Matthew Trueblood

The Cubs are on the verge of the move we foresaw and recommended this morning, as multiple reports indicate they're nearing a deal with free-agent catcher Carson Kelly. Image courtesy of © Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK Though (as I laid out in my first post of the day) they did have a few options, the Cubs' best and dearest hope coming into Day One of the Winter Meetings was to get a deal done with free-agent backstop Carson Kelly. Now, they're on that precipice. Kelly, 30, hit .238/.313/.374 in 91 games and 313 plate appearances in 2024, which he began with the Tigers but finished with the Rangers after being traded in July. That batting line was about 5 percent worse than the league average, adjusting for park effects, and marks him out as a better hitter than most complementary catchers. With the Cubs, should this deal be completed, he'll settle into a fairly equitable time share with Miguel Amaya, and give the team solid defense to pair with that stick. I laid out a comparison of Kelly with Amaya, trade candidate Christian Vázquez, and already-signed free agents Danny Jansen and Kyle Higashioka in the piece linked above, showing that Kelly was the best of them in 2024, overall. He owed much of that value to his superbly accurate arm behind the plate, but he's also coming into his own as a hitter. Jansen was the best hitter in the bunch as recently as early this season, but he slumped badly in the second half and Kelly showed far more consistency with the bat. His swing speed distribution compares interestingly with Jansen's; note how he gets up into the zone where a hitter becomes truly dangerous (around 75 miles per hour) more often. Jansen is better at pulling fly balls, but Kelly makes hard contact more often and whiffs much, much less. His 17.6% strikeout rate was one feature that attracted the Cubs' interest; he'll be a catcher capable of handing the stick and keeping the line moving from the bottom of the order. Kelly also owns an .812 career OPS against left-handed pitchers, and has been over .800 each of the last two years. He'll probably draw most lefty assignments, while Miguel Amaya (career .701 OPS vs. RHP, .559 vs. LHP) will sit those days. Kelly will take on some right-handed starters, too, though, as the Cubs figure to try to balance their catching workload fairly evenly. The new rules (less time between pitches, which means more prolonged squatting; more frequent steal attempts) make catching a more demanding and grueling job than ever, and having someone the team can trust to take about half the playing time in reliably advantageous matchups would be huge for Chicago. View full article

As the market keeps moving, the players signing in new places are starting to sting a little more. Good options who could have fit the Cubs nicely are coming off the board. Where do good options still exist? Image courtesy of © Stan Szeto-Imagn Images Other than players like Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto, it's a little silly to fixate on any one free agent, from a fan perspective. The likelihood of landing that particular player is quite low, because (after all) the players in question are free to choose the team they prefer. For reasons financial, geographic, competitive or personal, plenty of players end up going somewhere else, even though they seemed like a great fit for the team. Getting upset each time that happens is a recipe for perpetual hot stove misery, and the point of the hot stove season is fun, not misery. Eventually, though, a team does have to find the best player and value they can, and act on it. Sit and watch too long, and good lanes close up for you. The good solutions to obvious problems grow thin, and the few still available become more costly, because the agents or team executives involved begin to sense that they can apply leverage in negotiations. After a flurry of moves this weekend, the Cubs might be approaching that territory—though it would be too much to suggest that they're there already. The Mets signed Clay Holmes to a three-year, $38-million contract Friday night. That was a tough break for the Cubs, and a good example of the phenomenon above, because the Mets intend to move Holmes to the starting rotation. That would have made it practically impossible for the Cubs to rationally match New York's offer, because Holmes (while a fine candidate for that increasingly popular conversion) was not a great fit for the Cubs' projected starting rotation. They couldn't do much to prevent missing out on Holmes. Nonetheless, it was a bitter pill to swallow, because Holmes was one of the best candidates for the bullpen upgrade the team clearly needs this winter. Losing out on him unavoidably reduces the number of good options available to the team, in one area in which that list was already a bit short. There are rumors that they're interested in Kirby Yates, who could be a great short-term fix, but if Holmes hadn't gotten a big offer to switch roles, he could have shored up the back of the Cubs pen through 2027. On Sunday, the market gave the Cubs another 1-2 punch to the proverbial gut, as Tyler O'Neill and Michael Conforto each signed reasonably-priced deals. O'Neill will make just under $50 million over the next three years with the Orioles, while Conforto—one of my favorite targets for the team should they trade Cody Bellinger, after he had a season in which his superficial stats failed to keep up with good batted-ball data and especially impressive bat-tracking numbers—landed with the dynastic Dodgers on a one-year deal that didn't even reach $20 million. That's this winter's answer to last year's Teoscar Hernández signing for Los Angeles, and another painful miss for the Cubs. Realistically, the team almost certainly felt like they couldn't sign a player like Conforto or O'Neill before trading Bellinger. Again, that would have put them in a tough position to deal with either teams or free agents, because the whole industry is aware of the self-defeating limits being placed on the team's spending by ownership and acquiesced to by their insufficiently assertive front office. Still, the missed opportunities are real. There are still plenty of ways the team can try to improve themselves, overall, even if and when they trade Bellinger. The number of viable options dwindled this weekend, though, and whereas it might have been easy to shrug off misses on players like Willy Adames or Shane Bieber due to their cost and fit on the roster, a few players who went elsewhere most recently cut deeper. Jed Hoyer faces a stern test, and Conforto, especially, would have gone a good distance toward helping him pass it. Instead, he'll have to thread the needle from a different angle. View full article

