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The first step in solving a problem is admitting that there is one. Thing is, Jed Hoyer only kind of did so on Tuesday. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images If you were hoping for something of value to escape the lips of Jed Hoyer on Tuesday, then I’m not sure you’ve ever heard Jed Hoyer speak. Much of the day’s end-of-year presser involved general statements about the disappointment of the year, vague information on player health, and some word salad about needing to outperform projections. As frustrating as it can be to listen to Hoyer speak coming off the candor of the Theo Epstein reign atop the Chicago Cubs front office, that latter bit is sure to strike as particularly infuriating. In essence, Hoyer noted that each team in this year’s playoff field has at least one five-win player, with that player outperforming projections to reach the mark. I’m oversimplifying the quote, but Hoyer’s oversimplifying the concept and denying reality. That’s worse, right? It seems worse. We at North Side Basseball have not been quiet about the Cubs’ need for a legitimate star. They’re a team comprised of complementary bats. That’s no fault of their own. They’re not built to be upper-tier run producers. There are legitimately good offensive pieces throughout the lineup, however streaky their actual output may be. But lacking that true catalyst in the lineup is what stretches their bouts of offensive woes from weeks to months. I say months, because Hoyer very astutely pointed out that seemingly the entire team fell into a season-ruining slump across at least May and June--as if we were unaware. Ultimately, the major issue with Hoyer’s sentiment about outperforming projections is that it confirms the fears of fans--ones that had already been realized throughout much of the 2024 season. The Chicago Cubs were relying on upside. They needed upper-percentile production from throughout their lineup in order to make their roster, as constructed, actually work. They built a lineup on hope, more than any tangible quality. That’s a problem, and given what Hoyer communicated on Tuesday, it’s a deep-rooted one. Let’s talk about Hoyer’s assertion regarding playoff teams, five-win players, and outperforming projections, because there is at least a kernel of truth there from a broad perspective. Yes, you need elite baseball players to be an elite baseball team. Major League Baseball history is merely sprinkled with tales of sum-of-their-parts clubs that have been successful. The majority of great teams were built to win with great players. However, where did those players that Hoyer references come from? Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor, and William Contreras were all acquired via trade. Shohei Ohtani and Bryce Harper were signed in free agency. Bobby Witt Jr. was drafted No. 2 overall. Even if you wanted to go a bit farther down the leaderboard and take some injury context into account, you’ve got Manny Machado, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Trea Turner. Free agency, trade, trade, and free agency. Each player listed was either acquired via front-office aggression or, in the case of Witt, features a certain level of prospect pedigree. I’m not so blinded by 2024 frustration (which is, admittedly, increasing as I write this) as to not acknowledge that there are exceptions here. Gunnar Henderson and Jackson Merrill weren’t top-five picks. Yordan Alvarez was acquired by Houston before he even logged a minor-league game with the Dodgers. Willy Adames (not a five-win guy, but darn close) was acquired before his real and sustained breakout in Milwaukee. But you’re also talking about some very specific organizations with a track record of getting their players to realize their potential. Which brings us to another issue with Hoyer’s empty truisms: the Cubs haven’t done that. Perhaps it’s unreasonable to have expected it to happen thus far. But I’m also not so sure it is. We have myriad examples of 2021 and 2022 draftees already performing as MLB regulars. Some of them are on star-level trajectories. Despite the high volume of intriguing position players, we haven’t seen anyone whom the team developed entirely internally break down the door to the big leagues. More specifically, they haven’t done it to the level that Hoyer describes. A regular role doesn’t even seem like it’s on the horizon for this group of enticing positional prospects, let alone a star-level breakthrough. Are we supposed to believe that it’s in the tank there somewhere, on the way? Should it be considered a believable scenario, deployed as justification for not pursuing legitimate offensive talent in the way that many of their National League counterparts already have? There’s no solid evidence to support buying the hope that Hoyer was trying to sell you on Tuesday. The specific issue here is stars. That’s what Hoyer was talking about. The team can develop quality position players (and probably even better pitchers). But the idea that you need a certain caliber of player to be postseason-bound with any kind of regularity is demonstrably true, and the cause to believe that this front office can acquire or develop such players is scant. Because you need to do one of two things. You either need to acquire upper-tier players via trades or free agency, or you need to develop them with robust organizational processes. You need to be willing to trade prospects or spend actual dollars. Hoyer and company have proven far too conservative in their pursuit of that level of player in any context (we’re not talking about the Dansby Swansons of the world, or a trade for Isaac Paredes here; the bar we're talking about is above their heads) and we haven’t seen evidence of the latter. The Phillies and Dodgers and Brewers are running circles around them on both sides of the equation. Of course, none of this is new. We knew this about Hoyer before he opened his mouth on Tuesday. What we don’t know is how much of that is attributable to behind-the-scenes budget constraints. Frankly, though, it doesn’t matter. This is a major-market baseball team with a recent history of success. They reset to build up their farm and get their books healthy. They’ve done that. The next step, however, is going to require Hoyer to step much farther outside of his comfort zone–whether with his prospects or his bosses' money–than he might be comfortable doing. And that, dear reader, is the problem here. View full article

Baseball seasons are so long that almost every team and individual season end up rendered in gray, rather than black-and-white. So, in a gun steel-and-charcoal campaign, where are the light gray silver linings--and who gets to decide on their value? Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images Success is a hilarious concept within the world of sports. From a fan perspective, success is almost entirely dependent on final outcomes--especially in matters of team sport. Did your team win a championship? No? Well, then we can only assume that season was a failure, not a success. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but fandom does tend to be a pretty simple framework in most cases. As a teacher, coach, and athlete development specialist, I’m extremely process-oriented by nature. I'm also prone to stretches of overthinking about what sound process and success actually look like. So, while I can sit here and say that the 2024 Chicago Cubs season has not been a success--and be right--I also have to recognize that there are layers to that that would make me wrong. The organization set a goal to reach the playoffs this season, on their way to establishing the “next great Cubs team.” In that respect, the season was not a success. You don’t even need the championship qualifier here. The team underachieved for months, putting together a hot stretch in August that served as the fake rally with which we’ve become all-too-familiar, in macrocosm. They failed to reach the playoffs. There are reasons they failed that ran beyond their control, but by their own standard, set forth back in the spring, it was an unsuccessful season. There are layers to consider, though. A team is made up of individuals, and those inidividuals all had their own seasons. We can define success a little differently when looking at them in isolation than when examining the team in a wide-angle lens. Focusing specifically on the offense, what do you want out of a hitter to demonstrate success in a given year? Landing on the positive side of the 100 wRC+ threshold? Developing a new element of the skill set, or continuing to thrive in an old one? Steady performance? Broad development, especially for younger players? I’ll admit I probably have more questions than answers. At the same time, our answer is probably somewhere in there. You obviously want hitters to land above average, and to show us that they are either providing stability where it didn't previously exist or developing new areas of success. That last bit rings true in terms of development, too. With that in mind, perhaps we can turn our attention to some individual Cub hitters that did have a successful 2024 season--or at least muse about their place within all of this. Places where we can count simple developmental progress as a win are always the most comfortable, so that’s where we start. The Cubs had some very loud successes here, primarily in the form(s) of Michael Busch and Pete Crow-Armstrong. Busch was a fascinating acquisition from the jump. Squeezed out of the infield picture in Los Angeles, the offensive upside was clear. It was just a matter of where he’d play. It quickly became clear that he’d assume the void left by Anthony Rizzo what feels like a decade ago. And he’s done just that, in effective fashion. He’s been above the 100 mark in wRC+ in each individual month outside of August, while turning in a 120 mark overall. Perhaps more impressive (given that we expected his offense to be pretty good) is the defensive evolution he’s showcased. He has 8 Defensive Runs Saved. That number isn’t only acceptable; it's elite. There’s some development that he’ll still undergo – primarily cutting down the strikeouts – but he’s the guy. Same goes for Pete Crow-Armstrong. We spent the entire year wondering if and when Crow-Armstrong’s bat could even remotely catch up to his glove. Turns out, the answer to if was yes, and the answer to when was August. A 154 wRC+, .244 ISO, and 8.2 BB% were among the marks Crow-Armstrong posted that month. Everything good was up, and the strikeout rates were down. He’s carried that over a bit into September, too. The defense requires no encomiums. He’s a Platinum Glove Award candidate-in-waiting. It’s a different conversation than we might’ve been having in, say, July, but the growth there is evident. This breakout was essential for establishing his role. I suppose we can lump Miguel Amaya in with those guys, too. The sample size is still small, but no smaller than Crow-Armstrong's. After Amaya's swing and approach changes in the summer, it’s possible that he could be The Guy behind the dish--although only possible, and far from certain. He posted gaudy wRC+ figures in July and August (149 and 157, respectively), and struck out at a mere 2.9% clip in the latter month. His ISO exceeded .250 in August, too. It hasn’t carried over into September, primarily due to some horrendous batted-ball luck. Given how poor his offense looked for the first three-ish months of the year, it’s hard to label it a success outright. Maybe we lean more inconclusive. But he’s at least generated more equity for himself within the “catcher of the future” conversation. The development angle is a copout, though. You can do that with nearly every team in Major League Baseball. “Well they’re bad, but look at this guy who’ll be important going forward.” Let’s talk about the veterans, because this is where things get murky, and murky is where things get interesting. Ian Happ has had a successful season. He shook off a poor April and a merely average May to post upper-tier numbers for much of the season. It hasn’t been his best overall season, but he’s continued to demonstrate steadiness in his approach and has bumped up the power numbers from his last two seasons (.210 ISO), even with a complete absence of it early in the year. The eye test doesn’t love him with the glove, but the metrics all have him above average. Who am I to argue (although I plan to, at a later date)? It's not nearly as cut-and-dry with the likes of Seiya Suzuki, Cody Bellinger, or Dansby Swanson, however. Do we call it a successful year for someone who turned in a very strong offensive season, but became unplayable defensively? What about a hitter who turned in a solid season, but lost much of the impact that earned him a lucrative new three-year(ish) deal? And then we arrive at the captain of the Chicago infield, who started off poorly on both sides of the ball and quickly regained control over his defense--only for the offense to continue faltering until late July. While never an upper-tier offensive threat to begin with, can we consider what has become a just-okay year by his own standards to be a success? If you haven’t figured it out, this column is speaking more to the philosophy of success than the actual standard of it. You could certainly point to the strides Suzuki made at the dish, to argue in favor of a successful 2024. You could also lean to the side that says his defensive ineptitude could hamstring the Cubs’ roster construction, if he’s strictly a DH now. Cody Bellinger’s year hasn’t not been a success. But the absence of actual power is also a concerning element to navigate for him. Swanson isn’t expected to be an offensive catalyst. But playing on that contract, he kind of is, right? Or he has to be, unless and until the team expands its spending in some substantial way. Does a two-month stretch of strong showings at the plate compensate for a performance that was at least partially responsible for digging the Cubs their early hole? This is the manifestation of my own brain, getting caught up in pieces elsewhere on the internet that opine things like “Dansby Swanson had a good year” or “It’s a good thing that Cody Bellinger is probably coming back, actually.” Because my initial inclination is to disagree. Yet, the massive gray areas wherein we can define success or failure complicate that to such a dire extent. It’s one of baseball’s great paradoxes. Regardless of all that, disappointing as the 2024 Cubs may be, at least they offer some… nuance? Some things to talk about? I had discussed, back in the middle of the summer, that the Cubs were not only bad, but something worse: boring. They are, at least, less boring now. Major League Baseball is a unique sport, in that there’s such a significant emphasis on development. Other sports have this, as well, where you’re looking at stages of a rookie’s evolution into a veteran. But there’s such a heavier emphasis on it in the baseball world that it’s easier to find the successes in the midst of the disappointment of the team context. Ultimately, you can define success in a lot of ways. The 2024 Chicago Cubs were not successful in many of them. But there are also these other things (I’m gesturing broadly now) where we can actually be happy about the trendlines. So who knows what it really means, anyway? View full article

He's not a bad player, but he's not a good fit, either. How do you solve a problem like a likable former MVP? Image courtesy of © Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images Even with a brief run of success at the end of August into September, it was always going to be a stretch for the Chicago Cubs to be playoff-bound. If you’re like me, you’ve been thinking about the 2025 Cubs for quite a while. With the team’s postseason hopes set to come to an official end within the next handful of days, though, we can start to do so in a bit more earnest fashion. With that, there’s one very significant piece of the discussion at the forefront of the offseason: Cody Bellinger. There’s been a bit of waffling over Bellinger’s potential value, should he decide to re-enter the free-agent market this winter by exercising his opt-out provision. That's bound to be the case when you’re talking about one of the higher-profile potential free agents. With Bob Nightengale recently reporting that Bellinger is “fully expected” to opt in, however, it’s time to grok just what that looks like for the Cubs. Bellinger has turned in a solid, if unspectacular 2024 campaign. He’s been above-average by wRC+ (114), and has sustained most of the gains he made last year in his contact and approach. The difference, however, lies in the power. Last year, Bellinger hit 26 homers and posted a .218 isolated slugging. Both were his highest marks since 2019. This year, he sits at 18 and a .168 ISO. There are a handful of factors we could examine as to why, but our focus here isn’t directly on Bellinger’s offensive output. Overall, we can classify it as… fine. Any number of teams would take that production, even with some subtraction from