Matthew Trueblood

There's radical uncertainty ahead for the Cubs bullpen this winter. Their relief corps will see a ton of turnover during the coming offseason, and it will require considerable investment. Let's figure out where those changes and investments might be. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports Right off the bat, we can identify a few absolute locks for the 2024 Chicago Cubs bullpen. Adbert Alzolay comes with some lingering health questions, but to whatever extent he can stay available, he'll enter next season as one of the team's high-leverage arms. MLB Trade Rumors projects a $2.5-million arbitration award for Alzolay, but the team won't bat an eye at that cost. Equally certain to come back is Julian Merryweather, who will be eligible for arbitration for the first time this winter, too. The MLB Trade Rumors estimate for Merryweather is just $1.3 million, and although he occasionally issued too many walks, he'd be a bargain at twice that price. What the Cubs need is more strikeout stuff throughout their pitching staff, and Merryweather might be the best strikeout artist they have. You can count on Jose Cuas, Daniel Palencia, and Luke Little to be prominent parts of the bullpen mix going into the season, too. Each is still dirt-cheap, by baseball standards, and none of them is eligible for arbitration yet. They all have minor-league options remaining, and none is guaranteed to spend all of next season in the big-league bullpen, but they're all good enough to stay on the 40-man roster even during a winter of tumult. Their upside is terrific. After that, though, some tough decisions loom. Michael Fulmer won't be back, after he underwent elbow surgery that will sideline him all season. Brad Boxberger's mutual option will not be picked up. Mark Leiter, Jr. is a much less obvious case. As late as early September, it was a sure thing that the Cubs would want him back, even as he reaches arbitration eligibility. Alas, he collapsed over the final month. His splitter abandoned him, and without that pitch, he's useless. His projected salary of $1.6 million is perfectly affordable, but because it's impossible to count on him in any real way after the way his season ended, even that modest payout might not be palatable to a team facing a roster crunch and the need to economize around the edges as they make bigger expenditures elsewhere. There's a cluster of relievers not due to make any real money, but whose places on the roster are tenuous until further notice. Keegan Thompson's disasterpiece of a 2023 puts his future with the club in grave doubt, but he belongs in the category of hurlers with whom the team will be slow to cut ties. So do Jeremiah Estrada and Brandon Hughes. These are the types of arms who often end up turning into gems eventually, the way Merryweather did last season with Chicago. The challenge is to try to be the team with whom it happens, rather than let them make a circuit ride of the waiver wire before unlocking their talent. Nick Burdi, Tyler Duffey and Michael Rucker are low-upside fringe relievers. They're unlikely to stick on the 40-man roster beyond the end of November, but if one does so, they'll have a decent chance to win a low-leverage role in the big-league pen come spring. Ethan Roberts and Codi Heuer have an even narrower path through the winter, because their injured status doesn't protect them from the 40-man crunch during the winter. That exhausts the pure relievers on the current 40-man roster, and the only slots affirmatively claimed are those of Alzolay, Merryweather, Cuas, Palencia, and Little. The two guys who still need our attention are Hayden Wesneski and Drew Smyly. As much as fans might have loved the idea of Wesneski as a starter even seven months ago, it feels increasingly like he belongs in the bullpen. In fact, late in the campaign, he seemed to take nicely to the short relief role into which he was pushed because of the team's mounting injury trouble. I like Wesneski a lot as a power arm in a pure, one-inning slot, hitting 98 or 99 miles per hour with his fastball and facing few left-handed batters. Smyly, of course, will act as depth for the starting rotation. He's likely to be needed in that role at least occasionally, although very unlikely to be used that way as much next year as in 2023. He was even more of a revelation than Wesneski when he converted to short relief in September. His curveball plays up magnificently in short bursts, thanks in part to the extra few ticks he finds on his fastball. Smyly is going to cost the team $10 million next year, which is a steep price for a swingman. That makes him a trade candidate, but if the team keeps him, they'll have a reliable lefty in relief--even if Hughes isn't able to bounce back from his lost 2023. This list neglects a few more complicated cases: Javier Assad, Ben Brown, and Caleb Kilian. Assad has made such a strong case for himself as a starter that it feels cruel to throw him in with this crowd. Brown has all the explosive upside of, say, Wesneski a year ago, but we now know how mixed a benediction that is. Kilian must be out of chances to emerge as a starter by now, but could he (like Wesneski) turn into a beast by moving to short relief and tightening up his repertoire? There's an avalanche of change coming to this unit. That's necessary, even in the wake of a season that seemed to further prove the organization's prowess at discovering and developing credible relievers. This piece isn't mean to answer all the looming questions. It's just meant to clarify them. Where do you come down on Cuas, Palencia, and Little? Would you tender Leiter a contract? Can Wesneski take over a high-leverage role if he completes the conversion to full-fledged reliever? Let's fire up the hot stove and start the conversation. View full article