Two segments of the free-agent market have moved quickly this MLB offseason: that for starting pitchers, and that for catchers. The Cubs have made additions to each group, but are they still looking to make a bigger backstop splash? Image courtesy of © David Richard-Imagn Images Many Cubs fans had set their sights on catchers Danny Jansen or Kyle Higashioka this winter. Those fans were bitterly disappointed this week, when the Rangers signed Higashioka to a two-year deal and Jansen secured $8.5 million from the Rays on a one-year pact. Nowhere on most fans' radars was Gary Sánchez, but he could also have been a fit, so when he agreed to a one-year deal at the same value as Jansen's on Saturday night, it narrowed the path to upgrading behind the plate even further. The Cubs, of course, have the temporary and minor luxury of getting to decide just how badly they want that kind of upgrade. They also missed out on Travis d'Arnaud, after the erstwhile Atlanta catcher had his team option declined and ended up signing for two years with the Angels. On that very occasion, though, they were able to scoop up Angels castoff Matt Thaiss, a reclamation project and a refugee from one of the league's worst player-development and -instruction outfits. Thaiss, who could improve rapidly with some tweaks to his pitch framing, signed a split contract and is out of options. That means that the Cubs can feel fairly confident about retaining him even if they initially have to pass him through waivers at the end of spring training, because unless another team wants to claim him and make him their backup, he'll be more incentivized to stick around and keep the pay associated with the minor-league aspect of his deal. The first option facing the team, then, is simply to keep Thaiss, wait for Moises Ballesteros, and hope the combination of those two is sufficient support for what they hope will be a full season of the much-improved Miguel Amaya they saw in the second half of 2024. That's appealing, because from here, it's functionally free. The team can spend all of its available resources of money and young, expendable talent elsewhere on their roster. The downside is equally obvious: Thaiss (bat) and Ballesteros (glove) face major questions about their viability as even complementary MLB catchers. Most teams are struggling to find catching right now, but that doesn't mean any team should be complacent with one not-even-proven backstop atop their depth chart. When it comes to realistic external options, though, there are just two apparent remaining ones. The first is Twins catcher Christian Vázquez, whom I first flagged as a potential target in this trade speculation piece two months ago. Vázquez is the defensive specialist—not only among the players remaining available this winter, but arguably, among all of those who ever were or looked poised to be so. Rank all 56 catchers who were behind the plate for at least 300 innings last year, and Vázquez came in ninth in 2024 in Defensive Runs Prevented, according to Baseball Prospectus. He's one of the game's best pitch framers, and is deeply respected as a manager of the pitching staff and a partner in their daily preparation. Two winters ago, the Cubs vied to sign Vázquez, but the Twins were willing to offer a third guaranteed year, so they landed Vázquez. After consecutive poor seasons at the plate, his trade value is in the red, but that only means that the Cubs could acquire him for almost no talent and still pay him less than the Rays and Orioles will pay Jansen and Sánchez, respectively. The final option, though, is the most intriguing. Carson Kelly, the former Cardinals farmhand and potential Yadier Molina successor, was instead traded to Arizona in the Paul Goldschmidt trade several years ago. He's bounced around even more since then, including splitting 2024 between the Tigers and the Rangers, but Kelly, 30, had a very strong campaign in 2024. In fact, he's probably the player more fans tended to hope Jansen or Higashioka could be. Player Framing Runs Blocking Runs Throwing Runs Batting Runs Total M. Amaya -2.7 1.5 -1.5 -4.4 -7.1 D. Jansen -1.9 1 -1 2.1 0.2 C. Kelly -0.8 0.6 2 2.3 4.1 C. Vázquez 7.2 0.5 -0.2 -10.4 -2.9 K. Higashioka 4.3 -0.9 -0.4 0.5 3.5 If the Cubs believe in the swing transformation and the defensive improvements Amaya made in the second half of 2024, they might believe him to be the best of this set of players. Any way you slice the data, though, Kelly looks like one of the best. He's only a few months older than Jansen, and each of them are at a few years younger than Vázquez or Higashioka. Kelly might be looking for a multi-year deal, whereas Jansen chose a one-year prove-it opportunity over the chance of such a payday, but there are good reasons to prefer Kelly. His arm really stands out; Kelly is the only player in this set who was better than average at slowing the running game. (Thaiss, for what it's worth, was one of the very worst catchers in baseball at that this year.) He did it with just an average exchange time—that is, he got rid of the ball after catching it in only a roughly average fraction of a second. He also had a below-average arm, in terms of sheer throwing speed. Yet, he caught four more runners attempting to steal than expected, based on the lead distance and speed of the runners he was throwing against, according to Statcast. How? I'm glad I asked. Updated Catcher Throwing metrics at Baseball Savant break down the contributions of each aspect of a steal attempt to its success or failure. The runner's speed and position are included. So are the catcher's exchange time and throw strength, plus a teamwork element—things like great (or lousy) tags by the infielder, perhaps; it's really just anything other than the catcher's contributions. But among those contributions, there's one more delineated category: Accuracy. On 12 different throws, Kelly's throw accuracy added at least 20% to the chances of a caught stealing, relative to the expected accuracy from an average catcher. On only five throws did he lose at least that much value with an inaccurate throw, relative to the average expectation. Here's that trait in action. Kelly on the Money.mp4 Almost any big-league catcher can do that once, but Kelly does it consistently. Let's take a look at another one, and treat ourselves to a Javier Báez tag, for old times' sake. Kelly Nails Him.mp4 [DJ Khaled voice] Another one. Kelly Dime.mp4 Seriously, he makes throws like these a lot. These are two important things: Effective; and Beautiful. In a world in which runners are freshly emboldened by rules preventing pitchers from messing with their timing as much or throwing over repeatedly to keep them close; the bases into which they're sliding are bigger; and fielders can no longer halfway cheat by cutting off access to the base while they await a throw, there's no surer way to give your team a chance to record outs on steal attempts than dropping the ball into that imaginary bucket, about shin-high and just to the first-base side of the keystone. Kelly does it as well as anyone. It's wonderful that we have stats to capture this now, because accuracy might well turn out to be the biggest key to catcher throwing efficacy, but we don't even need the stats to grasp this. Just watch those videos, and know there are more like them. It's dazzling. Kelly has a near-elite ability to thwart the running game, at a time when that's rising in importance. Kelly's bat-tracking and batted-ball data were also better than Jansen's this year. Overall, I would rather have him than Jansen, so as long as he remains available, the Cubs have a path to a clear (if, perhaps, costly) upgrade at catcher. They could probably sign Kelly for two years and less than $20 million, but not much less. If they're not willing to spend that much on what would probably be just half a position's worth of playing time—even an obviously vital and fairly scarce one—then they'll have to either accept the all-glove, no-stick option of Vázquez or make do with Thaiss. Each option is viable, but requires a different set of other moves to work. The option that puts the least pressure on other moves would seem to be signing Kelly, but since free agents are just that, Kelly could elect to go elsewhere, as Jansen and others did. That's why having at least snared Thaiss and signed him to a deal that secures him as a floor for the secondary catching job was an important early step this winter. View full article