his 2023 power output--especially when you combine it with his versatility. As of this writing, Bellinger has appeared at first base, center field, and right field on regular bases, plus shorter stints as the DH. He’s been roughly average at each spot, by most analytical measures. A steady, versatile bat with occasional power is a profile that has some appeal. But assuming Bellinger doesn’t exercise his opt-out–as is currently the industry expectation–is he actually a fit for the 2025 Chicago Cubs? The question is defined more by the emergence of certain players around him, rather than by any shortcoming of Bellinger himself. It’s a logistical question that also lends itself to a financial one, given the payroll context associated with an opt-in. The logistical one, though, is the more interesting one for me. As frustrating as the season has been from a contention standpoint, the emergence of Michael Busch and Pete Crow-Armstrong have been exciting. The former would surely get some down-ballot Rookie of the Year votes in less robust rookie classes, thanks to his 20-homer season and increasing maturity as a hitter. The latter has captured fans' imaginations, thanks to a 10/25 season and an explosive second half. Jovial as we may be over their respective developments, it’s precisely those breakouts that are starting to squeeze Bellinger out of the picture. When Bellinger re-upped with the Cubs, the expectation was that he’d man center until Crow-Armstrong was ready. From there, he could move onto the dirt. Busch’s emergence instead pushed Bellinger over to right field. That, in turn, forced Seiya Suzuki into a more consistent role as the team’s designated hitter--although, that part works out nicely, since Suzuki wasn't looking especially viable in right field anyway. It’s a configuration that we could reasonably expect to carry into 2025: Bellinger back via (in essence) opting in, Busch and Crow-Armstrong each being pre-arb, and another two years on Suzuki's contract create a lot of inertia that would tend to keep them all where they've been lately. From there, you’re locking in the young guys, making Suzuki a full-timer at DH, and rolling Bellinger out in right almost every day, occasionally rotating him elsewhere only to spell the others or get off his feet. It’s a scenario that strips the Cubs of any flexibility, however. For one, the splits aren’t so stark in their contrast that you’re regularly moving Bellinger in or out of anywhere other than right, unless it’s a day off or a specific arm that you’d like the others to avoid. Additionally, right field offers the team perhaps their best chance at upgrading the offense in the grander way this team needs to seek this winter. Bellinger’s return would hamstring that effort--and not only on paper. Which means that, objectively, the best thing to do about Bellinger’s apparent return would be to turn around and trade him. It frees them up to make meaningful additions elsewhere, while giving specific players on your roster who are more crucial to the long-term future a little more freedom to operate. You’re then able to seek out meaningful additions that the lineup needs to generate a more sustained offensive product. Of course, that comes with a major caveat: the contract itself. I generally try to stay out of financial discussions, but it’s hard to imagine too many teams being eager to take on Bellinger’s $27.5 million figure, given his lack of power and the fact that so few were willing to give legitimate pursuit last winter. Nor are they going to seek out Suzuki’s $19 million, given his rapid trajectory toward DH-only territory and his no-trade clause. So even moving one to open some flexibility in terms of adding impact talent to your roster seems like an extremely unlikely scenario. The logistical question feeds into the financial one. And one question plus one question equals a problem for the Cubs. They have to navigate their current, unsatisfactory roster construction by attempting to add an impact bat to a spot that doesn’t exist, by moving one of a couple of contracts that nobody is likely to want, all while operating within an internal model that appears to be conservative to a fault. Therein lies the very obvious problem with Cody Bellinger’s impending return. It’s (for me, at least) feeding into a rather negative perception of an otherwise quality baseball player. If anything, though, it’s more condemnation of the organization than criticism of the player. Because, again, Bellinger is fine. Unfortunately, this team needs to add a player that is multiple levels above fine, so that they may match the offensive output of their contending counterparts in the National League. And while they could do it with a full season of this late-season Crow-Armstrong or this impressive version of Michael Busch, relying on upside is exactly what sank the Cubs in another year of non-contention. Ultimately, it’s not so much that Bellinger’s return is a minus for the organization, as it is that leadership is ill-equipped to navigate what comes next. View full article

The Cubs' long-term shortstop has come on strong since the All-Star break, but there are mixed signals within his data in terms of the sustainability of that success. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports The amount of ink spilled over Dansby Swanson, his performance (on both sides of the ball), and his contract throughout this 2024 season is enough to… do something that you could do with a large volume of ink. In a summer where many of us in this space spent the time lamenting just about every facet of an underperforming offense, it was Swanson’s ineptitude that drew the most ire. I last wrote about Dansby Swanson on Apr. 10. It was a different time. The offense was off to a strong start, showcasing discipline and intention with seemingly each individual plate appearance. They were chasing starters from games early. Swanson himself was slashing .270/.378/.514 through 45 plate appearances, with a walk rate over 15% and a top-30 ISO. He was sixth overall in HardHit%. The falloff from there was precipitous. Even by the end of April, his wRC+ sat at just 89. He followed that with a figure of 38 in May. Things rebounded slightly in June (110), before a mark of 63 in July. Only in August did Swanson turn in his highest quality month, from start to finish. Therein, Swanson went for a 120 wRC+ while slashing .261/.340/.443 and posting strikeout and walk numbers of 22.0% and 11.0%, respectively. Every single output listed was his best in a month this year, with a .182 ISO trailing only June for his best, as well (.204). It’s impossible to look at the explosion of the team’s offense and not look at Dansby Swanson as a key part of it. There have been sexier elements of it, for sure. Pete Crow-Armstrong’s apparent breakout, Miguel Amaya’s mechanical adjustments, and Seiya Suzuki turning in a third consecutive well-above-average month could all have a lot to say about this team down the stretch. But we can’t overlook Swanson’s rebound. What we can do, though, is look upon it with less optimism than we might some of the other developments within the lineup. On Apr. 10, Swanson was aggressive on – and subsequently mashing – fastballs. Despite some regular month-to-month variance, that’s long been his M.O.: capitalizing against heat. The early trends were not at all indicative of how he’d finish the month. Fastballs ended up being the pitch group he swung at with the lowest frequency in April. Hard stuff then took a backseat to offspeed in May, June, and July--offspeed, as in the pitch types that Swanson chases the most, whiffs at the most, and manages the lowest rate of hard contact against for almost the entirety of his career. August, though, showed us exactly the iteration of Swanson that the team needs to see in order to justify his contract. He swung at fastballs at a 53.5% clip last month, while cutting the offspeed Swing% by nearly 15 percentage points (down to 46%). Shockingly (he said sarcastically), he demonstrated his lowest chase rate (17.6%), lowest whiff rate (26.2%), and highest HardHit% (40.0%) against the hard stuff. So Swanson, a guy with the clearest of needs at the plate to maximize his output as a hitter, did exactly the thing that he needs to do for an entire month. As such, it becomes easy to ask: Why doesn’t he just swing at fastballs all the time? There’s some complexity to that question, though--mostly in that pitchers are likely smarter than to give the fastball masher a diet of fastballs. Except, what if they aren’t? Swanson has