges of the roster; cutting Arias neither hurts nor brings new clarity. Folding Rea into the crowded rotation picture and plucking one fungible arm out of the bullpen competition is a worthy move, though, and the latest in a series of moves this winter that (while feeling somewhat underwhelming, without one person who gives the rotation or the relief corps a new ace) clearly improve the team's pitching staff. It's probably helpful to think of it this way: Matthew Boyd has replaced Kyle Hendricks Colin Rea has replaced Drew Smyly Caleb Thielbar has replaced Mark Leiter Jr. Eli Morgan has replaced Héctor Neris Now, that doesn't quite summarize the real changes, because Morgan isn't penciled into as high-leverage a role as the one for which the Cubs signed Neris last winter, and Rea is a more viable starting option than was Smyly. Nor does it account for the loss of Jorge López, who gave the team high-quality relief work over the final two-thirds of 2024 but is now a member of the Washington Nationals. You can head off in the wrong direction, too, by assessing those upgrades without considering the fact that the team will head into the season expecting both Porter Hodge and Nate Pearson to contribute significantly to the bullpen, or that they have high hopes for Ben Brown, Cade Horton, and Brandon Birdsell. On the other hand, some of that has to overcome the regression we might fairly expect from Jameson Taillon and Shota Imanaga, after strong seasons fueled in part by some good luck and a friendly combination of weather conditions on most days at Wrigley Field, and the bullpen's improvements have to offset the loss of injured ex-closer Adbert Alzolay. If the rotation to open the season consists of Justin Steele, Imanaga, Taillon, Boyd, and Rea, is that group clearly better than last year's, which had three of the same five but Hendricks and Javier Assad or Jordan Wicks working in place of Boyd and Rea? Yes, it is, but not by very much. In fact, the bulk of this year's team's advantage over last year's would be in the form of having Assad, Wicks, Brown, Horton, and Birdsell waiting in the wings, a better and more reliable second line than they had entering 2024. If the Opening Day bullpen includes Hodge, Pearson, Tyson Miller, Thielbar, Morgan, Luke Little, Julian Merryweather, and Jack Neely, are they better than they were for the majority of 2024? Yes, but again, the superiority lies mostly in depth—they'd have the upside of that group, plus some of the spillover from the overloaded rotation competition and the optionable, versatile arms of Daniel Palencia and Cody Poteet. They're better, but not because of the first guys you name. That's an uncomfortable situation, especially since they'd likely end up losing a few of their solid depth charges (many of those listed already, plus non-roster invitees Ben Heller, Brooks Kriske, and Phil Bickford) in a roster crunch at the end of spring training. I keep coming back to the same thing, which I know many fans aren't ready or pleased to hear, because they are (deservedly) mistrustful of the Ricketts family's ownership. It's this: the Cubs' roster is crying out for a trade that consolidates multiple roster spots into one, exchanging depth for upside in the process. I have already written about this possibility, but look at the Padres, who need to clear a bunch of money from their payroll and only have 34 players on their 40-man roster right now. A trade of as many as four current 40-man roster guys—Owen Caissie, Assad, Wicks, and Rob Zastryzny, perhaps?—for Dylan Cease and Robert Suarez makes a world of sense. It would put a lot of chips into the center of the table on the single hand that is the 2025 season, but it would align the team's talent better, spending some of the money we know they still have to spend and giving both the rotation and the bullpen more certainty at the top of the depth chart. That's just one of several possible shapes a trade could take, but a trade does seem to be on the cards. At this moment, the Cubs' pitching staff is better than it was in 2024. Craig Counsell is more likely to have good options at key moments throughout games and throughout the season, and they're likely to prevent runs better (although, if the winds change at Wrigley, they could still allow more raw runs than they did in 2024). That said, this kind of improvement is fragile. It puts a major onus on the manager and comes with undue risk, because a string of injuries could bring the whole house of cards down. They can achieve a more stable, more obvious, and more exciting form of pitching upgrade. It's just about pulling the right levers, in the endgame of the offseason. View full article