For half of last season, the Cubs had two aces atop their rotation. In the second half, they had just one. Much of their 2024 hope hinges on the extent to which Marcus Stroman bounces back from his injury-marred stretch run. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports As tempting as it is to chalk up all of Marcus Stroman's struggles from July through the end of the season to the hip injury that sidelined him for so much of that time, that would be an oversimplification. That's both good and bad news. Stroman wasn't necessarily likely to sustain the improvements he'd made and the success he'd had in the first half, even if he'd stayed healthy. On the other hand, the extent to which he was compromised by that injury has been a bit overstated. In reality, Stroman got pretty unlucky during his period of ineffectiveness, before landing on the injured list and in the short time after he returned from it. He wasn't able to locate his stuff well, but much of the trouble he got himself into was the result of fairly fragile sequencing effects. Here are Stroman's zone rates on each of his six pitch types over the last three years, subdivided into two groups: 2021-22, and 2023. As you can see, he didn't throw as many strikes with any of his offerings last year as he did over the two prior campaigns. However, the effect was most pronounced on his slider and splitter, and those are his two least-used pitches. It's hard to use this raw data, then, to explain the fact that Stroman's walk rate shot up from 6 percent in 2021 and 2022 to 9 percent in 2023. That rise in free passes only partially canceled out the benefits of a bit more nibbling, such as a much lower homer rate, but it was a huge contributor to the derailment of his season. When Stroman ran a 9.11 ERA in six July starts, an 11.6-percent walk rate was a major part of the problem. Invariably, it seemed, Stroman would walk a batter or two, creating some traffic on the bases, and then a hit would fall in and the snowball would roll downhill on him. The strange thing is that Stroman's walk problems weren't born of an overall inability to throw strikes. Rather, it was often the case that he would get into good or neutral counts, only to let them turn into bad outcomes--especially walks. In 2021, 8.3 percent of the plate appearances involving Stroman that reached a 1-1 count ended in a walk. In 2022, it was 7.8 percent. In 2023, though, that number skyrocketed to an excruciating 12.9 percent. He wouldn't immediately fall behind. The problems arose when he got into deep counts, thanks to the pitch mix he used in them. A lot of those 0-2 and 1-2 sliders just got him closer to walks. His heavy usage of the splitter in 1-1 counts tipped the balance the wrong direction, too. Stroman had a fairly minor weakness that became a severe handicap when he couldn't locate his sinker and slurve as well anymore, and therefore couldn't lean on them as heavily. Here's a peculiar thing: Stroman is far from alone in having neutral counts go sour for him in 2023. As a whole, the league issued free passes in 9.7 percent of the plate appearances that reached 1-1 this year. That's the highest rate for any full season since the advent of pitch-by-pitch information for all games, back in 1988. That's jarring, because the league's overall walk rate this season was not especially high. Of the last 36 campaigns, MLB's average walk rate in 2023 (8.6 percent) ranked 17th. This isn't a fluke confined to 1-1 counts, either. A historically unusual percentage of the league's walks came after a pitcher had gotten ahead of the opposing batter this year. At this point, it feels clear that Stroman will opt in for 2024, forgoing the chance to hit free agency and taking a $21-million salary. In practice, he'll take up $23.7 million on the Cubs' payroll, because that's the annual average value of the three-year deal of which the option for next year is a part. Given that, the Cubs need him to perform like the front-of-the-rotation starter he was for the first half of 2023. Because he doesn't miss bats at a rate that will allow him to run any more than an average strikeout rate, that requires him to cut his walk rate substantially from its elevated 2023 level. Variance will take care of some of that. He wandered into some bad luck on a pitch-to-pitch basis, just as pitchers often do on a batter-to-batter, inning-to-inning, or game-to-game one. Stroman also has to either land some of his less-used pitches in the strike zone or eliminate them altogether, though, so that he can throw more strikes and force hitters to get a little more aggressive. For their part, the Cubs have to assume he won't be able to do so so easily, and go find a pitcher who pushes Stroman down their starting rotation depth chart. View full article

Good point, TT. If we account for the fact that the buyout would still have to be paid next year, we can think of it as somewhere between the two figures, but certainly the CBT numbers are the most important ones in the conversation. I agree. If you bring him and Stroman back, it has to be in the context of a VERY aggressive winter.

The offseason won't kick off in earnest for another three weeks, but the Cubs have all the information they're going to get in order to make some important decisions. First on that list is the choice of whether to retain their longest-tenured player. Image courtesy of © John Jones-USA TODAY Sports Under the terms of the long-term contract to which the Cubs signed Kyle Hendricks in March 2019, they hold a $16-million option on his services for 2024. A year ago, that looked unlikely to be picked up, but he had a solid 2023. That changes the calculus quite a bit, because $16 million doesn't buy what it used to. Besides, thanks to a buyout worth $1.5 million, it's really a $14.5-million decision for them. The Chicago rotation already has Justin Steele and Jameson Taillon firmly in place for 2024. Marcus Stroman is the one with a decision to make about his future, rather than the Cubs having one. Drew Smyly is under contract for 2024, though the team surely hopes they can relegate him to the bullpen, given what we saw in 2023. Jordan Wicks and Javier Assad, on the other hand, have earned the right to vie for places in the rotation to begin the season. That gives the team a fairly crowded rotation depth chart, which would tend to nudge you toward cutting Hendricks loose. On the other hand, in 2023, he pitched more innings (137) than all but Steele, Taillon, and Smyly, and had a lower ERA (3.74) than all but Steele and Assad. He not only returned from a career-endangering shoulder injury, but looked as good as he has since 2020. His walk rate was a minuscule 4.7 percent, and he induced weak contact at one of the best rates in baseball. Those are both fragile skills, though--at least at this stage of Hendricks's career. He will always run better-than-average walk and hard-hit rates, because of the nature of his approach, but to repeat (or even approximate) the numbers he put up in 2023, he'd need to remain nearly elite in those categories. That's hard to do, for a few reasons. First, limiting hard contact isn't a very sticky skill. Pitchers' rates don't correlate well year-to-year, even if one confines the sample to hurlers who had at least 250 batted balls against them in each of two consecutive seasons. Second, Hendricks's low walk rate comes despite the fact that he doesn't throw very many strikes. Of 100 qualifying pitchers, Hendricks had the seventh-lowest Zone% in 2023. He relies on batters expanding the zone a little bit in order