seen an increasing number of fastballs, with July to August representing the only drop, wherein he still saw roughly 55% heaters in the latter. Even when he’s behind, pitchers are still throwing him the hard stuff at a rate that has sat as the highest in four of the five completed months to date. One would absolutely be justified in wondering exactly where this level of awareness has been from Swanson throughout 2024. We can’t attribute all of it to pitch types. Swanson has made some mechanical adjustments focused on elevating the ball more, given his alarming career-high of a 49.4 GB%. Perhaps he’s drawn some recent inspiration from Mal Swanson’s Olympic exploits (I say that only slightly ironically; I’ve got NWSL takes for sale, too). But with how tight the correlation has been throughout his career between offensive output and fastball aggression, it’s difficult to put too much stock anywhere else. Ultimately, there are a couple of truths in matters of Dansby Swanson. One is that he needs to succeed on fastballs. A second is that he’s not always going to swing at fastballs. That leads to a third truth, which is that Dansby Swanson is going to remain an immensely frustrating player to watch, because of the first two. The looming fourth truth, however, is that Swanson isn’t going anywhere. So as much as we’d like to see a prolonged stretch like this, we’ll likely have to accept the fact that moments such as these are fleeting, due to his own issues with plate discipline--a fifth truth, if you choose to view it as permanent. View full article

Don’t look now, but the Chicago Cubs might just have their catcher of the future… Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports …is a thing I would say, if I were a more optimistic person in matters of this particular franchise. There’s no doubt that Miguel Amaya’s second half has been superb. It’s inarguable. After a first half in which he hit only .201 and ran a paltry 58 wRC+, Amaya has been a massive boon to a Cubs offense that has shown actual signs of life at different times over the last few weeks. His second-half numbers read as follows: .311/.346/.527, 12.5 K%, 5.0 BB%, .216 ISO, 143 wRC+. Amaya falls in the top 5-7 among qualifying backstops in virtually every category since the start of the second half, with very slim margins separating him from the top in most instances. That illustrates just how legitimate his impact has been since he made some mechanical adjustments and refined the approach. That’s the component of this stretch of play that has been discussed: the adjustments. We’ve discussed multiple angles of the changes here at NSBB, with Matt Trueblood most recently looking at the chaos present within the nuances of Amaya’s changes that have led to such rapid gains in his offensive performance. Further discussion of the changes, however, is not our purpose here. We’re not even interested in the sustainability of it all, in the more literal sense. Instead, the focus here is on the implications this could have on the catcher spot moving forward, from an organizational standpoint. More specifically, we’re interested in how this could impact the team’s perspective of the position. Because there’s a very direct outcome that seems almost too obvious at this point. We all know what it is. Miguel Amaya carries his run through the end of 2024. The Cubs – who reportedly made an inspired pitch to acquire Los Angeles Angels catcher Logan O’Hoppe prior to the trade deadline, showcasing a clear desire to upgrade their future behind the dish – decide that Amaya has now earned a longer runway with which to latch onto the catcher-of-the-future gig. They fill in the backup spot with a glove-first veteran, add their traditional third catcher to stash in Iowa, and call it a day. Again, it’s almost too obvious. This is a conservative front office. I won’t go as far as saying they’ll choose the path of least resistance. But Jed Hoyer-led leadership has shown a certain degree of loyalty to players already in the organization, at the expense of pursuing outside additions. Not that there’s exactly a plethora of outside talent to be had on the catching market. In free agency, you’ve got Elías Díaz, Danny Jansen, and an array of players who would serve as a no. 2, at best. They could take another run at O’Hoppe, but the trade market is likely to be even more barren than the free-agent class. Once you have an upper-tier catcher, you’re not likely to let them walk. With that in mind, I do think that the offseason context would make the obvious approach here simultaneously logical. Amaya has shown that, at his best, you could do far worse. The fear, however, is that the front office doesn’t even make the effort. They’ve seen what they need to see over a two- or three-month span, and move on to examining other avenues of offensive upgrades within the roster. That, dear reader, would be bad business. I wouldn’t go as far as saying dereliction of duty, but I’m also not not saying that. We’ve seen Miguel Amaya at his best. But we also have a far more extended sample of him at his worst. Perhaps the breakout is real, and he can be an above-average hitter from behind the plate. What that doesn’t mean, however, is that the Cubs should merely hand him the keys to the gig. I don’t think leadership is foolish enough to do exactly that. The fear persists, though. We’ve seen this front office play it safe far too often. Failing to make meaningful additions and then attempting to gas up the upside is how they’ve found themselves mired in offensive mediocrity for almost the entirety of 2024. I don’t know if Amaya’s adjustments will hold up. And I don’t know if the Cubs can even find legitimate catching help on any market this winter. I do know that this team in the Jed Hoyer Era has a track record with respect to decision-making. And this stretch of play is reigniting those fears. View full article

It feels like there's always an enigma in the center of the Cubs' positional core, somewhere--a player whose performance and fit into the team's long-term plans are both hard to suss out. Lately, the most inscrutable of the bunch is the man making more than any other 2024 Cub. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports I loved so much about what Cody Bellinger brought to the table for the 2023 Chicago Cubs. Turning in his first 20/20 season while also producing his best overall offensive numbers since 2019 made the Cubs bringing him back an absolute necessity. A team short on bats needed Bellinger to return for 2024--to say nothing of the quality defense he provides at multiple positions. Bellinger’s 2024 has been… not entirely what he or the team hoped. But it’s also been quite similar to what he provided last year. To break out my English teacher vernacular, it’s been rather paradoxical. Many of Bellinger’s 2023 approach and contact trends have carried over. His swing rates are virtually identical. His contact rates, both inside and out of the zone, have fluctuated by less than 2 percent. His non-contact strike rate this year is 26.1%, against a 25.9% mark last year. It’s led to almost the exact same strikeout and walk outputs that we saw last year. Even with some of the underlying concerns over quality of contact and batted-ball luck, Bellinger has managed to turn in a very solid season. Except where he hasn’t. That comes on the power side. Despite a 26-homer season last year, Bellinger’s overall ISO was still .218. For a player who has multiple .300+ ISO seasons to his credit, that wasn't an overly impressive figure. It's been a nasty surprise, then, to see it drop rather significantly even from there, this year. In 2024, Bellinger sports a .154 ISO. His HardHit% this year, at 32.0%, is nearly identical to last year. Not even at the height of his struggles in Los Angeles was it so low. Wavering quality of contact combined with an increased FB% has led to a bit less luck on the batted ball side this year, too. At this rate, it would obviously be unreasonable to expect Bellinger to return even remotely to his former power output from early in his career. His body has simply been through too much. He has managed to evolve, however, and remains a very capable bat, thanks to his refined contact ability and occasional power. This is where my concerns over Bellinger’s value to this Cubs roster start to manifest, though--because "quality approach and occasional power" sounds an awful lot like, well, a lot of this Cubs roster. The Cubs need impact. The unique structure of Bellinger’s three-year deal offers him the ability to opt out after