The most coveted free agent remaining on the market will probably choose his new team this week. The Chicago Cubs have a concrete claim to be the right team for him; it's just a matter of whether or not he wanted to hear it. Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-Imagn Images On Wednesday, teams can once again begin signing international amateur free agents for 2025. There will be dozens of millions of dollars handed out to dozens of Latin American teenagers, but this year, there will also be a handsome sum paid to one of the most sought-after free agents in recent memory. By next Monday, we might very well know which MLB team Roki Sasaki will play for over the balance of the 2020s. Sasaki has taken meetings with several teams and mulled his many options, and it's very nearly time to select the best one. When they met with Sasaki in Los Angeles last month, the Cubs surely made an impassioned case that they are that best option. It's not a ridiculous notion, either. In fact, it has deep roots in fact. I would not categorize the team as the favorites to land Sasaki, but don't read too much into the tea leaves and the half-sourced reporting that has tumbled unimpressively across Baseball Twitter for the past several days. Instead, let's talk about why the Cubs really might be as ready to help Sasaki as any team in baseball—if not more so. Firstly, of course, an existing support infrastructure for Japanese players and experience with helping them assimilate with the culture of the team and the country are valuable in this circumstance, and the Cubs have those things. They're far from alone in that aspect, but not that far from alone. The Yankees and Red Sox have done this, but not especially recently. The Padres have onboarded talented players from NPB, but no one with this kind of profile to them. The relevant comparators to the Cubs (who have brought over Seiya Suzuki and Shota Imanaga on this side of the COVID-19 pandemic) are really just the Dodgers and the Angels, and the latter is a generous grandfathering-in based on Shohei Ohtani. Neither Sasaki (who, after all, hasn't said much of anything for himself in the American press) nor his agent Joel Wolfe has indicated that not having these things in place already is disqualifying, but consider that a point in the Cubs' favor. The other (much more important) criterion Sasaki figures to consider, beyond things utterly outside teams' control (like geography, an advantage that keeps the Dodgers and Padres at the head of the pack), is in what ways the teams interested in him propose to help him blossom into the ace hurler he believes he can be—the one who can make $300 million or more when he hits free agency in six years, to make up for the money he won't get as part of this initial deal. The Cubs can be that team, and they can prove it. Consider this data on Sasaki for 2024, taken from the superb NPB Pitch Profiler app. Translate those kilometers per hour into miles per hour, and you have a pitcher with a fastball that sits around 97 miles per hour; a devastating splitter, north of 88 MPH; and an 83.6-MPH slider that is almost equally excellent. More important than those pitches and their outcomes, though, are where he throws them. Consult those heat maps, thumbnail sketches though they might be. Against righties, Sasaki hammered away at the glove-side edge of the plate, working hitters away. Against lefties, though, he focused heavily on the opposite edge. The idea was the same: keep the ball away. He was pitching away from power, even in a league with less overall power than one finds in an MLB lineup. While he did throw those heaters all over the zone to each type of hitter, he was dedicated in his assault on one edge for each. Notice, too, the way he keeps his splitter south of the zone, almost all the time. He really worked that pitch down to the shins of batters, from each side; it wasn't thrown for strikes at all. He won by inducing chases on that pitch. For that matter, you can see that he threw his slider low and away from righties, diving out of the zone at the corner, but tended to throw the slider to lefties as a backdoor offering. Compare the above to this image, which represents Shota Imanaga's approach to NPB hitters in 2023, before he came over to the Cubs. Ovviously, Imanaga and Sasaki are not the same guy. When you look at the locations of certain offerings, though, similarities stand out. Unlike Sasaki, Imanaga had a strong preference for one side of the plate with his fastball in his last year in Japan, wearing out the third-base side of home plate against both righties (it was the inside edge to them) and lefties (to whom it was the outside edge). He threw the pitch a bit higher to righties, trying to crowd it in on their hands, but aimed low and away from lefties, just as Sasaki did to righties. See, too, how much he focused his splitter (labeled above as a changeup) along that line just below the zone. Now, look at where Imanaga threw his fastballs against righties in 2024, Stateside: And where he threw the same offerings against lefties: And where he threw his changeups and splitters, to righties: You can't pitch the same way in MLB that you do in NPB. The