For a day on which nothing actually happened, a lot sure did happen on Thursday, eh? Let's clean up a mess. Image courtesy of © Paul Rutherford-Imagn Images On Thursday afternoon, all hell broke loose for a bit on what is left of Cubs Twitter. Most of the good baseball talk these days is happening at Bluesky, but because Jeff Passan hasn't yet defected, those of us who want to instantly catch important news when it breaks are forced to spend some time on Twitter. And if you're one of those people, you surely encountered at least one of several reports that spilled out on Thursday afternoon and evening about a discussion between the Cubs, White Sox, and Mariners, on what would be a three-way trade involving Garrett Crochet coming to the Cubs and Nico Hoerner going to Seattle. Our own Jacob Zanolla was one of the first to report what he was hearing. Others chimed in with similar scraps, and pretty quickly, a speculative deal came into focus for the lovers of tea leaves and intrigue hovering around the hot stove. Because it was out in the social media atmosphere, the rumor took on a tangibility that made it feel very real and urgent for a lot of people. Alas, within a few more hours, there were multiple reports that the "deal" was "dead." Ok, let's unpack all that a little bit. Firstly, let me say: Jacob was not making things up, and I have no particular reason to think anyone else who tweeted seemingly corroborating reports was, either. I can confirm that those talks took place, not merely Thursday or late Wednesday night but in pieces over the last few weeks, and that the three teams were circling toward a potential deal by Thursday afternoon. It would, indeed, have involved Crochet and (most likely) Hoerner, with one headline prospect going from the Cubs to the White Sox, another going from Seattle to Chicago, and a few ancillary pieces changing hands along the way to balance things out. That much is true. If you follow me on Twitter or on Bluesky, you'll note that I neither tweeted nor skeeted on the subject. However, we did do some background work on it in the North Side Baseball Slack channel. For me, the available information did not rise to the level of reportability, but something was close enough that we started getting ducks in a row. Crucially, I think, fans should understand that it's not especially uncommon for a deal like this to get this close. When I say the rumor didn't quite feel reportable, I don't mean that there was any uncertainty about the existence of the discussions. I just didn't have something that met my own standard for newsworthiness, because trade talks get as far as I believe this one to have gotten happen all over the league, every week. Some of them never even escape the biome of the teams involved, but plenty of them do, and at that point, the external holders of the information have to decide what merits public mention. This is not a criticism of Jacob. I want to make that very clear. He and I don't consult on these subjects anyway, and while his contributions are highly valued and welcome, we would not lay claim to a report by Jacob the same way (say) The Athletic would claim and back one by Ken Rosenthal. He is free to speak with his own voice on Twitter and make his own calls about newsworthiness, as long as he's reporting accurate information. I believe he did just fine here. I just want to start by highlighting the fact that this trade was not especially close. The Cubs, alone, have been closer to another notable deal this winter than they were to completing this one. As far as I know, no one ever publicly reported even the possibility of that trade. Some of our perceptions about trade possibility and activity are distorted, if we ever assume we're hearing about everything—or even that there's a reliable difference between what is reported and what isn't, in terms of how real it got before fizzling out. Now, let's talk about how the deal "died," beginning with whether or not it actually did. As the headline probably tells you, that's not how I would characterize the situation, though my quibble is as much with our language for such situations as with the particulars of this one. Once you understand that this trade was never more advanced than a dozen others that will not-quite happen over the next week, you can see part of my nitpick easily enough. Did it really "live," exactly? Or was it just a gleam in someone's eye, noticed from across a room by an unrelated third party? (Let's, er, abort this metaphor right here. But you get my point.) My second issue is the larger one. Is the deal "dead," as some said? I wouldn't put it that way. Obviously, nothing has happened—no players have changed teams in some other fashion, for instance—to preclude the teams resuming talks. When discussions like these collapse, they tend to be hard to pick back up, because someone has shut something down and it might be a (literal) dealbreaker for someone else. But minds can change, and so can circumstances. I regard it as highly unlikely that the semi-reported deal goes on to get done, but it's not fully scuppered. I would say, instead, that it's been thwarted for now, by two separate problems: Getting the Mariners involved was meant to fix a stall reached by the Cubs and White Sox, rooted in the fact that the Cubs were unwilling to give up any combination of two top prospects the White Sox found satisfactory. They had already talked to Seattle about Hoerner, and folded them into the discussion with the idea of sending Hoerner there and having Seattle supply a second piece the White Sox would accept. Two problems sprang up in the attempt to make that work. Firstly, of the three or four names discussed as that second piece, the Sox and Mariners never came to an agreement on one. I won't divulge the names of any of those young players, but I think each side was being reasonable there. Secondly, the Cubs didn't want to send much in other value (either a supplemental, lower-tier prospect to the Sox, or money to the M's, or both) beyond Hoerner and one top prospect to satisfy the other two teams. As we have often discussed here, the Cubs front office does not like paying transaction costs. They would have had to step up in a significant way to bridge the gaps that existed. The Cubs are also distracted, in a way. Yesterday, we discussed how trading for Eli Morgan and signing Matthew Boyd has started to sharpen the positions on Hoyer's winter chess board. In truth, though, he still has multiple potential strategies available, and this move would have committed the Cubs to one path a bit too soon—at least in one reading of the facts. As was also reported Thursday, the team has plenty of irons in lower-tier free-agent fires, and they're juggling discussions about a possible Cody Bellinger trade (though no, it doesn't seem like Bellinger being part of this trade was much of an option; he would land in Seattle only under a totally different set of scenarios) as well as the pursuit of a high-ceiling player like Crochet. The World Chess Championship is happening right now, in Singapore. World Champion Ding Liren and challenger Gukesh Dommeraju have faced off in nine games, so far, of a possible 14, and I've watched a good amount of their match via various streaming platforms. Each has put some creative and dangerous ideas on the board over the last several games, but they've drawn each of the last six. In that entire run of play, there have only been two or three moments when one of them could have taken decisive control and found a win. They've missed them, even then, not because they weren't good enough at chess, but because they had to consider a wealth of options and remain cognizant of the risk of counterplay, all under the tick and tock of a clock. That's a bit like the situation the Cubs are in right now. As frustrating as the last two seasons have been, any baseball fan (and even some chess fans) can see that the Cubs entered this winter in a strong position. Hoyer has to find the move that can be decisive, at some point, or else his team won't get over the hump and back into the postseason next year. The clock is ticking on him, too. Right now, though, he can see multiple paths to victory, and his opponent—the rest of the league, basically—has some turns yet to play. The timing of this deal wasn't right, or at least, it didn't seem so yet to the