to keep that walk rate down, and while his stuff and command do encourage that, it's a hard thing to do on a long-term basis. Hendricks also faces a major hurdle, in that he really doesn't miss bats. Between nibbling so much (of necessity) and getting whiffs on just over 21 percent of swings, Hendricks's strikeout rate fell to 16.1 percent last year--his lowest clip since his rookie campaign of 2014. According to Baseball Prospectus's Deserved Run Average, which accounts for park factors, opponent quality, handedness matchups and other factors on a granular basis, Hendricks was actually a below-average pitcher last year. His batted-ball data and that low walk rate made some of his other peripheral statistics look good, but DRA debits him quite a bit for the lack of strikeouts. It even accounts for the above: Hendricks is only credited with 88 deserved strikeouts (against 93 actual ones) and he's saddled with 32 deserved walks (against 27 actual free passes). If we accept the fact that Hendricks's hard-hit rate, walk rate, and strikeout rate are all likely to regress somewhat, it gets much less clear that he should come back in 2024--at least for $16 million. To those facts, add this one: shoulder capsular injuries like the one that sidelined Hendricks for the second half of 2022 and the first month and a half of 2023 have a tendency to recur. He survived that brush with pitching oblivion, but history suggests that he might get hurt again soon. However, Hendricks is important to the organization. He's the link to the championship team. He's also a valued mentor and exemplar for the team's younger hurlers. The Cubs can't afford to keep him at the price set by his option terms. If possible, though, they should explore an extension to replace that deal. Last winter, Smyly signed a two-year deal worth $19 million, with incentives that could (and did) push the value higher and a team option for the third year. Hendricks is in a strikingly similar position right now. His superior track record and the relationship between team and player probably means he would command $11 million per year on a similar contract, instead of $9.5 million, but even that number represents a meaningful discount from the price tag on the option. As I wrote last week, the Cubs need to build a deep rotation for 2024. They should be ready to use six starters at a time, which means having eight or nine viable arms lined up going into spring training. Hendricks can be a valuable part of that. It just isn't going to work without a bit of maneuvering to get his price down, thereby creating more space for them to operate beneath whatever ceiling ownership puts on their winter spending. View full article

Exactly. Probably can’t be an everyday plan, probably doesn’t need to be one in the Cubs’ roster context. Also, fwiw, a good clubhouse guy.

When the ALCS begins Sunday night, keep an eye on the man who often slots in as the Texas Rangers' designated hitter. Next year, he could be a perfect fit for the Cubs' lineup. Image courtesy of © Mitch Stringer-USA TODAY Sports It's possible that Mitch Garver will use his long-awaited free agency this winter to seek out a team who views him as a full-time catcher. That's always been his primary position, and he takes pride in the improvements he's made as a defensive catcher over the years. It's likely that he finds the most interest and money by marketing himself as a more versatile player, though, and if so, the Cubs could be the perfect suitor for the right-handed slugger. Garver, who will turn 33 this January, has been limited by injuries in each of the last four seasons. At times, he's played through injuries and failed to produce much, but when truly healthy, he's been consistently excellent at the plate. In 2023, he batted .270/.370/.500 in 344 plate appearances in the regular season, with 19 home runs. In the ALDS, he added four more hits, eight total bases, and seven RBIs. He appeared in 28 games at catcher this season, and spent the bulk of his time as the DH. He's also played first base sporadically throughout his career. There will be more important, more alluring, higher-profile free agents on the market this winter, but Garver could fit gorgeously into a retooled Cubs roster. If Christopher Morel can grasp the rudiments of third base, there will be plenty of available playing time at DH in 2024. If not, signing a veteran like Garver could give the Cubs greater flexibility (and, therefore, greater leverage) to trade Morel to bolster their starting rotation. Meanwhile, behind the plate, Garver would help address what feels like a lack of depth at the position for the big-league team. I wrote two weeks ago about the somewhat turbid catching picture for 2024, based on the age and track record of Yan Gomes and on the uneven rookie campaign of Miguel Amaya. Garver would clarify it, not by unseating Gomes or sentencing Amaya to another few months in Iowa, but by lightening each of their catching loads a bit and better balancing the various defensive skill sets required of catchers under the new rules. It's likely that Garver will be able to command something akin to what Trey Mancini got in his turn as a free agent last year. That name might have spiked your blood pressure a bit, but at the time, signing Mancini for two years and $14 million made a world of sense. Garver would be an even higher-upside play than Mancini, thanks to the value of his more demanding defensive home, and to his sturdier recent numbers. On the other hand, he does get hurt often, and (because his approach is extremely predicated on hitting the fastball) he can fall into ugly slumps when trying to play through his bumps and bruises. Behind the plate, Garver is roughly average as both a pitch framer and a thrower. He's an experienced and well-liked receiver, though not a savant of game-calling or an especially good handler of the ball in the dirt. At bat, he's as concertedly focused a pull-field, fly-ball hitter as there is in baseball, and it's an approach he's polished to a shine. His refusal to chase outside the zone and his ability to spoil junk until he gets the fastball he's really hunting makes him lethal, when he's going well. His batted-ball profile would be a dead solid perfect fit for Wrigley Field. What do you think about Garver as a free agent target for the Cubs, beginning next month? What's your level of confidence in their current catching corps, and do they have the capacity to add a third catcher and DH to this roster without the positional group becoming dysfunctional in some way? Let's discuss. View full article

No *official* confirmation, but I’ve gotten it from someone I trust, and AZ Phil has it that way at TCR, too.