strike zone is different; the ball is different; the fielders behind you are different; the ballparks are different; the opposing hitters are different. If you dedicate yourself to aiming at the edge of the plate with fastballs over and over, you're going to end up giving up hard contact, because MLB hitters can cover the whole plate fairly well. If you can't elevate the fastball consistently, you won't miss enough bats with it to do what you want. If you can't throw even your diving splitter for strikes now and then, you won't get the chases you need, and you'll walk too many batters. That's a far cry from suggesting that Japanese hurlers can't come to MLB and dominate; we know that much by now. However, even a pitcher who has had tremendous success in NPB and boasts multiple killer offerings in terms of velocity, movement and release point often has to learn to locate differently when they come to MLB. They have to pitch with a different mindset. That's a hard thing to do; the Cubs just proved they can help a hurler do it well. Sasaki has bigger question marks attached to him than most fans or media seem to grasp. Most of them are associated with health, and no team is systematically good at preventing pitcher injuries. The Cubs' track record is unremarkable in that area. So is everyone else's. If they can convince Sasaki that they'll provide a conducive environment to stay healthy, though, they have a firm footing to claim that they can also help him be the best he can be when he takes the ball. Now, they just have to see whether they've made that case well enough to land a pitcher who represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and turn him into a real, live once-in-a-generation pitcher. View full article

After their latest move to bolster the pitching depth of the big-league team, the Cubs still have a middle-of-the-road projected payroll and a lot of money to spend. But they might not spend every dime in their budget this year, for reasons fans would actually like. Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Signing Colin Rea to a one-year deal worth $5 million Friday brought the Chicago Cubs' projected 40-man roster payroll for 2025 to roughly $178.3 million, according to Cot's Contracts. That figure bakes in all their agreements with arbitration-eligible players, the small amounts (less than $1 million apiece) they'll pay to pre-arbitration players, and an estimate of Kyle Tucker's salary ($16.25 million, the midpoint between the figures submitted by Tucker and the Cubs on Thursday). It's a very modest sum, 13th among MLB teams at the moment and lagging the figures for (most notably) NL Wild Card rivals like the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Francisco Giants. Their competitive-balance tax number is nominally higher, at $196.4 million, but that actually comes in lower (14th) in the league rankings, as the Red Sox ($171.4 million in 40-man spending for 2025, $209.2 million by the CBT's reckoning) leapfrog them. That reflects the fact that, while the Cubs have a cluster of veterans under medium-length deals with high annual average values, they have almost no one on the books beyond 2026, and their multiyear deals are (with the exception of Matthew Boyd's) not backloaded. Shota Imanaga's contract contains a three-year club option that will weigh their books down somewhat and raise his annual average value starting in 2026, assuming they exercise it this coming fall, but that won't bear on their 2025 figure. So, the Cubs have about $36.7 million to spend if they want to settle in around $215 million in actual 40-man roster payroll for 2025. That sounds like a lot, because it is. However, if they spent all of that money over the next month or so, they'd come up to $233.1 million in their CBT figure—and perhaps higher than that, since any multiyear deal might push money off into seasons beyond 2025 without giving them a break from the tax burden. That would be cutting it close, since the team stumbled over the line this past season, didn't meet their ownership-imposed revenue targets, and seem extremely committed to staying below the CBT threshold of $241 million for 2025. I will give just one paragraph to this disclaimer: Obviously, they should spend way more money than that, and the Ricketts family should be ashamed of itself for its insufficient investment in the team. However, for the purposes of this piece, I want to talk about why they might make certain budgetary choices, and that conversation settles most productively into a valley where we accept the reality of the situation. The Cubs aren't going past $241 million in CBT spending this year, and the very most they would be willing to spend on the payroll (even if it didn't carry them past that line) is $225 million. So we're going to work from that premise. Jed Hoyer always likes to leave himself in-season wiggle room, and among his various pet policies, that's perhaps