both 2024 and 2025. There was a point in the year where opting in seemed like a virtual certainty. But with a bit of an uptick in performance in the second half (123 wRC+, .207 ISO), there remains a chance he could look for the big payday that eluded him last winter, out on the market. The unfortunate reality is that the Cubs should probably hope that he does. In a purely hypothetical sense, such a decision would offer the Cubs the most opportunity to seek legitimate impact via the trade market. I previously discussed the inflexibility that the Cubs have in adding impact to their roster. Their left fielder is locked in. Essentially their entire infield is, as well. Their center fielder is on the come-up. You’re looking at right field (in the event of a Bellinger departure) and catcher as the only plausible areas where they could seek the upgrade they so sorely need for the middle of their lineup, without incurring major transaction costs or the added risk of redundant resource allocation. The latter also becomes eliminated if the front office decides Miguel Amaya has shown enough in the second half to get another crack at the starting gig in 2025. This is where I start to struggle to navigate the idea of Cody Bellinger in the Cubs lineup moving forward. He’s so similar to the rest of their lineup. Steady approach. Good for occasional power. But he’s no longer the guy you can build around. If he chooses to opt in, the Cubs will have a quality bat in their lineup. However, they’re at the point where they need much more than mere quality. They need a star. And Bellinger walking in favor of a new contract provides them with the best chance to do it. View full article

It's a good time to ask some big questions, even though we don't quite have their answers yet. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports I have a finite number of approaches to writing. Generally, I’m heading down one of three routes: push an agenda in favor of or against a narrative; draw attention to a particular player; or explore the space of my own brain in pursuit of making something abstract more concrete. This is the latter. My brain doesn’t tend to handle abstract well, and I can't seem to get a concrete sense of the expectations for Pete Crow-Armstrong. I’m not sure what the Chicago Cubs fan collective wants from Crow-Armstrong. Over the past handful of months, I’ve read plenty of columns and thinkpieces from various sources, expressing something about what they want to see from the defensive wizard. Whether it’s taking umbrage with his bunting habits or examining every single incremental offensive improvement, I’m struggling to grasp exactly what we want to see. It’s somehow become more abstract than “get better on offense.” Er. Well. Has it, though? Crow-Armstrong’s 2024 output is…quite bad. His slash includes a mere .210 average & paltry .254 on-base percentage while running at a wRC+ of 67. He’s cut the strikeout rate from even his minor league time, down to 21.9%, and is supplying at least occasional power (.141 ISO). But when it comes down to it, you’d like to see the guy with 100th-percentile sprint speed on base just a little bit more. We’d likely see more than his 23 steals to date. August, however, has seen a shift in offensive maturity. Through 57 plate appearances this month, he’s hitting .269 and reaching base at a .309 clip. He’s also slugging .500 and cut the strikeout rate all the way down to 8.8%. The walk rate, at 5.3%, exceeds his season mark. It all culminates in a wRC+ around 120 for the month. It seems to represent a corner being turned. Sustainability is the next step. I assume the collective will agree on both counts. We could haggle over which components are sustainable. Maybe a little less power? For sure, a little more whiff is coming. In any case, the upside with the stick is being realized in a way that it previously wasn’t. But regardless of what the actual narrative is surrounding any given day’s iteration of Crow-Armstrong, I’m still left wondering what exactly we want to see before 2024 runs out--assuming that, you know, the last 50-ish plate appearances are not it. I think that the actual reasoning behind such varied perspectives on what Crow-Armstrong is and is not doing is a much grander and, dare I say, more abstract idea than the performance of the player himself. The reality of our perception of Crow-Armstrong’s development – in my extremely humble opinion – runs deeper than the actual trajectory of his development. What I think we’re looking for from Crow-Armstrong is what my own brain craves: clarity. Around the game, we see young players – especially on the outfield grass – immediately make an impact. Baseball is in a terrific place, with myriad rising stars contributing to their teams in meaningful ways. Crow-Armstrong, on the other hand, has been more of a project, at least on the offensive side. I think the inherent quality of human impatience is why we’ve seen such a range of thoughts around him. We not only want to know what he’ll develop into as a hitter, but we want to know now. The Cubs have enough players with upside. We’ve seen them fail to realize it all over the major-league roster this year. We’ve also seen them start to scratch it in the upper levels of the system. It’s all tantalizing, for better and worse. But it’s hard to stomach so much abstraction, whether in my own brain or the rational reader’s. That’s the conclusion with which I’m running. I don’t think that Crow-Armstrong has reached the point of being a polarizing player. Very few are questioning the upside itself; those who are appear to be outliers. But the remainder of the collective appears to be looking at different things. The improvement. The individual plate appearances. The bunting. It’s created a scattered idea of the player. Ultimately, I think within all of this, we’re just looking for the same thing: to know. Perhaps we will soon. View full article

There's a difference between what this team is and what it ought to be. That much is clear. Unfortunately, the club's irrational belief in its own roster has foreclosed some options for fixing that. Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports If you’re like me, you’re punting on the remainder of the 2024 Chicago Cubs. If you’re even more like me, you’re punting on the remainder of the 2024 Chicago Cubs and turning your attention almost entirely toward Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears. But the very little bit of attention span I have remaining for baseball, as August crisps toward September, is thinking about the Cubs in 2025. Earlier this week, I wondered about Ian Happ’s best spot in the batting order moving forward. Given his work this year, it appears that either the top of the lineup card or the very middle thereof (No. 1 or No. 5) are the most likely slots in which we’ll see him. Throughout that process, though, a concern started to emerge in the back of my mind that eventually moved to the front of it. That concern was later compounded by fellow North Side Baseball contributor @matto1233’s verbalizing of the same idea. So let’s talk about it. Specifically, the concern is roster flexibility. In a broader sense, it’s roster construction. But as it relates to any movement within this lineup – an idea that could have a large bearing on where Happ hits next year – the rigid nature of the group is something I’ll be watching with a keen eye as we crawl toward the winter. The Chicago Cubs are a team built out of complementary bats. This is an issue we’ve raised before. It’s a team – and a market – in need of A Guy. They have lots of nice bats on the roster. But without A Guy, you’re not maximizing the complementary nature of the individual skill sets. These are the current Cubs hitters under contract or team control through at least next season (with the final year of that control): Happ: 2026 Michael Busch: 2029 Nico Hoerner: 2026 Dansby Swanson: 2029 Isaac Paredes: 2027 Seiya Suzuki: 2026 Cody Bellinger: 2024 (Player Opt-In, though!) That’s to say nothing of Pete Crow-Armstrong in center field and a handful of positional prospects in the upper minors (Matt Shaw, James Triantos, Kevin Alcántara, etc.). Simply put, there are a ton of bodies here, both for the remainder of 2024 and for the foreseeable future. So if you’re Jed Hoyer et al, what exactly are you doing here? You’ve assembled a group of quality baseball players, but many of them have underperformed or proven too streaky to be reliable. And while none of them have performed outright poorly enough to dump them