parties involved. I wouldn't say it's dead, although it can certainly die in the coming days. Juan Soto will soon sign somewhere; that's a big turn for the other pieces on the board. There will be more, too. It's still possible for the board to rearrange itself a few moves down the road in such a way that these three teams face the same options under more conducive circumstances, or that their appetites for risk have risen. In any game of chess or MLB offseason, though, that circling back is unlikely. Thus, the Cubs have to look for other ways to seize the same kind of initiative, be it through direct negotiations with the White Sox on Crochet (giving up that richer prospect package, and hoping to make up the losses via a separate Hoerner trade) or with the Mariners and others on Bellinger (giving them access to more of the free-agent market again). In the meantime, keep taking reports from anyone but Passan with a grain of salt—not because everyone doing the reporting is a huckster (they're not!), but because a high standard for reporting rumors like these might be the only thing keeping any of us sane. If you really want to put yourself in Hoyer's shoes for a while, grab a chess board and a friend, and keep notifications turned on for Passan until he starts skeeting. View full article

Part of the value of the contract to which the Cubs agreed earlier this week lies in the clarity it provides them—the options it forecloses. Some observers don't seem to have noticed. Image courtesy of © Ken Blaze-Imagn Images There are a variety of valid analyses of the Cubs' agreement to sign Matthew Boyd to a two-year deal at the beginning of this week. Some fans appreciate the mixture of depth and upside he adds to the team's starting rotation, but others balk at the lack of star power and at a price tag that tends to suggest a lack of huge moves trailing in this one's wake. Both are reasonable positions. However, there's also a thread of conversation going around the internet that is not reasonable, and which we need to thwart. No matter what you might hear, or from whom, the Cubs are not going to deploy Boyd as a reliever—at least not unless or until he suffers some significant injury that alters his arc from here. Boyd has evolved nicely over his long career, from a lefty very much vulnerable to right-handed batters into a much more platoon-neutral one. He allowed just a .641 OPS to righties in 2024, easily the best of his career in seasons featuring any meaningful number of batters faced. He's developed his changeup into a weapon against those batters, and throws it more than he used to. Meanwhile, he's brought along his sinker, which works nicely out of his low slot as a weapon against lefties and allows him to be less reliant on his sweeping slider than he was earlier in his career. In short, while he might not be available every fifth day the way an ideal starting pitcher would be, it's his well-rounded skill set and ability to thrive as a starter that made him attractive to the team. He's started 168 of the 182 games in which he's appeared in his MLB career, and he's only become more viable as a starter in the last few years. You can also consider the terms of the deal and see the situation plainly: The Cubs didn't pony up $14.5 million per year to a player they envision as a reliever, given that even if he did slide into that role, Boyd's upside would be something less than that of a relief ace. While many Cubs fans (rightfully) hope and expect that the team will still try to add to the top of the rotation depth chart this winter, and while many of them (less rightfully) might prefer Javier Assad, Ben Brown, or Jordan Wicks as starters, the fact that this deal happened at all sends a clear message: the Cubs don't agree. Boyd got this deal because the Cubs (and at least one or two other teams in the market) view him as a starter, and a strong one. If he can harass lefties with his slider, sinker, and four-seamer and make the changeup work off his four-seamer consistently against righties, Boyd is simply a different pitcher than his somewhat ugly career stat line implies—and the team is betting big on that being the state of things. Part of the value of this move was that it headed off some other possibilities. Fans won't view it that way, and are certainly not obligated to do so, but that's a real consideration. For the third year in a row, Jed Hoyer and company entered this offseason with a huge spectrum of possible paths to building a better roster. Sometimes, all those possibilities pile up on one another and become an obstacle to decisive action, rather than facilitating it. Early moves (like the team's trade for Eli Morgan and the Boyd signing) sometimes help as much by partially checking off an item on a list as by actually solving a roster problem. There is still plenty left for the Cubs to do this winter. Signing Boyd narrowed the number of options available, but that should make it easier for the team to choose their next moves. To see that value clearly, though, you have to embrace the inevitability of Boyd being part of the team's starting rotation. It's not a fluid situation. He's locked in, just as Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga, and Jameson Taillon are. View full article

It's a small thing, but it's important: the Cubs still have control of their center fielder for up to six more seasons. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images Somewhat infamously, in 2015, the Cubs waited until the day they could delay Kris Bryant's free agency by a year before they called him up. It wasn't even close to being the first case of such blatant service-time manipulation. It wasn't against the rules. It was, however, a little icky. Since Bryant went on to win the Rookie of the Year Award that season, under new rules added to the collective bargaining agreement three years ago, he would now be given a full season of service time, anyway. At the time, though, Bryant was left without a recourse, other than the grievance he and Scott Boras filed—and, predictably, years later, officially lost. It doesn't seem as though the team did that with Pete Crow-Armstrong. They did wait until almost the middle of September 2023 to call him up for the first time, but that appears to have been about bringing him along at the appropriate pace and about the competitive circumstances they faced in the moment. Besides, at that moment, it was hard to guess whether he'd be positioned to start the following season with the Cubs. If he did, though, he would certainly get over a year of service time in 2024. He didn't. After the Cubs re-signed Cody Bellinger in February, Crow-Armstrong began the season with Triple-A Iowa. He got the call when Bellinger was hurt colliding with the wall in April, but didn't play very well, and was sent back down three weeks later when the team got healthy again. More injuries made way for him again by mid-June, but Crow-Armstrong ended this season with 170 total days of MLB service time, counting 2023 and 2024. A full season of service time is 172 days. In other words, though he's only two years from reaching salary arbitration, Crow-Armstrong is still six years from free agency, just as if he were called up for the first time this April. It's a big deal for the Cubs, because that extra year of team control increases his trade value, their leverage in potential extension negotiations—and, if he pans out the way they hope he started to in the second half of 2024, one extra season of his services if no extension comes to fruition. Crow-Armstrong will turn 23 next March. The season in which these two days of service make a crucial difference, 2030, will be his age-28 campaign. There's every chance that that's still part of his peak; he's likely to remain an elite defensive center fielder at least through that campaign. Crow-Armstrong is penciled in as the team's starting center fielder for 2025, and he's a key X-factor in any projection of their success next year. His plate discipline is far, far behind his tools. It's still far from assured that he'll blossom into the star the team hopes he can be, but we've seen some glimpses of his upside. That the Cubs have (theoretical) control of his services for 2030 is welcome news, though Crow-Armstrong has every right to feel slightly put out about it. View full article