the most understandable. The Cubs won't want to come especially close to the line, since various incentives and escalators could then get them into real trouble, and they will want to be able to add $10 million within the season if needed. Therefore, we're safer to say that they can add $30 million to their payroll from here, bringing that raw number up just shy of $210 million and the CBT number to $226 million or so. That's within the realm of possibility, and even within the smaller realm that is their budget. Now, let's talk about why you're hearing some rumors that they might have even less to spend than that—but why you might be happier with that state of affairs than you think, when you consult your own feelings in six weeks or so. To go back to the Red Sox as a counterexample to the Cubs: Why is the gap between what they'll actually spend in 2025 and their CBT figure close to $40 million, while the Cubs' is just $16 million? It's because of the long-term, team-friendly deals to which they recently signed the likes of Ceddanne Rafaela (eight years, $50 million) and Bryan Bello (six years, $55 million). As such pre-arbitration deals always are, those contracts are backloaded, so those two will make only about $4 million in 2025—but they go on the books at a combined salary over $15 million, for CBT purposes, because the AAV is all that matters for that calculation. Even Rafael Devers costs more in CBT terms ($29.1 million) than in real money ($27.5 million) in 2025, because later in his 11-year deal, he'll pull in $31 million per season. Long-term deals tend to widen the gap between real payroll and CBT payroll, especially when signed by players who are far from free agency; that's just how such deals are structured. The Cubs have less leverage over their plausible pre-arbitration and arbitration-eligible extension candidates—Pete Crow-Armstrong, Justin Steele, Miguel Amaya, Michael Busch, Matt Shaw, Kevin Alcántara, even Javier Assad—than the Red Sox had over Rafaela and Bello, and none of those individuals seems overwhelmingly likely to sign a long-term deal this winter. As a group, though, you would probably take the over on 0.5 such deals this spring, and any deal signed would involve raising the CBT salary of the player in question, even though it would probably change the amount they earn in 2025 very little. Then, of course, there is Tucker. A long-term deal with him (while still a longshot) has to be held open as an option for the Cubs throughout the balance of the offseason, and should one materialize, they need flexibility. When the Red Sox signed Devers to his extension (in January of 2023, but kicking in 2024), they elected not to attach the deal to his final season of arbitration eligibility. That gave them extra CBT wiggle room for 2023; they stayed below the line that year but would have been over it if his AAV were raised by including 2023 in the long-term contract. Chicago could go the same route if they strike a deal with Tucker, but they might prefer not to. Giving Tucker an extra couple million for 2025 as part of a long-term deal could help get said deal done, and since they have wiggle room in both real and CBT payroll right now, they might also like the long-term CBT benefits of doing things that way. For instance: If Tucker and the Cubs agree at $16.2 million for 2025 and sign a separate 12-year, $400-million deal thereafter, he'd count against their CBT payroll for $33.3 million per year starting in 2026. If they boost his salary to $18 million for 2025 as part of what becomes a 13-year, $418-million deal, his CBT salary would come down to $32.1 million. That's a small difference, to be sure, but it exists, and it's just one of what could be several possible structures, some of them more extreme and involving bigger savings in various ways. It's also just one way in which the lurking possibility of a deal with Tucker could make the team a bit less eager to spend to the limits of their budget in the coming weeks. The other way is this: Even if the two sides strike a deal that doesn't attach itself to the short-term one they arrive at (be it via arbitration hearing or negotiation) for 2025, that deal figures to include a signing bonus. To use the Red Sox as an example one more time, when they signed Devers in 2023, they paid $5 million of his $20-million bonus right away, even though the deal didn't technically begin until 2024. So, while it might not show up either in a tabulation of 40-man spending for 2025 or the CBT number, a long-term Tucker contract would probably include increasing upfront costs by anywhere from $2 million to $10 million. As is true with Steele, Crow-Armstrong, and the others, the odds of a Tucker extension are relatively long. However, as they try to round out a roster they have already concretely upgraded this winter, the Cubs have to factor in the very real possibility of at least one such deal taking place while they're in