Brandon Glick
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I wrote that exact introduction nearly a year ago, as the prelude to my first-ever article for North Side Baseball: “The Value of Buying Even When You’re (Probably) Not Going to Win the World Series”. The Cubs would prove me prescient in the days that followed, as the team scooped up Jeimer Candelario and José Cuas ahead of the trade deadline in an attempt to merely get the team playing meaningful games in September again. Though they would end up collapsing and fell short of the postseason, it was still nice to see the Cubs choose a path with conviction. Now, a year later, I call upon the Cubs again to choose a path, though a far less enjoyable one. As I wrote last week, the Cubs’ hesitancy to spend in free agency this offseason has led them down a far less prosperous road this season. Still saddled in last place in the NL Central and double-digit games behind the first-place Milwaukee Brewers, the team simply isn’t built to overcome deficits, either in the games they play or in the standings. As the season has worn on, it's become clear that this iteration of the Chicago Cubs won’t be sniffing the postseason. So, then, it’s intuitive that the team spends the remainder of the year doing whatever it can to bolster its chances in the seasons to come. If that means trading away fan favorites and tanking for a higher draft pick, then so be it. We should all be used to it by now. At this point, Cody Bellinger is all but certainly a goner. The reigning NL Comeback Player of the Year may be one of the few consistent bats in Craig Counsell’s lineup, but that also means he’ll be one of the team’s most valuable pieces on the trading block. Though he hasn’t matched last year’s tremendous effort, his .738 OPS and lasting ability to play quality defense at first base and all three outfield spots should make him a seamless fit for any contender needing a left-handed bat. If they can, the Cubs will also look to dump Jameson Taillon and his hefty contract on another squad. The right-handed starter was disastrous at the start of his Cubs’ tenure, but he turned things around in the second half of 2023. This year, he’s pitching like a frontline starter, with a sub-3 ERA in 81 1/3 innings pitched and a FIP of 3.80. If teams are convinced his turnaround is for real, then Taillon and his remaining 2.5 years of control could bring a significant asset back to Chicago. The third-longest tenured player on the roster, Nico Hoerner, is also a name being floated around the rumor mill. He has two and a half years left on the contract extension he signed last spring, at a relative pittance compared to other players of his ilk ($11.5 million salary this year and next, $12 million salary in 2026). Attaching his Gold Glove defense and speed to the offensive player he was last year (.729 OPS) rather than this year (.667 OPS) yields a profile that’s bound to generate a lot of trade interest, especially given that Hoerner just turned 27 in May. Beyond those three, the list of potential Cubs trade candidates is long. If the team is looking for a quick turnaround in 2025, then the team may opt to hold onto their long-term assets, while trying to fetch a price for some usable (if underwhelming) ancillary players like Patrick Wisdom and Héctor Neris. If the team is committing to a longer retooling window, then perhaps Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Christopher Morel, or Javier Assad should be on the market. And if the Cubs are ready to take a sledgehammer to the monument of mediocrity they’ve built over the last five years, then everyone not named Justin Steele or Shota Imanaga should probably start buying extra luggage, just in case. Of course, trading any combination of players this year in the name of tanking doesn’t guarantee the Cubs anything, like it did in the past. The new MLB Draft Lottery ensures that even teams that sell out for losses won’t always be rewarded for their “efforts”. The Cleveland Guardians, who finished last season with a middling-but-not-terrible 76-86 record, beat the odds at the 2023 Winter Meetings, claiming the first overall pick in this month’s draft despite having just the ninth-best odds to do so (2.0%). As it stands, there are currently five teams with a worse record than the Chicago Cubs: the Los Angeles Angels, the Oakland Athletics, the Miami Marlins, the Colorado Rockies, and the historically bad Chicago White Sox. The Cubs likely have too much talent and too much of a cushion to fall beneath any of those teams in the standings, but even if they let the Angels usurp them, their odds to “earn” the first overall pick still won’t be favorable. The three worst teams by record share an equal 18.3% chance to get the top slot, followed by the fourth-worst team’s 14.7% odds. Every team after that has odds below 9.0%. Still, it would be a waste to not at least try. There’s no use trying to outrun the treadmill of mediocrity the North Siders find themselves stranded on. They have some valuable players who could bring back a couple of interesting prospects in a trade, and selling at the deadline could give them better odds at winning the draft lottery. At the very least, losing more would insulate them from falling too far in the draft order. To put it plainly, these 2024 Cubs probably aren’t going to snag the first overall draft pick. It’s more likely than not that they’ll be picking outside the top five again. But maybe, with a few small subtractions from the roster, they can back their way into a premier selection. Hell, if Bellinger and Hoerner are shipped out, maybe they can luck their way into their highest selection since taking Kris Bryant No. 2 overall in 2013. Failing that, though, it would just be nice to see the Cubs admit they aren’t good enough, and that they need to do better going forward. On the brink of success lies the precipice of failure. Trying to make this season more than it is could steer the team right off that cliff. They need to rein themselves in and look for another way forward. -