The speedy, smooth-fielding Korean infielder must sign with an MLB team by Jan. 3, 2025. The Cubs should at least give him a call. Image courtesy of © Mandi Wright-Imagn Images Three weeks ago, I wrote about why Hyeseong Kim could be a great fit for the Cubs this winter. Now, the second baseman has been officially posted by the Kiwoom Heroes, for whom he's played the last six seasons in the Korean Baseball Organization. He will have 30 days to sign with an MLB team, with the team who acquires him paying a posting fee to Kiwoom in the process. With a few moves already under the front office's belt in the time since the article linked above came out, let's revisit the argument for signing Kim and determine the extent to which he remains a good option. In short, both Nico Hoerner and Isaac Paredes are right-handed batters, and Paredes, in particular, has always sported significant platoon splits. Kim, who will turn 26 next month, is a left-handed hitter who's most likely to profile as a second baseman in the big leagues, but he should be capable of sliding over to third at least occasionally. Alternatively, the team could ask Hoerner to pick up some reps at third. In either case, the idea would be to reduce the playing time of both Paredes and Hoerner by about 30 percent, with all of that time coming out of their at-bats against right-handed pitchers. Kim would balance the lineup with what seems to be a high-end contact-and-plate discipline profile from the left side, boosted by good speed. He's light on power and would be a bottom-third hitter in a good lineup, but that's fine. Given the value he would provide with his glove and legs, he'd only need to show solid OBP skills against righties to be an especially useful player in the Cubs' circumstance. With Mike Tauchman out the door via non-tender, the lane for adding a medium-cost left-handed batter who heavily favors OBP over slugging in terms of value has only grown wider. Now that we know with some certainty that the team intends to spend slightly less than they did last year, the modestness of Kim's price tag should carry some extra appeal. Signing him could still be part of a complex of moves that involves sending out Hoerner (in addition to the more likely trade of Cody Bellinger), to save some money and ensure financial flexibility, but it would work just fine to bring Kim aboard merely as the 10th regular on the roster, akin to the role Tauchman ended up playing in the injury-riddled early stages of 2024 for the team—only he should be even more valuable than Tauchman, overall. It will be interesting to see where the bidding goes on Kim. Even by the lower standards of KBO, his batted-ball data didn't blow people away, so much of his value in MLB figures to hinge on sustaining great strikeout and walk rates. No one think he's a viable shortstop in the majors; he'll have his market constricted by the widespread belief that he's a second baseman. On the other hand, he had a power surge his last two years in the KBO, splitting plenty of gaps. He's younger than most free agents teams get a chance to sign. He could end up signing a deal as long as five years, but with an annual average value well under $10 million. If that be the case, despite their usual aversion to long-term commitments, the Cubs should at least stay involved. View full article

Reported;y, the Cubs are a "viable" destination for one of the sport's best starting pitchers. But he wouldn't come cheap. Image courtesy of © Paul Rutherford-Imagn Images All offseason, close observers have been keenly aware that Garrett Crochet is going to be traded this winter. The chances that he remains in the White Sox organization come Opening Day are somewhere south of 10 percent. Most Cubs fans have also been vaguely aware of the fact that the North Side is a plausible landing spot for the current pride of the South Side club, since the Ricketts family seems disinclined to spend big money to catch up to the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, and Phillies in terms of spending like legitimate big-market powerhouses. Now, however, the Winter Meetings are a mere few days away, and the trade market is beginning to percolate in earnest. Wednesday morning, albeit in vague and very on-brand form, Jon Morosi of MLB Network and FOX Sports brought that background notion rushing into the foreground. By no accident, this is a tweet short on specifics. Morosi, one of the most well-liked people in baseball media, is nonetheless something shy of a true news-breaking titan. He's prone to tweets like these, which include no new reportage (notice that he doesn't indicate having been told this by any particular source or having new information, per see) and trade on the automatic credence lent to everything he says by virtue of his role with two of the major news and coverage outlets attached to the league. This tweet shouldn't make you materially more confident or expectant of the Cubs being involved in Crochet trade negotiations, and while it tacitly invites you to imagine a bidding war between the Cubs and a divisional rival for the services of an elite White Sox southpaw (something we have seen before, after all!), I would advise against indulging that imagination, too. In this case, though, the seemingly unprompted update is still helpful in a small way: it makes more salient a consideration that probably already belonged near the front of our consciousness. The Cubs are definitely interested in Crochet—enamored of him, even, according to two sources in other front offices—and they have the MLB-ready, high-upside young position players the White Sox want in a trade. With Matthew Boyd providing expensive but potentially strong depth at the back end of the rotation, the Cubs are now poised to add an elite starter at the other end of it—but need to do so on a cost-effective basis. Crochet checks the boxes. What stands out most with Crochet is that, while he had a very fastball-forward approach last year, he has a deep arsenal that allows him to dominate hitters regardless of handedness or skill set. He didn't lean on one out pitch to rack up strikeouts in 2024; he has four pitches that all miss bats at a rate well above average. Crochet's fastball shape isn't that distinctly cut-ride option the Cubs prefer, but he more than makes up for it. His four-seamer sits 97 and touches 100, even as a starter, and his cutter and sweeper work off it gorgeously. His changeup plays off the heat and the cutter nicely, too. He even has a sinker he threw enough to force hitters to think about it last year. Pitch Type High% InZone% Miss% Vel HorzBrk IndVertBrk Fastball (4S) 49.0% 59.4% 31.4% 97.2 -7.9 15.2 Cutter 22.5% 53.2% 33.2% 91.6 3.7 5.7 Sweeper 17.1% 44.0% 42.7% 84.2 14.2 -0.5 Change 11.3% 25.4% 33.9% 91.0 -15.5 8.8 Fastball (2S) / Sinker 40.0% 44.0% 32.1% 97.9 -15.2 7.8 The wildest reality with Crochet is that he might yet have another level to reach. His ability to throw strikes with the cutter and even the sweeper could allow him to rely less on his fastball, and that pitch itself could be better-located, just by reorienting his approach to be more focused on attacking the top of the zone. Throwing fewer heaters, in particular, could resolve the slight home-run problem Crochet had against righties last year. Crochet does have a bit of a dead zone fastball, so his success with it depends on command and