Arizona. That is almost certainly why there are rumblings about the team spending less than the amounts we might have expected a few months ago. They've explored a lot of avenues this winter, but the things that have actually panned out so far—adding Boyd and Rea for bullpen depth; dealing for Eli Morgan and signing Caleb Thielbar to deepen the bullpen; and signing Carson Kelly to hedge against Amaya's risk as a primary catcher—have steered them into a particular place where spending the largest amount possible is no longer the goal. This doesn't mean fans shouldn't expect them to spend significantly more money before Opening Day, or that they shouldn't be angry if that spending doesn't materialize. The spending will happen, though, and when it does, we should keep in mind that their reasons for being cautious or not breaking the bank might be better than we're immediately inclined to believe. There's also a sense of unresolved trade potential here, which further colors whatever choices the team might make about spending. Even after the Tucker trade, the Cubs were involved in several rumors about key additions that would have come via trade, and with moderate financial investments. They still seem to have a roster crying out for a trade that realigns their talent, and that, too, could give them the roster they should be trying to build without (in all likelihood) pushing their budget to its very limit. We won't be able to fully evaluate this offseason until it's over. The Rea deal did seem a strange step, but there's another important move or two left for them, and even if their total spending from here does turn out to be less than we'd have preferred or imagined, it's important to understand the perfectly acceptable reasons why that might be so—in addition to the frustrating ones. View full article

Starting pitching depth is never a bad thing, right? Wrong. And we're about to find out if this is one of those times. Image courtesy of © John Hefti-Imagn Images Let's start with the basics: the Cubs have agreed to a one-year, $5-million deal with Colin Rea, a veteran right-handed starter who has been both a recent member of the Cubs organization and a recent member of a Craig Counsell-managed starting rotation. The deal was reported by MLB Trade Rumors's Steve Adams. Rea, 34, had a solid 4.29 ERA in 167 2/3 innings pitched for the Brewers in 2024, and also pitched extensively for them in 2023, Counsell's final year with the team. He's a fine backend starter, who blossomed into a bit more for a prolonged stretch in early 2024. However, by the end of the season, he was out of Milwaukee's rotation and essentially out of their pitching plans for their playoff series against the Mets. Let's get this much out of the way: Rea is a great story, a great teammate, and a fine rubber arm for the back end of the rotation or a long relief role. He reinvented himself at Driveline, turning from a fringe big-leaguer and Triple-A journeyman into a hurler who missed few bats but also pounded the strike zone and managed not to give up undue amounts of power over about 300 innings for the 2023 and 2024 Brewers. His deep arsenal—six legitimate pitches, including three flavors of fastball and a solid sweeper—keeps hitters off-balance and generates a good amount of non-damaging (though not strictly weak) contact. Rea is, then, a fine addition to the very back end of a rotation group. He can touch 95 miles per hour, and he can take the ball pretty much any time you ask him to, and he can turn the lineup card over at least once without running into a brick wall. If Rea is your sixth or seventh option, you're not doing too badly. Ditto, of course, for Javier Assad. The problem is, right now, the Cubs have too much "not bad" and not enough "actually good" on their roster, including and especially on the pitching side. So, this move doesn't deserve instant criticism. It does, however, raise the pressure and sharpen the team's position. It now feels less likely that they can bring this offseason to a satisfactory close. The compensation fans can embrace, for now, is that the ways in which they still can do that might have just gotten more interesting. Rea cost $5 million for 2025, though since there's a club option for 2026 involved, some of that money might be slightly deferred, in the form of a buyout on that option. He's not going to stop them from signing anyone they really should be interested in, because they still have $40 million or so left to spend after adding him. Bringing in Rea also makes Assad (and Jordan Wicks, and Cade Horton, and Brandon Birdsell, and Caleb Kilian) more expendable. We know that the Cubs are still trying to upgrade this roster via trade. That could still happen in one of a few ways, including by dealing for San Diego's Dylan Cease. If parting with one of those younger starters helps secure Cease, and then Cease joins Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, Matthew Boyd