in some money-saving fashion, the collective also isn’t strong enough to hang with the top offenses around the National League. As such, the ones the Cubs might be motivated to move should a higher-upside bat come along are likely to be difficult to clear. Nobody’s taking Swanson’s contract. It’s unlikely that anyone takes on Bellinger’s, once he (presumably) opts in. Seiya Suzuki’s upside with the bat isn’t so much that a team is willing to acquire him to DH, given his demonstrated durability issues. You can maybe move Hoerner on his reasonable contract, but what impact player are you getting at the keystone? There are so few such players, and those teams that possess one aren’t keen to part with them. If you’re moving Hoerner, it’s probably to create space for Matt Shaw or James Triantos, but do either of them move the needle enough? And those are really the only conversations this team might be willing to have. Happ is an integral part of the roster and the culture. Busch has brought stability to a position that’s been volatile since Anthony Rizzo’s departure. Crow-Armstrong’s all-world defense is finally being supported by some flashes at the plate. You just moved a fan favorite in Christopher Morel to acquire Paredes and his multiple years of team control. They’re all locks. Now we’ve got the ol’ rock-and-hard place issue. This ultimately speaks to two problems. One is the organization’s roster construction to date. As Matt Ostrowski put it in the NSBB writers Slack, the Cubs brought in Dansby Swanson to be A Guy--except that Swanson isn’t A Guy. He’s someone you bring in to supplement A Guy, as we all saw him do with Freddie Freeman and Ronald Acuña Jr. in Atlanta. Defense? Yes. Leadership and vibes? Absolutely. Offensively, though, nothing about his slog of a 2024 has been surprising, as frustrating as it may be. He’s a microcosm of how the front office has assembled this particular group of hitters. The other problem is how you make meaningful additions moving forward. Outside of the catcher spot, where the team has reportedly already expressed interest in a notable upgrade, there isn’t an obvious spot at which you could pursue A Guy. In my extremely outsider opinion, Hoyer is unlikely to want to disrupt the cultural fabric of the team much. Nor will he want to move any of these guys for a subpar return, given the upside they actually possess regardless of 2024 outcomes. That’s not to say it’s impossible that such a move could transpire over the course of the winter. But such inflexibility, in conjunction with historically conservative leadership, makes it extremely cumbersome to develop into a concrete idea. In turn, that makes it harder than we'd all like it to be to envision the path from here to where the Cubs need to be. View full article

Does batting order matter? Put it this way: try running your team out there without writing one. Image courtesy of © David Richard-USA TODAY Sports I’ve been on something of a personal quest this season--one not entirely unlike the archetypal hero & their journey to self-actualization. No, I haven’t encountered personal loss, physical danger, or newfound levels of maturation wrought by the people, places, and things with which I interact. But my journey has featured a call, an abyss, and, I think, a conclusion. That conclusion is this: I’m in on Ian Happ. If you remember, I spent the early portion of the season pondering Happ’s purpose. I wasn’t sold on whether the Chicago Cubs left fielder was even good, let alone an integral part of the roster. Several months after the fact, however, I have arrived at the conclusion that the Cubs do, indeed, need Happ. That isn’t my purpose here, though. I could surely throw out some numbers to support the idea of Happ being a key piece of the Next Great Whatever. He is, after all, on pace for one of his best seasons yet, courtesy of an elite walk rate and the potential to set a new career mark in home runs. Instead, with the Cubs largely out of the National League Wild Card race, my questions are starting to shift toward 2025. In this particular case, I’m wondering where Happ is best suited within the Cubs’ lineup for next season. Technically, Happ has hit out of eight different spots in the order this season. If we eliminate the singular plate appearance as a pinch-hitter in the No. 9 hole, we’re looking at seven. He has an additional 49 PAs between second, sixth, and seventh. He has 54 in the No. 3 spot and 61 as No. 4. The two slots in which we’ve seen Happ the most are leadoff (143 PA) and the fifth spot (186 PA). The distribution of time in each is quite interesting, as well. Craig Counsell rode Happ as his top guy through almost all of March and April. Beginning Apr. 19, we saw a stretch in which Happ bounced around quite a bit. He went sixth, second, and then third for a long stretch, before the second half of May saw him bouncing around again. In early June, he was slotted in at no. 5 through Jul. 11, before a few weeks in the cleanup spot. On Jul. 30, he was back in the leadoff spot, where he's resided since. There are myriad reasons for the inconsistency in Happ’s spot in the batting order. One is the inconsistency of the lineup at large. Happ’s own absence of power early in the year made him a viable leadoff candidate, as he was still walking at an exceptional rate. As his bat got hotter, many of his teammates didn’t follow suit, or were injured. Thus, it was a matter of plugging in his patience-power skill set wherever it might’ve been deemed most valuable. Even with the power now showing up, though, Counsell reinserted Happ into that top spot at the end of last month. Given the higher volume of plate appearances out of the No. 1 and No. 5 spots, one assumes that we’ll see Happ ply his trade at the dish in one of those two positions, long-term. In a direct comparison, Happ has been stronger out of the latter. As a leadoff hitter, Happ has slashed .213/.329/.426, with a wRC+ of 115. He’s walking at a 14.7% clip. When dropped to fifth, the slash goes .253/.360/.544 and the wRC+ is 150. His walk rate sits at 12.9%, and there's much more power there. Objectively, it seems fairly obvious that the better performance from Happ has come from the No. 5 spot: more on-base skills, more power, better overall production. It’s important to consider, however, that Happ’s increase in production coincided with his move to that spot. Had we gotten the from-May-on version of Happ back in March and April, those numbers might not look so disparate now. The Happ question, though, isn’t so much about Ian Happ. It’s a broader, philosophical inquiry. Do you want more of a traditional leadoff hitter – someone who can take a walk, but more likely hits their way on and adds a few steals along the way? Or are you okay with an on-base force who supplies regular power, even if there’s no one ahead of him to make similarly effective use of that power? In today’s game, the latter seems like the easier answer to justify. The old prototype of the leadoff hitter is one we seldom see. Nico Hoerner is likely as close as the Cubs are getting, but he hasn’t been effective in that spot over his 2024 body of work (97 wRC+). Of course, any answer to such a question requires us to know what the Cubs have planned for their position group ahead of 2025--which…we do not. But given the conservative nature of the front office, in conjunction with the team’s various contracts, one imagines that major changes won’t happen. The lineup will more than likely look quite similar next year. Which brings us back to the original query: where is Ian Happ best suited to hit in this Cubs lineup? The easy answer is simply ‘yes.’ He’s proven adept as a leadoff man. He’s seen more pitches than all but six qualifying position players (aside: the Cubs have four of the top 10 hitters in pitches per plate appearance, including Happ) and reaches base at a rate that reflects that. He’s almost precisely average on the bases and can add the occasional steal. Of course, you like to see that OBP and power smack-dab in the middle of your lineup, too. This is all to say that I don’t have an answer to my question, because I don’t think there is an answer. If anything, it speaks more to the importance of overall roster construction than the specific skill set of Happ. If the team wants to pursue a more permanent leadoff hitter, then they’d be fine rolling Happ out in the fifth spot. If they want to pursue a more impactful power bat, then they could elect the keep him atop the starting nine. I don’t think there’s a wrong answer here. If forced to choose, I’m probably rolling with him out of the top spot and hoping that more consistent power develops out of the likes of Michael Busch or Seiya Suzuki, while simultaneously hoping that Cody Bellinger returns. But that we’re discussing either route as something viable does speak to my own growth within the larger Ian Happ narrative--and by extension, more importantly, to Happ's impressive maturation at the plate throughout this season. View full article