that overpowering velocity. The Cubs could have him lean more into the cutter and away from the four-seamer as a result, though he still needs the high, hard one to set up the rest of his arsenal. Either way, even though he might be squared up more than an average pitcher, it seems certain that Crochet would benefit from the superior Cubs defense, after he was often let down by the fielders behind him on the South Side in 2024. Crochet is an ace, without question, and his only question mark—whether he can be a durable starter across a full-season workload, including pitching into October—would be a less daunting one for the Cubs than for many teams, especially now that Boyd is on board to lend extra depth. The only real reason not to pounce on a Crochet trade is that it would cost the team a ton of young talent. With two years of team control remaining, Crochet would cost the team two of their top tier of highly-regarded position players already at Triple A, headlined by Matt Shaw, Moises Ballesteros, and Owen Caissie. If they only gave up one of those, it would only be because they threw in Cade Horton, Ben Brown or Brandon Birdsell instead—and even then, they'd also give up a significant third piece in the process. You can map the cost for Crochet pretty neatly onto the one the Cubs paid for José Quintana in 2017. Quintana pitched better than is generally remembered while with the Cubs, and to the extent he fell short of expectations, it was because the organization failed in their support of his ongoing development and good health, not because they were wrong to make that move. That deal doesn't deserve the malign with which it's remembered, but this one would be a much clearer win. Crochet's ability to lead a rotation deep into the postseason is bounded only by his health, not by his stuff or skills. There will always be such questions around great pitchers who become available. While it would sting for prospect lovers, this is the kind of trade the Cubs must make this winter: consolidating assets by dealing multiple young players with exciting but uncertain futures for a player with the demonstrated ability to dominate in the majors. Crochet is, arguably, the clearest opportunity to make such a move, and maybe the time for pulling the trigger is drawing near. View full article

Definitely intriguing in that role. I want to see the league as a whole, and the Counsell-led Cubs specifically, develop that role more. I do wonder if the future of it is as a second rotation, where you might have three two-inning guys (on the Cubs, it'd probably be Wesneski, Brown, Merryweather, as currently constructed? But you could find three on almost any team) who work on three-game (often four-day) rotations. You could get these guys to like 100 innings apiece that way, without the unpredictability and impediments to routine that are such underrated sources of the performance volatility and injury risk that come with most modern relief work.

I'd be wary of selling low, too, but keep in mind: none of the other 29 teams are run by basics. Haha. They aren't seeing the aesthetics; they're seeing that fastball that has remained string-straight through three iterations of his mound position and arm angle. I would guess his trade value will be basically the same a year from now, because I don't think he's got that fastball adjustment in him. I don't like to live by pitch modeling numbers, but he has a 51 Stuff+ on the four-seamer, and ugly numbers via both StuffPro and PitchPro, too. I wouldn't say his stuff is better than Miller's (although the sweeper CAN be) unless he and the Cubs can find a way to get him operating the four-seamer and the sweeper out of the lower arm slot he abandoned a year ago. He's a puzzle. It sure is tough to let go of the upside that comes with hitting 97 and having a plus breaking ball, though.

There are plenty of players below the young righty on the team's 40-man roster, who can be cut to make room for their newest starting pitcher. Still, the arrival nudges them closer to the horns of a dilemma that has been lurking for a while. Though it was only Monday morning that Cubs fans woke up to concrete news about changes to the team's 2025 starting rotation, there was never much question that such a change was coming. Matthew Boyd slots neatly into (for now) the fourth spot in the team's projected starting staff, pushing everyone but Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, and Jameson Taillon down a rung in the hierarchy. Someone was bound to be brought in to effect that shift, but now it's really happening. For Hayden Wesneski, that pulls the eventual resolution of many questions about the future a notch closer. It's been a tantalizing but difficult two and a half years in the Cubs organization for Wesneski, whom the team received in a trade for righty reliever Scott Effross at the 2022 trade deadline. He was initially viewed as a starting pitching prospect, but the auditions he got for that job (most notably in the first six weeks of 2023) didn't go well. He still might have upside as a big-league starter, but increasingly, it feels likely that one of these two outcomes will prevail: Wesneski makes a full-time, permanent move to short relief for the Cubs, where his stuff might play up and allow him to blossom into a dominant arm. Wesneski does figure it out as a starter... but it happens elsewhere. The Cubs trade him to a team in need of help in the rotation and with a bit more time to bring along a hurler still feeling for the command and polish required to succeed in long outings and face opposing lineups two or three times. Earlier this offseason, the team acquired right-handed reliever Eli Morgan from Cleveland, adding him to a mix that already included Porter Hodge, Tyson Miller, Nate Pearson, and other relievers with impressive but inconsistent track records. On the other hand, they non-tendered Adbert Alzolay, and have released hurlers Trey Wingenter and Yency Almonte. There's room for the good version of Wesneski in their projected bullpen, particularly because he can still be optioned to the minor leagues for one more season. Because his four-seam fastball is too straight and is constantly at risk of getting hit hard, he's struggled to both miss bats and limit power when forced to work through opposing lineups more than once. In relief, however, he can lean much harder on his plus sweeper. He has far better career chase, whiff, ground-ball, and strikeout rates in relief, and in 2024, he seemed to figure out the best way forward for himself in that role; he just wasn't actually called upon in it very often. Specifically, late in the campaign, Wesneski appeared to be getting behind his fastball better, leading to better carry, more velocity, and the ability to miss bats with it. He fanned nine of the 20 batters he faced in the big leagues in September, using mostly the recalibrated heat and that devastating sweeper. Wesneski Heat.mp4 While he does still fit into the team's plans if permanently shifted away from starting, Wesneski might serve them best as a trade piece. There are teams who might see him as a diamond in the rough, figuring they can fix his persistent release-point issues and help him find a fastball that isn't as easy for opponents to square up. Either way, the additions of Morgan and Boyd have forced the team closer to making a decision about Wesneski. If he's going to stay in the organization, he needs to come to spring training ready work in short bursts and avail himself of the 1-2 extra miles per hour he's generally found on his heater there. Otherwise, they should be shopping him, treating him as a valuable but secondary piece in a number of possible trade permutations to get their hands on much-needed upgrades for the lineup or at the higher echelons of their pitching hierarchies. View full article

Very MUCH non-Soto!