and Rea in the team's starting mix, then this deal will have been worth it. That feels far-fetched, though. At this point, any starting rotation upgrade other than Roki Sasaki does, because Rea is an awfully expensive spare piece, and that's what he'd be if any starter other than Sasaki were added to this group. That doesn't mean they're out of good ways to spend their money and make their moves. They can and should still take an active interest not only in Tanner Scott or Jeff Hoffman, on the pitching side, but any of a handful of hitters to round out a slightly undermanned positional corps. I observed yesterday (when the team acquired righty Matt Festa and stuffed him onto a 40-man roster now fat with 24 pitchers) that it felt like the team still needed to make a big move that would realign their talent from here. That only feels truer after the signing of Rea, which will require them to designate another player for assignment and make room on the roster. If they do that, then having brought Rea in to stabilize the pitching staff with viable volume at a low price will look very wise. If they don't, this will mark the moment when they clearly began lowering their sights in an unacceptable way. View full article

Here's a hint: the answer starts with a 'z' and ends with an 'ero'. Image courtesy of © Thomas Shea-Imagn Images It's important that you understand this: Thursday's news was not important. The only thing that matters about the Cubs and Kyle Tucker filing proposed salaries of $15 million and $17.5 million, respectively, for Tucker in 2025 is that you grasp the pivotal fact that it doesn't matter. This is a non-story. This is a nothingburger. Please, please stop wasting your energy and attention on it. Some fans balked when Tucker was the only arbitration-eligible player with whom the Cubs didn't strike a pre-arbitration deal Thursday, making it more likely that the two sides end up going to a hearing to determine how much the team's superstar right fielder will be paid this year. They felt it was a bad look, or that it indicated a dearth of seriousness about keeping him beyond 2025 on the part of the Cubs, or that going to a hearing risks alienating him. More than a handful of people can be found lamenting it as the end of any hope that the Cubs will extend Tucker, or even re-sign him when he hits free agency at the end of next season. To all those fans, I offer this advice: Stop. Immediately forget about this, and (if it's safe to do so) go outside. This does not have any impact whatsoever, and you should not care about it in any way. The Cubs have never had a very good chance of extending Tucker, because he's a youngish impending free agent with a $500-million upside in free agency and the Cubs have still never paid even $200 million to lock up a player long-term. This development, however, is a purely procedural and banal piece of obligatory news, and it doesn't change their odds of securing Tucker at all, in either direction. For some teams and players, going to a hearing is a frustrating and, yes, enmity-inducing outcome. Those cases, though, involve players and teams who have been together for years, with all the mutual emotional and financial investment that comes with that—including, often, simmering mistrust, or outrage at what can seem like a betrayal. It's the role of the team to talk about why a player should earn the lower of two proposed salaries, during these hearings, which can wound players who have been brought up by that organization and thought they were doing everything asked of them. It's entirely different to go to arbitration with a player you just acquired. There aren't deep enough emotional roots for the plucking of an otherwise tender spot to hurt that much. This is, regrettably, a business, and for guys just joining a new club, arbitration is a very normal and fairly bloodless process. Tucker's not going to end up in a snit with the Cubs, even if a hearing takes place—which is still far from guaranteed. The gulf here is wide, but it means that the sides could find any of a handful of midpoints at which to meet. At the outset of the offseason, MLB Trade Rumors projected a $15.8-million salary for Tucker. He and his agents filed at $17.5 million, and the Cubs at $15 million, meaning the Cubs are much closer to the projected mark. It seems perfectly possible that Tucker would take, say, $16.2 million, just under the midpoint between the filing numbers but $400,000 more than his projection from a few months ago. Because $2.5 million would make such an unfathomable difference in all our lives, we sometimes imagine that a player might behave with as much gratitude and dedication in response to receiving that much money as we would. Many fans seem to think the Cubs should have just paid Tucker $17.5 million, in the hopes of buttering him up for an extension. I can't stress enough how much that isn't the real world of baseball players and their salaries. That