The Cubs are bad, and one extra move this past offseason wouldn’t have changed that. Being more aggressive in building a competitive team, though, would have at least given fans hope that another rebuild isn’t on the horizon. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports I won’t belabor what’s going on with the Cubs right now. The team stinks. They’re the worst team in the NL Central, a whopping 13 games behind the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers and one of just three teams in the National League that has yet to reach the 40-win threshold. If this were 2022, or even 2023, I could make the case that this prolonged midseason tank job was simply a necessary evil--a means to an end. The team, at some point, needed to reset after the Great Chicago Fire Sale of 2021, and losing massive heaps of games to get higher draft picks and trade veterans for prospects was just a (painful) part of the process. This is 2024, though. That reset was supposed to have already happened. The Cubs bought at last year’s trade deadline, bringing in the since-departed Jeimer Candelario and the since-DFAed José Cuas. They went into September with playoff odds as high as 90%. What followed was a collapse that cost David Ross his job as manager, but the foundation was set for the team to exit “The Rebuild 2.0” and enter legitimate contention again for the first time since 2018. The Jed Hoyer-led front office began the offseason with a bang, poaching manager Craig Counsell away from the rival Brewers in a move that showed the Cubs were ready to flex their financial muscles again. They simply bullied the small-market Brew Crew, signing Counsell to a record five-year, $40 million deal, and it appeared the Cubs were going to leverage the Chicago market and go big during a crucial offseason. And then… crickets. By the time New Year's Day rolled around, the Cubs were the only team in the entire league to have added zero players to their major-league roster. They broke that pathetic streak by claiming catcher Brian Serven off waivers from the Colorado Rockies, but he was designated for assignment before January even ended. It was only when they signed international free agent Shota Imanaga and completed a trade for Michael Busch and Yency Almonte that the acrimonious bickering from fans quieted. Yet, instead of compounding those moves by signing one of the other remaining free agents, the Cubs fell silent again. Eventually, the team would sign reliever Héctor Neris and finally end their winter standoff with Cody Bellinger, but the biggest moves were the ones the team didn’t make: third baseman Matt Chapman and starting pitchers Jordan Montgomery and Blake Snell were all available deep into the offseason. Despite having a need for each of those players, the Cubs sat out the proceedings because they wanted to stay beneath the luxury-tax threshold. Again, none of those players individually would have salvaged this dismal 2024 season. Chapman has had a strong season, posting 3.0 WAR for the San Francisco Giants on the strength of his tremendous defense (which the Cubs are sorely lacking at the hot corner), though his OPS+ stands at just 111 through Jul. 3. Montgomery has pitched to a terrible 6.44 ERA in 65 2/3 innings for the Arizona Diamondbacks, and has actually been worth -1.2 WAR thus far. Snell has somehow been even worse, posting a 9.51 ERA in 23 2/3 innings while dealing with a series of injuries. This isn’t some retrospective on a failed offseason in which the Cubs simply lacked the gusto to make the one move that fans were clamoring for. It is an indictment of Hoyer and the Rickettses, for failing to take advantage of the Cubs’ financial edge over their NL Central compatriots. It is a simple decree that Hoyer hasn’t gotten the job done since taking over for his mentor, Theo Epstein, in 2020, and that his seat should be as warm as any executive’s in the sport. The Collective Bargaining Agreement is meant (in part) to act as a set of guardrails, to protect players, owners, and, ideally, the long-term parity of baseball. Within that lengthy legislation is a set of clauses specifically designed to level the playing field between the two prevailing classes of MLB franchises: the big-market teams and the small-market teams. Dive into the nitty-gritty of the details if you like, but the most important thing to highlight is that small-market teams receive a collection of assets to help them compete with the (should-be) freer spenders of the league. Those assets include, but are not limited to: competitive-balance picks in the amateur draft, extra cap space in their international signing bonus pool, and revenue-sharing dollars. Not all of the compensatory allowances are directly funneled into the baseball operations side of a franchise; there have been many reports of small-market owners simply pocketing their slice of the revenue-sharing pie. Regardless, the reason those teams get these accommodations in the first place is because of the hypothetical