In a deal reported deep in the night, the Cubs have set a high floor for the back end of their rotation, with a pitcher who provides depth and gives them many more options for their next moves. Image courtesy of © Scott Galvin-Imagn Images The Chicago Cubs agreed to a two-year deal with veteran left-handed starting pitcher Matthew Boyd, Jon Heyman reported early Monday night. The oft-injured southpaw will earn $29 million over two seasons, and the deal appears to be neither front- nor backloaded. All offseason, I have said the team needed to add two starting pitchers: one at the front end of their rotation, and one at the back. This is the latter type of move, but a very strong version thereof. Boyd, who will turn 34 on Groundhog Day, made only eight regular-season starts in 2024, and has not pitched even 100 innings in any season since 2019—although that year, he threw a whopping 185, in his second straight campaign as a high-volume starter with the Tigers. Durability is not Boyd's strong suit, but that might just be a good thing. He was available at this price precisely because he can't be counted upon for a whole lot of work, but when he's on the mound, lately, he tends to be quite good. He carried a 2.72 ERA and struck out 27.7% of opposing hitters for Cleveland during the regular season in 2024, and carried that brilliance right into October. He's a move more in keeping with the strategies we see embraced by the teams we all ask the Cubs to more closely mimic: the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, and Padres, who compile depth in an acknowledgment of the risk of injury but don't simply pay for reliable innings at a low level of quality. They'd rather have a good pitcher than a merely average one, even if it means paying a premium for a player who might spend a good chunk of the season on the injured list. To those who don't follow the American League closely, Boyd probably isn't much of a recognizable name, but he's had a long and occasionally very promising career. The last few years have been painfully injury-disrupted. He missed most of the second half of 2021 with arm discomfort the Tigers couldn't help him diagnose or resolve, at a time when that organization did virtually nothing right. Finally, in September, he was diagnosed with a torn flexor tendon, and underwent surgery to repair it. He wouldn't pitch again until the final month of 2022, after signing with the Mariners over his injury-shadowed winter. Then, in June 2023, he tore his UCL, requiring Tommy John surgery and shelving him until the second half of 2024. Thereafter, though, he reminded everyone of the two reasons why he's consistently been in demand all these years: He can really pitch, as a lefty with a funky slot and a good arsenal—which got markedly better in 2024; and He's one of the game's good guys, beloved in every clubhouse to which he has ever belonged. Boyd was an integral part of the Guardians rotation down the stretch, and then allowed just one run in 11 2/3 innings of work over three appearances in the postseason. Let's get into the nitty-gritty here, because it's pretty interesting stuff. Boyd, a Washington native who has long been a disciple of Driveline, is not a hard thrower, but he is a bat-misser, when he's right. He has a five-pitch mix: four-seamer, two-seamer, changeup, slider, curveball. The curve is sparingly used, and fairly new, but helpful. The four-seamer, slider, and change anchor the repertoire, and can mix in nasty ways. As you'd expect, against lefty batters, Boyd is slider-heavy and prefers to pair it with the sinker—though, in a wrinkle we know the Cubs like, he uses that sinker more like a true two-seamer, with more arm-side run than heavy action, often attacking the upper half of the zone with it to jam a lefty or set up another offering. Against righties, he's primarily a four-seamer and changeup guy, and the curveball comes into play more. For all our talk to date about how the Cubs like cut-ride fastballs, Boyd's is a pitch without a lot of vertical ride and with arm-side action, even from the four-seamer. It's probably best to think of him as a poor man's Sean Manaea for this offseason. Whereas Manaea would have cost the Cubs draft picks and is likely to get a three- or four-year deal worth more than $20 million per year, Boyd offers a much less durable (but similarly high-upside) low-slot, multi-pitch, veteran profile from the left side. TDZvdmJfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0FRY0VYRlVBVlZRQVd3UUZVUUFBVUFVRUFGaFJBRkFBQlFZQ0J3UUVVRkpSQmxaUg==.mp4 For what it's worth, too, getting such a lefty might have been high on the team's priority list, if they believe at all in the strange phenomenon of Wrigley Field playing very lefty pitcher-friendly of late. I broke down the data on that earlier this offseason, and it's worth considering when evaluating the addition of Boyd, as opposed to (say) Frankie Montas, who signed a similar but larger deal with the Mets earlier Sunday night. Boyd will not sate the appetites of virtually any Cubs fan right away, but he's a solid addition. He's a clearly better pitcher than Jordan Wicks, and gives the team a better matrix of possible outcomes if Ben Brown, Hayden Wesneski, Cade Horton, or Brandon Birdsell are unable either to stay healthy enough to have an impact or to succeed as starters. He also makes it more feasible to trade from the team's upper-level pitching depth, should they end up in a negotiation wherein their young offensive prospects aren't quite getting the deal done in the right way. If this is the only major addition the Cubs make to their pitching staff this winter, it's insufficient. That feels unlikely, though. They paid a small early-winter, buy-now premium to land a player who can replace the gravitas of Kyle Hendricks and Patrick Wisdom, brightening the clubhouse a bit; has proved the ability to get out even very good hitters, very recently; and might have been undervalued by the market because of the way his injuries have prevented him from stringing together successful outings over the last four seasons. It reads as a move designed to give them upside even while adding to the back end of the rotation. They still have ways to further strengthen the team by adding to the front end, or by turning their attention to building an elite bullpen. 