concession would not be worth anything in terms of making Tucker want to stick around; he's playing for much bigger prizes. Even as a gesture, in the modern game, that kind of extra payout falls flat. If (as I know is true for many) you've pinned your hopes for the team's future on a Tucker extension, I do have bad news, which is a repetition of what I said at the top of this piece: it's unlikely that he signs one. It was never likely that the Cubs would ink him to that kind of deal, and it's not even very likely that they'll re-sign him when he becomes a free agent in November. Thursday's failure to agree on a salary for 2025, though, just doesn't matter at all in that context. It's simply something that happened. The acquisition of Matt Festa is a more valuable thing to think about at length—and since Festa himself might never appear in a Cubs uniform, that is saying something. The Cubs will still make Tucker an offer this winter. It's just not likely to be an adequate one. That's been the reality all along, and it's ok. The stakes are very high for 2025. Don't bother trying to reduce them by fantasizing about a 10-year Tucker deal. One could materialize; it's not out of the question. But it's not the reason why they made last month's trade, and it's not necessary that Tucker sign a long-term deal to justify that trade. The value of that move was the way it increased the team's viability for 2025, including the fact that it demonstrated Jed Hoyer's understanding of the need for just this kind of player. At whatever salary, he will take the field for the Cubs this season, and the important questions are about which other players the team finds to add to his supporting cast. View full article

On an offseason deadline day just barely important enough to stir some roster shuffling, the Cubs continued to amass relief depth, and reduced their number of bench options by one—for now. Image courtesy of © Jim Cowsert-Imagn Images The Chicago Cubs sent cash to the Texas Rangers Thursday, in exchange for right-handed reliever Matt Festa. To facilitate Festa's addition to their already-full 40-man roster, the team designated utility man Miles Mastrobuoni for assignment. It's the end of an era, in one small, annoying way, as Mastrobuoni was part of a cadre of ultimately unhelpful but understandable bench gambles the Cubs tried out over the past three seasons, drawing disproportionate ire for their inability to buttress a too-thin lineup. It also poses new and intriguing questions about a bullpen competition that already felt topped up with fringy but interesting right-handed hurlers. Festa, 31, comes with four years of hypothetical team control, but he's both out of options and injury-prone. Even when he's been on the mound in the majors, his results have not been pretty. The Rangers had designated Festa for assignment to accommodate Chris Martin, whom they signed earlier this week. This is, in other words, a very small move. At the same time, you can see what the Cubs see in him. He is (and stop me when this sounds familiar) a low-slot guy without premium velocity, but with good cutting action on his four-seamer; a cutter; and a sweeper that can be devastating when he can command it well. In short, he's a dead ringer for the profile of Tyson Miller, whom the Cubs landed last May and who thrived for them thereafter. To be fair, though, Miller's previous big-league results were better than Festa's, even before the Cubs got hold of him. Depending on how you count a couple of compelling arms who could still be aiming for rotation roles, this move gives the Cubs anywhere from 14 to 17 people competing seriously for their eight bullpen spots. That's not counting anyone off the 40-man roster, like non-roster invitees Phil Bickford, Brooks Kriske, and Ben Heller—all of whom are actually more promising than a couple of guys who remain on the 40-man right now. In total, the team is carrying 24 pitchers and just 16 position players on their reserve list. That's not unheard of, during an offseason, but it means that some paring down and reshuffling remains to be done. In fact, since we know that the team also intends to sign or trade for at least one more high-profile, high-end pitcher in either the bullpen or the rotation, we can mentally tick one of the guys off the bottom of the current pecking order and still have made no progress toward balancing the roster the way they'll want to. Mastrobuoni's departure will not be mourned in any quarter, except perhaps by those who like to keep the 40-man roster balanced even in the winter. He became utterly redundant this winter, as the team brought aboard two utility men (Vidal Bruján and Gage Workman) with almost exactly the same balance of upside and flaws that make you doubt they'll ever reach it. Mastrobuoni joins Nick Madrigal, Patrick Wisdom, and Mike Tauchman among the exodus from the Cubs' bench, and it's increasingly clear to me that the team also intends to make at least a modestly impactful addition on the positional side of the roster sheet. That's good, and necessary. It feels like Craig Counsell has pushed for that for a while now, and it's happening. Festa probably won't be even the caliber of breakout bullpen booster that Miller was, but dealing for him makes sense, and Masdtrobuoni is a welcome bit of chaff-clearing. The Cubs continue to set the stage. Sooner or later, they just need to show us for whom they're doing so. View full article