As the Cubs look ahead to what will need to be an active and change-filled winter, they have sent a few prospects out to the Arizona Fall League and the Caribbean winter leagues for some unusually high-stakes exposure. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports For Kevin Alcantara, the big roster clock in the sky is already ticking. The fact that he needed to be placed on the 40-man roster last November is one reason why he was available to the Cubs in the Anthony Rizzo trade the previous July. Teams always have one eye on the countdown to when a player needs to go on the 40-man, and once they're there, that attention shifts to the number of years left in which a player can be optioned to the minors. Alcantara spent most of his first season on the 40-man in High A, where he could be of no help to the parent club, and that also took up one of his option years. At least Alcantara has two of those remaining. Alexander Canario is due to be out of them altogether, having used up all three of his option years already. Again, one reason for the Giants' willingness to surrender him in the Kris Bryant trade in 2021 was that Canario was already on the 40-man but still playing in High A--essentially, that he was Alcantara, two years before Alcantara was. The good news for the Cubs is that, because of the injury Canario suffered last fall that cost him a good chunk of 2023, he's eligible for a fourth option, so he can still be stashed in Iowa in 2024. In practice, though, these two can't be almost dead 40-man spots in 2024, as they were in 2023. We saw the team get cornered in terms of roster moves more than once in the second half, and much of it was because they had players like these two--too good to try to remove from the roster, but not in position to contribute to the team of which they were theoretically a part. Besides, the Cubs have to make an aggressive trade or two this winter, and they'll need to add at least a couple players to their 40-man again next month, to protect them from the Rule 5 Draft. They need to know what they have in Alcantara and Canario, so they can plan their next moves. For those reasons, Alcantara's current stint in the Arizona Fall League has unusually high stakes. He only got a brief taste of Double A in 2023. He's seen very little advanced pitching, for a guy the team could remotely hope to use next year. The AFL is not a great place to check that box, especially this year, but it's still a step up from day-to-day competition in the Midwest League--at least in terms of the polish and command of the pitchers. Alcantara has responded well to the much-needed challenge so far, but it's also clear that he needs time and reps to figure things out. In 30 plate appearances so far, Alcantara is hitting just .185/.267/.407. He's hit two home runs and drawn three walks, but fanned nine times. That's a sufficiently encouraging start, but obviously, the hope will be that he can get some more hits and put the ball in play more often the rest of the way. Strikeouts are the big concern about his game, but he trimmed his strikeout rate during the regular season--not only from the previous season, but as this one went along. From July 1 onward, including his stint in Tennessee, Alcantara batted .336/.416/.552, walked 12 percent of the time, and only fanned at a 22,3 percent clip. The Cubs will want to see him adjust and attack the same way against AFL pitching. Canario, meanwhile, canceled his initial plans to join Alcantara in Arizona. Instead, he'll be playing in the Dominican Winter League. The Cubs had to sign off on that alternative arrangement, and the fact that they did so is somewhat telling. Think a bit about the offseason calendar, and how it matches up with that of fall and winter ball. The AFL is almost a fortnight old already. It will wrap up in less than a month, just before teams need to make decisions about whom to add to their 40-man and whom to leave exposed to the Rule 5. Traditionally, that window--mid-November, through Thanksgiving--is the first active trade window of the offseason. It's in that stretch, for instance, that the Braves traded Jason Heyward to St. Louis in 2014, and that Jeff Samardzija was traded to the White Sox by Oakland the same year. Meanwhile, the Dominican league (LIDOM) doesn't even start for another week. Teams could play well into January. That the Cubs are ok with Canario going to that league to make up the time he lost due to injury in 2023 signals that they're in less of a hurry to establish his value for 2024--be that to themselves or on the trade market. To put it another way: they're more concerned about scouts for other teams seeing Alcantara right away than about getting the same eyes on Canario. Though he's a very exciting prospect, perhaps with the best sheer upside in the entire system, Alcantara is going to come up in trade rumors a lot this winter. It makes sense, if the Cubs find themselves engaged with a trade partner who isn't in a 40-man crunch, for them to at least listen on him. The presence of Pete Crow-Armstrong ensures that most of Alcantara's playing time in the big leagues would have to come in the corner outfield spots, where Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki are each under contract for the next three years. Crow-Armstrong's disappointing September audition notwithstanding, he's very likely to be the Cubs' primary center fielder in 2024. Alcantara won't be able to push him off that position unless Crow-Armstrong totally collapses at the plate, which few people expect. In theory, of course, there's an open role there. Alcantara could spend much of 2024 in the minors, anyway, and in 2025, he might platoon with Crow-Armstrong in center or with Happ in left, while frequently spelling Suzuki (who could DH instead on those days) in right. That's a tough thing to ask a toolsy 22-year-old to do, though, and holding onto a player for an entire year when it's not clear that they'll have a more steady gig than that the following year is a tough ask for a contending team. The role just described fits Canario perfectly, though, and the team doesn't have to wait a year for him to be ready for it. He's likely to be available in trades, too, but since his value to acquiring teams would be much lower and his value to the 2024 Cubs is much higher, he's less likely to be dealt. It feels like the Cubs sent him to LIDOM because he can best prepare for helping them in the big leagues next year by going there. It feels like they sent Alcantara to Arizona not only because it's the next natural step in his prospect progression, but to showcase him as a potential centerpiece in a big deal. The sledding is not going to get easier in 2024, within the NL Central or the National League as a whole. The Cubs have to improve significantly in order to get over the hump and into the postseason next year. Canario and Alcantara can each make big contributions to that endeavor, but those contributions are likely to be very different from one another. It made sense, then, to give them these very different offseason assignments. View full article