It was pretty clear that the existing position player corps wasn't going to get the Cubs over the top. They've taken a big step toward overhauling that group with one trade, and while it invites some questions about other ones, it also affirmatively answers a few big ones. Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports For the second consecutive year, the Chicago Cubs have acquired a corner infielder that was once part of their own organization (and, in a further level of irony, included in the same 2017 trade). However, the difference in context between last year’s Jeimer Candelario addition and Sunday’s acquisition of Isaac Paredes could not be starker. Candelario was a pure rental. The Cubs rode a scorching July into “buy” mode, and were willing to surrender their MLB Pipeline Nos. 16 and 17 prospects (Kevin Made and DJ Herz) to make it possible. The consequence of trading away Christopher Morel and Hunter Bigge to acquire Paredes is one of more immediately notable impact, but also one that maintains a keen eye on the future in a way that last year’s move did not. Let’s start with what the Cubs are trading away. I’m running on a month free of Twitter. But I imagine the reaction to this move will be extremely polarizing. Despite an offensive season wrecked by poor batted-ball luck and a defensive one that failed to see the development we collectively hoped for, Morel was an immensely popular player. He brought an energy to the roster and a power output that hasn’t been particularly common throughout the last couple of seasons. Hunter Bigge flashed big-time stuff in a three-inning sample. The Rays are going to have him throwing, like, 110 MPH. Barely a year after being a 15th-round pick out of Ball State, Ty Johnson has touched 98 and missed lots of bats this year, although it all came below Double-A and he's been a bit on the effectively wild side. Unlike last year’s trade, where it was a lower-level prospect and a guy who would’ve had a tough time breaking into a deep staff, the departures here are guys whom we know--and whom we like. The reality, though, is that this move makes loads of sense from a logistical standpoint. You’d like to keep Morel around as a bat. But unless the organization was going to look at another position change – unlikely given the Cubs’ organizational depth on the outfield grass – he wasn’t a defensive fit. His presence as a DH-only, then, would’ve hamstrung their ability to cycle some other guys into the lineup at various points. I’m not so sure Craig Counsell likes that kind of limitation for that spot. The sample is very limited, but in 2020, 2022, and 2023, the only player who got more than a quarter of the starts at DH in a season for him with the Brewers was Andrew McCutchen, who started there 82 times in 2022. With Bigge, on the other hand, you’re capitalizing on the value of a pitcher with some volatility throughout his minor-league career. You’d like to see both on the North Side, for both practical and sentimental reasons. Jed Hoyer, though, showed he can be shrewd (for a change) in his pursuit of actual improvements to the roster. Because that’s what Isaac Paredes is. He’s an established bat at this point, with a career wRC+ of 121. Though not demonstrating quite the power output of last year, he still has an ISO lingering around .200, with very strong strikeout and walk numbers. In direct comparison with Morel, the Cubs clearly lose out on some power potential, but gain in multiple facets of hitting. His defense at the hot corner is also solid. The Cubs have had five players log at least one full inning at third base this season. Only Miles Mastrobuoni has come out clean in the eyes of the defensive metrics. Morel’s -9 FRV & -12 OAA made him one of the worst positional defenders in all of baseball. Even with Paredes sitting exactly average by FRV (0) and barely above by OAA (1), he’s a massive upgrade. He’s been average or above in each of the last four seasons. And he’s in place well beyond this year. That’s perhaps the most important thing to note about this trade. Despite what will likely be painted as a black-and-white, buyers vs. sellers perception, this isn’t indicating the Cubs as “buyers” in the grand sense. Buying, at least to me, implies a pursuit of contention within that year. There’s intentionality behind it. The Cubs have acquired an impact player, yes. But they didn’t do so in hopes of spinning themselves into a contender by year’s end. It’s not totally unrealistic that it could happen. Given their place within the standings, though, it probably won’t. Instead, this is Hoyer planning for next year. Paredes isn’t a free agent until 2028. You give yourself some stability at a position that lacked it going back to last year, while removing a logjam at the designated hitter slot. That allows you to cycle in some depth guys or prospects as the season progresses, whether as a DH or positionally. While the notion of the Cubs as buyers should be dispelled, the move does, however, increase the fascination with the direction of the team in the next 48 hours. Will Paredes play third base exclusively, given his previous versatility in Tampa Bay? Does it make a Nico Hoerner trade more likely, now that you’ve filled a spot that could’ve otherwise housed Matt Shaw or James Triantos? Might we get more of a chance to see young bats now that they could, in theory, come up to hit a little bit as a DH? So many questions. The good news, at least, is that third base is finally not one of those questions. View full article

While a catching catastrophe is partly to blame for the Cubs' lousy season, there's some renewed hope around their young, homegrown backstop. Image courtesy of © Jeff Le-USA TODAY Sports As discouraging as much of the 2024 Chicago Cubs offense has been, the absence of production from behind the plate has been almost dispiriting. A tag-team plan that began with Miguel Amaya and Yan Gomes has been disappointing enough to see half the unit jettisoned from the roster, while the other has ceded playing time to a player not even in the organization until the middle of June, in Tomás Nido. While the seemingly immediate decline of Gomes’s glove and bat was a disappointing result for a steady veteran, it’s the struggle from Amaya that has been far more difficult to stomach. This was supposed to be the year that the longtime farmhand latched onto the starting job and grabbed the “catcher of the future” label. Instead, we’ve been collectively counting the days until Moises Ballesteros makes his Wrigley Field debut. That was the case until July, at least. On Jul. 3, Amaya was hitting .186 and featured a .249 on-base percentage. He hadn’t recorded a hit since Jun. 26 and had started losing significant playing time to Nido. The Cubs gave Amaya a small stretch of days off to work on his swing mechanics. The result was a more subtle leg kick, in pursuit of something resembling a two-strike approach at all times. The results have been striking. In 29 July plate appearances, Amaya is hitting .458. He hasn’t struck out in seven games. His 13.8 K% is his lowest individual month thus far, while his 13.8 BB% represents nearly double any other individual month--although, of course, it's still a minuscule sample. His .167 ISO is also notable, following a .055 mark in May and an .035 in June. His wRC+ for the month sits at a wild 232. The stretch runs Amaya’s overall output into something far more enticing out of the catcher position. He’s at a .223/.290/.306 slash and a 75 wRC+. The numbers are, obviously, still subpar. But this is a far cry from where he was at the beginning of this month. That very much speaks to how Amaya has taken to the changes in his swing and approach. It’s a small sample, but one that has the potential to alter the trajectory of the Cubs’ future at the position if even remotely sustainable. A woeful year by Amaya had the fan base searching for alternatives behind the dish. Danny Jansen and Elías Díaz were hot names, until it became clear that the team wouldn't be deadline buyers, and Ballesteros started catching more eyes as a longer-term option. While the Cubs aren’t going to acquire a pending free agent like Jansen, Amaya showcasing any level of steadiness can stave off any catching pursuits altogether. This would allow them to allocate their resources elsewhere. As far as Ballesteros goes, there are questions about his ability to catch full-time. Should the Cubs choose to give him a cup of coffee before year’s end, there isn’t any pressure to throw him behind the plate full-time. They can, instead, deploy him out of the designated hitter slot more frequently. Again, we’re dealing with a stretch of time in which nothing firm can be declared. But Miguel Amaya reestablishing that upward trajectory can do a lot of things for the Cubs, both at the position itself and elsewhere on the roster. View full article