There's one more big move left for the Cubs pitching staff—or two, if they win the Roki Sasaki sweepstakes. The erstwhile Phillies relief ace might be the right target—though maybe not even as a relief ace. After the Cubs signed Caleb Thielbar on New Year's Eve, it seems safe to guess that they won't also pony up what could be $15 million or more per year on a four-year deal to land Tanner Scott. They needn't eliminate the idea of signing a lefty reliever altogether, but the gap between Scott and the rest of the market in terms of likely salary demands makes it harder to justify spending big on him if he's not the left-handed linchpin in a heavily right-handed bullpen. Now that the Cubs have both Luke Little and Thielbar in position to pitch out of the pen, Scott wouldn't be the same presence he might otherwise have been. Just one rung down the ladder of potential reliever targets, though, is a righty who still makes a world of sense for the team—and who might even be more than a plausible relief ace. Jeff Hoffman is rumored to be seeking a four-year deal, himself, but if he does sign one, it's likely to be something closer to Jordan Hicks's recent four-year, $44-million deal with the Giants. Alternatively, he might settle for three years and aim for the $38 million Clay Holmes made in his deal with the Mets earlier this winter. Why those two comparators? Because, like them, Hoffman is at least interested in signing not as the dominant reliever he's been over the last two seasons with the Phillies, but as a starting pitcher. The idea isn't without merit, because what Hoffman found early in 2023 doesn't seem to be purely a product of having moved permanently to the bullpen at that point. He's thrived as a reliever, to be sure, with a 33.4% strikeout rate, 7.4% walk rate, and 2.28 ERA over the last two seasons in Philadelphia. Opponents have batted just .180/.249/.295 against him. Some of that has to be chalked up to the change in role; he averaged 94.3 miles per hour late in his tenure as a starter and has sat around 97 with his fastball since the start of 2023. Importantly, though, he didn't see that increase in velocity right away in 2022, when he made his full-time move to relief while with the Reds. It came, instead, the following year, and so did an even bigger jump in velocity on his slider—from 81-82 miles per hour to 87-88. That slider change was the result of a grip change that finally unlocked the velocity he'd long sought for the pitch, a phenomenon ably broken down by Destiny Lugardo of Phillies Nation early in his transformation. Fixing the slider grip and throwing that pitch so much harder transformed Hoffman into an overpowering arm, and because he also added a sinker and mixes in a splitter against left-handed batters, he's essentially a four-pitch pitcher. Whether he'd be close to this good after a move back to the rotation is hard to guess. It probably depends on how much of the velocity gains (on both the fastball and the slider) he could bring back to the expanded role, and the timing and explanations of those increases make it impossible to know the answer. It would be a viable experiment, though, and in a worst-case scenario, he seems like a reliably excellent relief ace. We haven't talked much about the possibility that he'd do so for the Cubs, but it's a real one. The fact that he could give starting a try again makes him doubly appealing, and the Cubs' pitching depth gives them the flexibility to benefit whether he ends up in the rotation or the pen. Signing Hoffman would be the least complicated way (though the most fluid, and thus the muddiest, at first) to obviously upgrade the Cubs while they wait to find out whether they can secure the services of Roki Sasaki. It would also represent a second chance for the team and the player; they were interested in Hoffman (before electing to take Kyle Schwarber instead) at fourth overall in the 2014 MLB Draft. Slot Hoffman into the top spot on the Cubs' bullpen depth chart (or third in their rotation), and they emerge as clear favorites in the NL Central. He's the perfect missing ingredient for them, though still far from the only option to round out the roster. The fact that he's still unsigned signals that the market views him mostly as a reliever, not as a starter, and that his market is somewhere south of Crazytown. As the relief market gets ready to move, the Cubs should hone in on Hoffman. View full article