Whether you've noticed or not, you've been living in the time of the six-man rotation for a few years. In 2023, we saw an inflection point that has to shape the Cubs' offseason plans. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports When MLB expanded to 30 teams in 1998, just over 42 percent of all starts were made with five or more days of rest. By then, the four-man starting rotations that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s were receding rapidly into memory, but every team was doing their utmost to field a consistent five-man rotation. At right around that same time, though, modern standards for protecting pitchers from overuse took root, and a gradual trend toward more rest prevailed. Still, it was 2011 before as many as half the league's starts happened on extended rest. Four days remained the most common interval between outings--no longer the majority, but the plurality, and that by a wide margin--until 2018 or so. At that point, though, an upsurge in starts on five days of rest occurred. It hasn't abated. In fact, coming out of the pandemic, it's only become more pronounced. There have been a few subtle changes to the seasonal schedule, adding an extra day off or two for each team. A few teams (most notably, perhaps, the Angels, who needed to accommodate Shohei Ohtani's two-way play) have converted to an outright six-man rotation, and a few others used it extensively in 2021, to work around the disruption to their pitcher's seasonal workloads due to the COVID-induced shortening of the 2020 season. Even among the teams still ostensibly using a five-man rotation, though, there's been a shift. Teams use off days to shorten their rotation and skip a struggling fifth starter much less often. When the schedule doesn't give them a break for more than 10 days or so, they often sneak in a bullpen game, or call someone up from Triple A to make a spot start. Even when teams get a couple of clustered off days, they often opt to let the rotation stretch out to a week, rather than prioritize keeping their ace on a five-day schedule. Until 2015, the league had never seen even 900 starts made on six or more days of rest. Since 2018, every full season has seen at least 1,000 such starts. In 2023, the median teams (the Marlins and Rangers) used starters on what would traditionally be counted as long rest (at least five days) 102 times. The Cubs only had 73 starts on at least that much rest. The only team who had fewer was the Giants, who survived much of the second half by keeping Alex Cobb and Logan Webb on a regular rotation and filling the other three days with piggyback starters, openers, and Johnny Wholestaff. By the end of the year, it was pretty clear that the Cubs' bucking of the global trend wasn't going to be a triumph of old-school thinking. On the contrary, their starters all seemed to break or wear down, contributing significantly to their September collapse. For 2024, this team needs not only to amass depth beyond their established rotation, but to consider making that rotation itself longer. If both Marcus Stroman and Kyle Hendricks return, they'll slot right into the group, alongside Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, and Jordan Wicks. That's five, already, but it doesn't need to (and, in fact, shouldn't) be the end of the team's plan. They still ought to pursue a front-of-the-rotation starter, and not at the expense of any of the guys listed here. Nor do they need to be looking to trade Javier Assad, Cade Horton, Hayden Wesneski, Ben Brown, or Drew Smyly, who would not fit into the Opening Day rotation picture if an established star were added to the crew of Steele, Stroman, Hendricks, Taillon and Wicks. Some of the Cubs' rotation depth pieces will be perfectly set up to open 2024 in Iowa. Some will be well-suited to relief work, while staying ready to work into the rotation if and when needed. Injuries will crop up, so having at least 10 viable starters is the smart way to line things up if the goal is to reach the postseason. They can make trades from whatever surplus they establish. Even before those things happen, though, the Cubs should be looking to make use of six starters. It's become the modern standard, and they're not set up to defy it. Obviously, this will be an expensive spot to fill. That's why the discussion we began Wednesday, about how high the front office will be able and willing to steer the overall payroll, is so important. Who do you want to see the team add to the starting corps for 2024? Who's expendable? Can you stomach the six-man rotation, which would have seemed so radical just a few years ago? View full article

Money doesn't buy championships. It must be spent wisely, but even if it is, it can't replace good scouting, player development, instruction, and execution. No amount of spending can guarantee the Cubs a playoff spot in 2024, but how much do they have to spend to even have a good shot? Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports In 2023, the Cubs assiduously navigated the season in such a way as to avoid exceeding even the first threshold above which they would have had to pay the luxury tax. Their full-season payroll figure, by the reckoning of the Competitive Balance Tax (which takes the annual average value of every contract for which the team is responsible), was abut $230.8 million, according to Cot's Contracts. That was about $2 million below the aforesaid threshold, which stood at $233 million for this season. Next year, that threshold rises to $237 million. The Cubs will have to surpass it even to match their work from 2023, let alone to build upon it. Right now, they have just under $160 million on their books for 2024 (again, sticking with the average value of each contract, since that's the relevant number here). That includes Marcus Stroman's $23.67 million, because he's entitled to it unless and until he opts out of the $21 million he'll get if he elects to finish out his three-year deal. At this point, the broad expectation is that he'll stick around, so keeping him listed here is the right way to think about it. However, that estimate excludes a lot of money that really won't be optional for the Cubs. They have a genuine choice about whether or not to retain Kyle Hendricks, but given the important place he holds in the organization at this point and how well he pitched in 2023, it would be awfully difficult to see him walk away. Rather than simply picking up the option, the team and the pitcher could come to a multi-year agreement that would slightly lower the CBT number associated with Hendricks's contract--say, from $16 million to somewhere around $12 million. Add that much, and the payroll bloats to $170 million. You can add another $7 million, while you're at it, because Yan Gomes is certain to come back on the option the team holds on him. Now, we have to account for the important players who will get significant raises via free agency this winter. That list contains (but isn't limited to) Justin Steele, Adbert Alzolay, Julian Merryweather, and Patrick Wisdom. The team might non-tender one or two of the players theoretically eligible for a raise their performance won't have earned, but all told, they're going to owe $190 million or more to their in-house talent--not the full crew we just saw win 83 games and fall just shy of the postseason, but that group, less the guys with the right to depart as free agents. There's $45 million and change left for the team to spend below the first tax threshold, and they have to replace the production of Cody Bellinger (even if it be by re-signing him), Michael Fulmer, and more. I probably don't have to tell you this, by now, but $237 million is not the relevant number. That's not the target. The