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Deep into the holiday weekend, now, you should be sick to death of football. Watch an old baseball game with us. Image courtesy of YouTube Today, at long last, I want to talk about Mike Harkey. In the first two installments of this semi-unintentional trilogy, I focused on the quirks and quiddities of the Cubs' broadcasts back in the heyday of Harry Caray and Steve Stone, assisted by Arne Harris; and then on the Dodgers' nifty, doomed, fascinating little technological measure, captured in the game. Today, let's stick to ball, and specifically, mostly, to Mike Harkey. If you don't remember Harkey, you're forgiven. He only pitched 656 innings in the big leagues, scattered across nine seasons. About 420 of those were for the Cubs. He was quite good in 1990 (more on that shortly), quite bad in 1993, and quite injured between around around those years. The game I tuned in and watched, and am exhorting you to watch with me in remote, time-shiifted fashion, is this one, from May 23, 1990. Harkey, then 23, entered this game (he hoped) on the upswing. He'd been blasted over the first six starts he made that year, with a 6.23 ERA and .842 opponent OPS. Yet, he retained a rotation spot for the defending division champions, and not without reason. He had a big build and a lively arm, and when he was right, you could see how he might dominate even a good lineup. His previous time out, in Houston against the Astros, he had fired eight scoreless innings, scattering just 10 baserunners and bringing that ERA all the way down to 4.93. Even in that outing, he'd only struck out four, while facing a whopping 33 Houston batters and throwing 130 pitches. (Yes, 130. It really was 1990, you see, and even a 23-year-old was expected to pitch until the hitters started to tell the manager he was done.) (Gee, one wonders if that kind of thing is why Harkey was hurt so often.) For the season, the best of his career, Harkey would only end up striking out 12.9% of opposing hitters. Strikeouts were less common then, of course, but not so much less common that this was typical. The league fanned at a 15.1% clip in 1990. Harkey was a big, fairly hard-throwing pitch-to-contact guy, which is part of why he never did ascend beyond the heights he reached in that first full season in the majors. Nonetheless, Harkey looked good on this day. Steve Stone noted that he had demonstrated the ability to throw both his changeup and his curveball (from a low-three-quarters slot and with good velocity on it, I would say what he then dubbed a curve would go by the name of sweeper, now) for strikes against the Astros. He was doing the same thing early against the Dodgers, and when the Cubs gave him a thin lead (thanks to Dave Clark, who really could hit a righty, baby) in the third, he seized upon it. No Dodgers batter reached base in the third, fourth, or fifth innings. In the top of the sixth, there was some danger. Harkey got the leadoff man, opposing pitcher Tim Belcher (batting for himself in a 1-0 game in the sixth inning! It was not at all noteworthy then, but would be unthinkable by the final few years of DH-less baseball, 30 years later), but then gave up a double and a walk to the top two hitters in the lineup. This was his third time through, already. In some modern games, it would have been time to turn to the bullpen. Back then, though, no one even got warm. Harkey recovered gorgeously, including delivering a couple of nasty changeups to fan Kal Daniels and get out of the inning. It was the second time Harkey's change had retired Daniels on a whiff, and he'd grounded out to Mark Grace in between. Harkey seemed to have the Dodgers slugger in the rocking chair. The Cubs nearly blew it open in the sixth, with two runs generated partially by sloppy Dodgers defense. Harkey mowed down the Dodgers in the seventh and got the leadoff man again in the eighth, cruising, up 3-0. But up 3-0 with one out in the eighth never seems to be that kind to the Cubs, does it? A clean single by pinch-hitter Mickey Hatcher started the trouble. Then, Lenny Harris hit a dribbler down the third-base line. Luis Salazar overran it, going into foul territory, and he failed to even consider that as he reached back for the ball, he was reaching into fair territory again. He was, though, and while he might have had a play on Harris if he'd been in better position or been more aware of the call, he had none by the time all was said and done. Next, a slicing line drive fell just shy of a sliding Doug Dascenzo, putting the Dodgers on the board. It was a well-struck ball, as Hatcher's had been. In all likelihood, this was the hitters telling Don Zimmer they were catching up to Harkey. Still, it could have been caught, if Dascenzo were slightly better-positioned or a hair faster off the block. Harris's and Stan Javier's singles felt unfair, given the great day Harkey was having. He'd earned better. He recovered to get pinch-hitter Eddie Murray to tap back to the mound, though, and although the tying run was now in scoring position, the Cubs were also just one out from escaping the jam. Zimmer had, in my opinion, a difficult dilemma on his hands. He'd allowed Harkey to face Murray, even as Stone remarked on TV that it was time to go to warming southpaw Paul Assenmacher. Murray was a better left-handed hitter than a right-handed one, at that stage of his career, and Assenmacher would have a better chance of getting a double play from him. Harkey had won that battle, though. Should Zimmer let him try to win the war and get Daniels out a fourth time? He went to Assenmacher, and any modern manager would do the same. On regular rest, after throwing 130 pitches in Houston, Harkey was at 101. Daniels, though not much remembered now, was a formidable lefty slugger at the time. Gaining the platoon advantage and going to a fresh arm was a no-brainer. I can't shake the feeling, though, that Harkey had Daniels's number. He overwhelmed him through three at-bats. He just needed one more good changeup to get through the eighth. Surely, though, that's hindsight talking. Assenmacher gave up an opposite-field, three-run homer, to ruin the day. That's baseball, sometimes. Harkey had pitched brilliantly, but it was no easy call to leave him in even to face Murray. There was every risk that Daniels would have done the same thing to him, had Zimmer left him in. The game was defined by some sloppiness, between the Cubs' sixth-inning rally and the Dodgers' to come back. It ended that way, too. A walk and a single to lead off the bottom of the ninth gave the Cubs lots of hope. Those came against Dodgers pitcher—I swear, this is true—Mike Hartley, who gave way to (best we can do on a match) Don Aase, but Aase for Hartley worked out better, sadly, than had Assenmacher for Harkey. Joe Girardi botched a sacrifice bunt, allowing the Dodgers to get the lead runner, so instead of having the tying run a sac fly away and the winning run on second, the runners were still at first and second. A pinch-hitter named Curt Wilkerson struck out, and leadoff man Marvell Wynne recorded the final out. Ryne Sandberg stood in the on-deck circle. Alas. Despite the mistakes by each team, this was a fun game to watch. Despite Sandberg not having a big impact (he went 1-for-4 with an unimportant double), it was nice to be reminded of an unintentional competitive advantage the Cubs claimed back then, too. Sandberg batted second most days, which is (we now know) where a team's best hitter should go in the lineup. At the time, it was vanishingly rare for a player as good as he was to actually bat in that position. From 1984-90, the 1984 and 1990 Cubs were the fourth- and fifth-best teams in terms of OPS from the second spot in the order. The only clubs who beat them were two Red Sox iterations for whom Wade Boggs took that duty, and the 1985 Mariners, thanks to the one All-Star season of left fielder Phil Bradley. This concludes our three-part tour of one random game on YouTube. More such games will be recapped and rehashed later this winter, so don't feel too put-out about this one being a loss. If nothing else, we hope you had fun remembering some guys—and some broadcasters' habits, and some forerunners to modern controversies about the use of technology in baseball, too. Happy Thanksgiving. View full article