I spend a lot of time thinking about, well, time. I’ve learned that it’s my most coveted resource and my most stringent boundary. So when I’m thinking about the things that I consume, especially in sport, I value my time. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports Admittedly, I’ve wavered on a number of occasions, as it relates to the 2024 Chicago Cubs. The team appeared to collapse in on itself after a strong April. An underperforming offense and a woeful bullpen had me starting to think about the other ways in which I could consume the sport, without it being related to my disappointing team of choice. To date, writing has forced me to remain engaged. But as we prepare to hit the Jul. 30 trade deadline (a point in time at which the Cubs figure to sell some stuff and get worse for the balance of the campaign, not better), I start to wonder about the benefit of such engagement once the team has essentially thrown in the towel on the season. Not that the Cubs are in a position to sell off their roster. They have aspirations of contention next year. They have too many multi-year contracts, juxtaposed with too much underperformance, to look the way that the Oakland Athletics or Chicago White Sox might once the calendar flips over to August. At worst (and probably at best), they’re looking at a sustained purgatory for the remainder of 2024. So why should we tune in? There’s an outside shot at contention even after the deadline, sure. But considering the way this team has looked all year, it’s hard to imagine being eager to engage even after the threshold has passed. They don’t excel in any facet of the game that makes you want to watch. They lack an identity. What will we still be doing here, post-July? For me, it really seems to boil down to two elements. The first is the arms. Porter Hodge has been excellent. Hunter Bigge will return from his optional assignment once a reliever gets traded or hurt. Daniel Palencia, too. Ben Brown just started mound work. Factor in Justin Steele and Shota Imanaga atop the rotation, and there remains a really interesting collection of pitchers to watch, who should be a lock to be around after July. Between the stuff and the velocity, it remains an exciting group, for now and for next year. Watch them get the work in on the mound and then shift your attention elsewhere while they’re at the plate. The other is the potential for call-ups on the positional side. Moises Ballesteros. Matt Shaw. Owen Caissie. The Cubs have been an infuriating group to watch operate at the plate this year, Michael Busch and post-April Ian Happ notwithstanding. The Cubs effectively calling it a year should mean that we get at least an early glimpse of some of their top positional prospects. That’s reason enough to tune in, assuming the team is willing to open up spots to make it happen. Ultimately, the reasons to tune in after July are fairly standard among non-contenders. You have your few young, exciting players, and some prospects about to crack the top level. You tune in to watch those guys, but maybe don’t invest in the outcome the way that you otherwise would have. It’s not a unique method of fan operation. In fact, it's a very familiar one for us Cubs fans. And that’s the important thing. The Cubs have not been fun to watch this year. Even their wins have been agonizing. For someone who clings to the value of time as much as I do, it’s been a labor. I want upper-tier defense. I want velocity. I want action at the plate. We all do. We’ve gotten only some of that this year, and only some of the time. If anything, I’ve come around to thinking that the 2024 Chicago Cubs could actually be more exciting once they’ve given up. A no-pressure environment in which some of their rising arms and future positional players can showcase what we might have to look forward to. I’ve spent the majority of the year wondering what this team’s future trajectory looks like, given their current stagnation. August and September look to offer just a little bit more energy in that respect. View full article

The Cubs' outfielder/first baseman isn't on the active roster at the moment, but the injured list is the furthest you should expect him to wander any time in the near future. You can safely ignore trade chatter about this particular player. Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports Jed Hoyer came right out on Monday and said it. Unless the Chicago Cubs defy what the first three-plus months of the season have shown us, they’ll be set to sell ahead of the Jul. 30 trade deadline. We’ve already heard rumblings about a handful of veteran players who could be dealt before that point. Perhaps most intriguing among them, though, is Cody Bellinger. Bellinger’s return was seen as something of a non-negotiable issue last winter, in terms of the Cubs’ 2024 fortunes. The team hadn’t added any other hitters with a track record to speak of, and Bellinger was coming off his best year since 2019. His average (.307), isolated slugging (.218), and strikeout rate (15.6%) were all at their best since that point, while his 20 steals represented a career-high total. They had to have him. It took until the extreme end of February, but the deal got done. It’s the combination of that deal and Bellinger’s 2024 performance (to say nothing of his current injury) that make navigating a potential trade a daunting task. Tabling the finger injury for a moment, Bellinger’s 2024 has been…not what his 2023 was. After a 134 wRC+ last year, he’s barely above the threshold for average this year, at 108. He’s managed to maintain similar strikeout and walk numbers to last year but isn’t replicating anything else. Most notable among the trends is the absence of power. He’s at a .141 ISO and a 7.6 percent HR/FB ratio; those figures are the lowest of his career. If the Cubs have any interest in trading Bellingeer, they have to overcome some issues more complex than a slightly underwhelming offensive season. In a vacuum, it’s fine production. He could offer supplementary offense to a contender while providing the ability to play a stable outfield and first base. The structure of the contract, though, likely washes out on-field value questions, in favor of financial ones. Bellinger’s contract was presented as a three-year pact. In reality, it's a series of one-year deals, because he has an opt-out after 2024 and another player option for 2026. Those two options add up to $50 million; it would require a pretty intense suspension of reality to believe that a prospective team might be willing to take him off the Cubs’ hands given the current circumstances. And that was before the injury. Bellinger was eligible to come off the IL on Sunday, but there’s no timetable for an actual return. That leaves a minuscule window in which he could come back, perform well, and wind up involved as a part of legitimate negotiations prior to Jul. 30. The timetable alone makes such a trade difficult to fathom. Even if we strip away the injury context, it’s just not something that seemed realistic at any point leading up to the end of the month. While the Cubs would surely love to move that contract off the books for the next two years, the control he has via the opt-out will torpedo his trade value, and the team won't want to trade him for nothing. Jed Hoyer finds himself in an interesting position ahead of this deadline. Most of the other sellers emerging on the market knew this would be their position, or have a clear set of players who make sense. This was not the plan for the Cubs, and their leverage in trade discussions about several potentially valuable pieces is tough to pin down. It’ll be difficult enough to muster up the ability to move players from elsewhere on the roster. A trade of Cody Bellinger is a complete impossibility. View full article