second threshold of the tax bracket, as it were, kicks in relatively gentle surcharges on the tax a team pays for overrunning the threshold. That comes at $20 million above the first threshold, so $257 million for 2024. The much harder cap, and one I don't expect the Cubs to exceed at any point within the life of this collective bargaining agreement, is at $40 million beyond the threshold--a cool $277 million. A team at the Cubs' point in the competitive cycle needs to be careful not to overspend and get stuck a tier or two above the bottom threshold for multiple years. That can make some of the penalties built into the CBA truly hurt. While there's no short-term financial or competitive reason why they couldn't spend as much as $275 million on next year's team, neither the free-agent market that looms this winter nor their current roster scream for that kind of brinksmanship. What's important is that the front office recognizes the need to spend something--to get well above $237 million. It has to be that way, because the Cubs are good enough to win in 2024, and should treat that opportunity as the valuable and sacred entity it is. At the same time, they haven't been good enough at developing or positioning their young players over the last few years to lean on that group to take them anywhere any time soon. As highly-regarded as their farm system is, they haven't yet proved that they can translate a promising prospect into a valuable contributor with the smoothness or the speed necessary to get themselves over the hump. Nor is this farm blessed with the kind of superstar upside that some other, thinner systems possess. The core of the Cubs, for the medium term, consists of Steele, Nico Hoerner, Dansby Swanson, Ian Happ, and Seiya Suzuki. Those are the guys the team controls for at least three more seasons, and who project to be above-average players throughout that period. That's not a bad group, but (unless second-half Suzuki was the real deal, which seems doubtful) there's at least one true star missing from it. It's also a pretty expensive core, really. The quartet of position players account for about $75 million of luxury-tax payroll by themselves. In a vacuum, that's not a bad cumulative price for those players. In the context of this roster, it's imperfect. If both Stroman and Hendricks come back, they'll cost something like $35 million. The team will also have to budget about $38 million for the group of free agents from last winter (Jameson Taillon, Drew Smyly, Trey Mancini, and Tucker Barnhart) to whom they guaranteed multiple years--even though Mancini and Barnhart are gone, and Smyly seems certain to be relegated to a relief role. Just as it did when the team was working around a $23-million annual salary for Jason Heyward, the money spends quickly. The leash gets short once the tax threshold even comes into sight, especially given how inefficiently the front office has spent the Ricketts family's money recently. Eyeballing this roster and using the roughest of projections, they need to add about 14 wins above replacement to position themselves well for 2024. You can't do that with average returns on investment in free agency. It will require Jed Hoyer and his gang to hit big on a signing or two, and to make an aggressive trade or two, and to improve at player development, including finding a way to make their big-league coaching staff better at getting the most from young players. Even if they do all that, though, they do need to spend more money. I'm here to say that if the Cubs don't spend at least $250 million next season, in terms of their CBT figure, Hoyer has missed the boat and been insufficiently proactive. I don't see how the Cubs can credibly expect to take their next step toward winning the NL Central and putting up a better fight against the best teams in the rest of the league, except by spending money to deepen their roster and supplement the infusion of young talent they expect. The X factor, as ever, is Shohei Ohtani. It's wildly unlikely that the Cubs will land him. I waited this long to talk about him for a reason. The kind of contract he should get (even after his injury last month) figures to be outside the comfort zone of Hoyer and company, but just as importantly, it's a big marketplace. Fans (and even some analysts) can easily lose sight of this, but a team has very little real control over whether it wins a free-agent sweepstakes. Yes, players usually sign with the team who gives them the most money, but in reality, there are plenty of cases in which a player's agent merely got the team the player most preferred to pony up whatever difference existed between their bid and that of a less wanted team. Ohtani probably won't sign with the Cubs, because they probably aren't his first or second choice, and one of the teams above them on his wish list seems likely to do what it takes to secure his services. If, however, the Cubs sign Ohtani, it should be as part of an exceptionally aggressive winter, overall. It should come with calls to the Cleveland Guardians about Jose Ramirez. It should come with authorization to spend up to $270 million, to ensure the team's immediate competitiveness as they onboard some of the young players who would look to Ohtani as their leader. Failing that, though, the Cubs probably have around $60 million to play with this winter, if they're serious about 2024. That won't feel like much, once they either re-sign or replace Bellinger, because that could take nearly half of their available capital, but it's the most they're likely to get--and it's the least they can do, if Tom Ricketts's tough talk about not counting non-playoff seasons as successes is to carry any weight. What payroll figure are you expecting for the 2024 Cubs? What's the least they can spend, and how would you resolve dilemmas on guys like Hendricks and Wisdom? Let us know in the comments. View full article

As we turn our attention toward an offseason chock-full of tough decisions, let's do a little exercise to clarify the areas of need and uncertainty for the 2024 Chicago Cubs. Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports It's tempting to try to skip ahead, at this time of year. After the bitter disappointment of the Cubs' late-season collapse, the fan's impulse is to chase big names and start vicariously spending Tom Ricketts's ill-gotten money. That's a natural and sufficiently noble exercise, but it won't take you anywhere until you gain some clarity on what the Cubs have for 2024. Once we can say that with some confidence, we can better assess what they still need. Here's the most plausible Opening Day lineup I can cobble together for next year's Cubs, making as few assumptions and adopting as few bold positions as possible. These are the incumbents at each of these positions, and in each of these lineup spots. Pete Crow-Armstrong - CF Nico Hoerner - 2B Ian Happ - LF Seiya Suzuki - RF Dansby Swanson - SS Christopher Morel - DH Matt Mervis - 1B Yan Gomes - C Nick Madrigal - 3B Again, there are a thousand ways to quibble with this, and it's not meant as a concrete projection of anything. It just gets us started. For instance: Can the Cubs possibly entrust Crow-Armstrong with a big-league job next spring, after he looked so overmatched and overwhelmed in his unhelpful September audition with the big-league team? It seems unfathomable that he would be batting first, at least. That, immediately, means that the team needs a hitter who slots comfortably into the top four of their lineup, pushing Crow-Armstrong down to ninth, where his defense can carry the rest of his profile. Once you slide Crow-Armstrong down there, you can see how thin the rest of the bottom half of the unit is. Gomes is extremely likely to take a major step backward at the plate next season, given his age, his track record, and the inescapable vicissitudes of the catcher position. Madrigal's full-season batting line (.263/.311/.352) probably undersells his true talent a bit, and his contact skills and speed are valuable at the very bottom of the lineup, but you can't afford to prioritize defense at the expense of offense at this many spots, even to round out the batting order. Some teams who have enjoyed a great deal of success recently (like the 2022 Astros and Yankees, or the 2023 Diamondbacks and Brewers) have had top-heavy lineups and glove-only guys to complete an excellent overall defense. Those teams each had at least one or two elite hitters in the heart of their order, though, and that caliber of bat is missing from the Cubs' right now. The X factor, in that regard, is Seiya Suzuki, who hit .350/.406/.667 over the final two months of the campaign. He can't be that good over a full season. If he can be anything akin to that, though, it does slightly change the equation. At the moment, the bench would figure to consist of: Miguel Amaya Miles Mastrobuoni Patrick Wisdom Alexander Canario This group answers a couple of the questions about the projected lineup, but urges forward a couple of the lurking ones there, too. It sure doesn't seem like bringing back both Mastrobuoni and Madrigal for 2024 will make sense. Madrigal got hotter for longer in the middle of the season, but it's Mastrobuoni who owns the handedness edge in a potential utility role. If anything, he's shown slightly better versatility, though Madrigal's defensive chops at third base and Mastrobuoni's misadventures in limited opportunities in the outfield have closed that gap. Most importantly, Mastrobuoni has demonstrated a durability that continues to elude Madrigal. Amaya seems to have a safe place on the 2024 roster, and could even usurp Gomes as the starter relatively quickly. Down the stretch, it was clear that David Ross didn't really trust his rookie backstop, but they have the whole offseason and next year's convocation in Arizona to polish and instruct Amaya as a full-fledged catcher of the kind this organization prefers. The problem is that, the more Amaya plays, the more the Cubs will be deploying an all-or-nothing, strikeout-prone right-handed bat in the lower third of their order. That, at the very least, is a big problem for the staying power of Wisdom and Canario. The former will be arbitration-eligible this winter, with 76 home runs over the last three seasons bloating his projected earnings and an utter lack of defensive reliability narrowing the options for Ross to use him well. In Amaya, Wisdom, Canario, Mastrobuoni, and Madrigal, the Cubs have a bunch of guys with exceptional skills in one or two areas and equally obvious shortcomings in others. That doesn't fit the construction of very many modern benches, and while our first inclination might be to shrug that off, there are a few factors militating against a specialist approach to building a supporting cast in this day and age. The shallowness of benches. If there's a player you trust to get a hit in a big spot, but not in the field or even on the bases, you have to burn two of just four available bench options to get any utility out of that player. It was much easier to make those kinds of maneuvers in the days of seven- and eight-man benches. Those days are long gone. Fewer position players play 160 (or even 155) games with each passing year. As a result, you want bench guys to have the capacity to step into a regular, starting role for a couple weeks or more at a time. That's much harder if those players have just one or two real strengths, and it can add an extra complication: the guy who needs a day off or a trip to the injured list might not match up with the positional competencies of the players available to replace him. The slow, inexorable squeeze on offense continues. The new rules that add an occasional hit on a ground ball and which have resuscitated the running game throughout the league are a nice counterbalance, but that's all they are. Strikeouts remain at an all-time high. Because of that high baseline of swing-and-miss, and because the overlong time since the last round of expansion has flooded rosters with talented pitchers who can throw strikes even with their good breaking ball, the ever-increasing athleticism of ballplayers has done more for team defense than for offense. You just can't be very valuable as even a semi-regular if you lack power, but you also can't sustain much value if you have holes in your swing, because pitchers will find them and your strikeout rate will skyrocket. The current shape of the game favors generalists, not specialists, especially among role players. The Cubs will probably need to jettison at least one of Wisdom, Canario and Mervis this winter, just as they'll need to choose between Madrigal and Mastrobuoni. More dauntingly, they will have to replace those fungible role players with stars, or they'll continue to have an overall talent shortfall in their positional corps next season. Which of these fringe options would you most like to see them keep? Who do you think needs to be let go? Who else already inside the organization should figure into the lineup, barring external additions? Let us know what you're thinking, as we set the stage for the big conversations about this roster over the coming weeks and months. 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Cade HortonPete Crow-ArmstrongMatt ShawOwen CaissieJordan WicksKevin AlcantaraMoises BallesterosBen BrownJefferson RojasJames TriantosJackson FerrisAlexander CanarioMichael AriasDaniel PalenciaLuke LittleBJ Murray JrJaxon WigginsJosh RiveraCristian HernandezHaydn McGeary

Cade HortonPete Crow-ArmstrongMatt ShawOwen CaissieJordan WicksKevin AlcantaraMoises BallesterosBen BrownJefferson RojasJames TriantosJackson FerrisAlexander CanarioMichael AriasDaniel PalenciaLuke LittleBJ Murray JrJaxon WigginsJosh RiveraCristian HernandezHaydn McGeary

One of the 2023 Cubs’ most unassuming heroes was the man who spent the majority of the season behind the catcher’s mask. Looking ahead to 2024, though, we have some big questions to consider about where that position is going and how the Cubs ought to handle it. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports Without doubt, Yan Gomes was one of the most valuable members of the 2023 Cubs. Entering the season, it seemed vaguely unlikely that the Cubs would exercise their $6-million option for his services in 2024, given his age and what he’d done as (in large part) Willson Contreras’s backup in 2022. Here at the end of the season, that seems laughable. Gomes not only delivered several big hits over the course of the season and outhit the average catcher by some 30 points of OPS, but became the anchor of the run prevention unit–a trusted receiver and beloved leader behind the dish. Here’s the problem: Gomes, like brief backup Tucker Barnhart, is a below-average thrower. He’s also a below-average pitch framer. Barnhart was actually slightly above-average in that regard, in 2023, but his bat was so bootless that he couldn’t stick, anyway. Until this season, framing was considered the much more important skill, but with the explosion of the running game after the implementation of new rules, that’s far less true. (It will be still less so if, as seems increasingly likely, the league goes to some form of automated strike zone within the next few years, but the shift is already underway.) Gomes is so good at the softer sciences of catching that it’s hard to envision the Cubs moving on from him at any point in 2024, unless his health forces them to do so. That’s a real possibility, though. Gomes hadn’t taken as many plate appearances or caught as many innings as he did this year since 2018. He’s 36 years old, which is something like 72 in catcher years. Let’s say Gomes does stay healthy next year, though. Can the Cubs afford to keep giving him the bulk of the starts? Even if he calls a great game and uses that extraordinary square-jawed handsomeness to bring calm and confidence to the hearts of his pitchers, can that make up for his deficiencies in the more quantifiable areas of catching? Happily, Miguel Amaya will make that a tough decision, in a good way. He had good framing numbers in his rookie campaign. Alas, he wasn’t good in the throwing department. That was part of why he didn’t seem to earn David Ross’s confidence, at any point. Of course, another part might be that Ross simply sees more of himself in Gomes than in Amaya, or that he seems to instinctively mistrust young players, but in any case, it’s true. It’s not even clear whether they can bring back Amaya (presumably, in a larger role) as the second catcher next year, or whether Ross will prefer that they bring in another external option and keep Amaya in Iowa to open the season. In Amaya, Moises Ballesteros, and Pablo Aliendo, the team does have three young backstops in the upper levels of their system. Only Aliendo has a plus arm, though, and only Amaya seems likely to be a serviceable framer. It’s going to be fascinating to see how the team responds to the winds of change in terms of what catchers do and what catching is. That question hangs heavy over teams other than the Cubs, to be sure, but it feels urgent in their case. For however long framing continues to be a skill that matters, it matters a lot to the Cubs, because their pitching staff relies more on called strikes than most teams’ do. They don’t have overpowering, swing-and-miss stuff. If they get a small zone on a given day, they get into trouble in a hurry. That’s one thing Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins will try to change this winter, but it figures to take some time. While the transformation is ongoing, the Cubs really need good framing, and they need to slow down the running game better than they did in 2023. Neither Gomes nor Amaya seems capable of doing both for them, so it will be a challenge to mix and match well enough to get the offense and defense needed from that spot to get over the hump and into the 2024 postseason. View full article

Sunday marks the end of an exciting and enjoyable season of Cubs baseball. With one of the players who did the most to make it so heading for free agency, let's take a moment to savor his campaign. Image courtesy of © Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports For most Cubs fans, it will be a massive disappointment if Cody Bellinger's Cubs career comes to a close Sunday. He's been too good, and too perfect a fit for their needs, for the team not to make every effort to retain him. Non-tendered by the Dodgers last winter, he signed with Chicago for $17 million, and he's been worth half again that much. Re-signing him won't be easy, and might not even be possible. Still, at this moment, it looks likely to be Jed Hoyer's first priority when the offseason comes. Before then, though, let's pause and consider just how good and fun Bellinger was in 2023. If he doesn't play Sunday, he'll finish the season with a .307/.356/.525 batting line. He's hit 26 home runs, driven in 97, and stolen 20 bases. That's an impressive collection of numbers. In Cubs history, the only other players to have 20/20 seasons in which they also hit at least .300 are Leon Durham, Ryne Sandberg, and Sammy Sosa. Obviously, of those three, Bellinger most resembles Durham. He hasn't blown past 30 in either power-speed category, as Sosa and Sandberg each did at least once during their years of filling up box scores. He's also been aided in reaching 20 steals by the rules changes that led to an explosion of steals throughout the league this year. Still, it's an impressive fun fact. Yet, it doesn't even fully capture the aesthetic pleasure of watching Bellinger play this year. With that lithe build, upright stance, and leaning, stretching swing, Bellinger is simply fun to watch, even in the batter's box--where some great hitters can also be a bit boring. He's unorthodox in delightful ways. He doesn't put up especially impressive batted-ball data, which certainly has to be accounted for when the team considers how much they'll be willing to pay to keep him around, but the way he moves in the box is oddly reassuring on that score. He seems so adaptable that you can shrug off the absence of 115-mile-per-hour screamers, to some extent. He hits it hard enough to find gaps and clear fences when he gets a little count leverage, and the rest of the time, he's just trying to hit it. That's the other dazzling thing about Bellinger: he's shown a remarkable ability to cut down his strikeout rate, and not just in favor of more groundouts. Durham isn't really the erstwhile Cubs first baseman to whom I would compare him most readily. Very often this year, when he's locked out his legs and leaned forward at the waist to sweep a pitch on the outside corner into left field, I've been powerfully reminded of Mark Grace. He's not nearly as extreme a contact hitter as Grace was at his peak, but Bellinger's 15.8-percent strikeout rate is good for a 71 K%+, according to FanGraphs. In other words (since 100 is average), when adjusting for league and other contexts, Bellinger's strikeout rate has been almost 30 percent lower than the average hitter's. Doing that while hitting for power and average, even if it comes as the cost of some walks, is impressive. In terms of K%+, BB%+, ISO+, and BABIP+, his season most resembles a couple of Aramis Ramirez's peak years. Sammy Sosa. Ryne Sandberg. Mark Grace. Aramis Ramirez. If Bellinger has put himself so neatly into the companu of those four players, it's hard to imagine how the Cubs can feel anything but thrilled with his season, or how they can let him walk this winter without putting up a fierce fight to keep him. In addition to that offensive production, he was a fine, capable center fielder (especially before his knee injury in May), and he's graceful and sure-handed at first base. That versatility makes him even more valuable, and while it will also make him harder to re-sign, the Cubs seem especially well-positioned to benefit from it. If Bellinger is willing to be an everyday first baseman, but to continue to make occasional appearances in the outfield, he'll fit perfectly into the team's long-term plans. Failing all that, though, he's been a joy to watch in 2023. If this was his only season in a Cubs uniform, it will go down as one of the best one-and-done years in the team's history. View full article