difference between their payrolls, and the payrolls of teams like the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Cubs. Spending doesn’t guarantee anything (the 2023 Mets and Padres could host a seminar on that topic), but it does create a floor. The more money allocated to the payroll, the better the players on the team will be. Inexpensive young talent will always be the lifeblood of the sport, but established veterans capable of producing at a consistent, All-Star level are required to navigate the tumult of an entire season, regardless of their cost. Thus, small-market teams field competitive rosters by leveraging their additional resources on the prospect side of things, and big-market teams do so by spending money on players who have already established themselves. In effect, the Cubs are actively putting themselves at a disadvantage by not outspending their rivals to a degree commensurate with their financial advantages. Some will be quick to point out that the Cubs do spend more than their rivals. Their payroll of roughly $227 million ranks seventh in MLB, and is more than $50 million more than the NL Central’s second-ranked team, the St. Louis Cardinals. The Brewers’ payroll is less than half of that of the Cubs, coming in at just $107.7 million. And that’s where the Cubs have failed. That allocation of resources clearly has not been wise, but it’s the team’s willingness to spend up to the brink of the luxury tax ($237 million for the first apron) without exceeding it. The Ricketts have quite clearly set a mandate that the Cubs remain below that figure, and Hoyer has found himself hamstrung by poor financial decisions he’s made in the past. The best big-market teams spend a lot of money on the best players. The Dodgers and Yankees are the obvious examples. Some big-market teams continue to just spend money until they get things right, like the Steve Cohen-era Mets have. And some big-market teams are simply content with pretending they belong in that exclusive club, like the Cubs are. These Cubs are not lovable. They are just losers. And when they sell this month - fire sale or not - we’ll know why. View full article
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I won’t belabor what’s going on with the Cubs right now. The team stinks. They’re the worst team in the NL Central, a whopping 13 games behind the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers and one of just three teams in the National League that has yet to reach the 40-win threshold. If this were 2022, or even 2023, I could make the case that this prolonged midseason tank job was simply a necessary evil--a means to an end. The team, at some point, needed to reset after the Great Chicago Fire Sale of 2021, and losing massive heaps of games to get higher draft picks and trade veterans for prospects was just a (painful) part of the process. This is 2024, though. That reset was supposed to have already happened. The Cubs bought at last year’s trade deadline, bringing in the since-departed Jeimer Candelario and the since-DFAed José Cuas. They went into September with playoff odds as high as 90%. What followed was a collapse that cost David Ross his job as manager, but the foundation was set for the team to exit “The Rebuild 2.0” and enter legitimate contention again for the first time since 2018. The Jed Hoyer-led front office began the offseason with a bang, poaching manager Craig Counsell away from the rival Brewers in a move that showed the Cubs were ready to flex their financial muscles again. They simply bullied the small-market Brew Crew, signing Counsell to a record five-year, $40 million deal, and it appeared the Cubs were going to leverage the Chicago market and go big during a crucial offseason. And then… crickets. By the time New Year's Day rolled around, the Cubs were the only team in the entire league to have added zero players to their major-league roster. They broke that pathetic streak by claiming catcher Brian Serven off waivers from the Colorado Rockies, but he was designated for assignment before January even ended. It was only when they signed international free agent Shota Imanaga and completed a trade for Michael Busch and Yency Almonte that the acrimonious bickering from fans quieted. Yet, instead of compounding those moves by signing one of the other remaining free agents, the Cubs fell silent again. Eventually, the team would sign reliever Héctor Neris and finally end their winter standoff with Cody Bellinger, but the biggest moves were the ones the team didn’t make: third baseman Matt Chapman and starting pitchers Jordan Montgomery and Blake Snell were all available deep into the offseason. Despite having a need for each of those players, the Cubs sat out the proceedings because they wanted to stay beneath the luxury-tax threshold. Again, none of those players individually would have salvaged this dismal 2024 season. Chapman has had a strong season, posting 3.0 WAR for the San Francisco Giants on the strength of his tremendous defense (which the Cubs are sorely lacking at the hot corner), though his OPS+ stands at just 111 through Jul. 3. Montgomery has pitched to a terrible 6.44 ERA in 65 2/3 innings for the Arizona Diamondbacks, and has actually been worth -1.2 WAR thus far. Snell has somehow been even worse, posting a 9.51 ERA in 23 2/3 innings while dealing with a series of injuries. This isn’t some retrospective on a failed offseason in which the Cubs simply lacked the gusto to make the one move that fans were clamoring for. It is an indictment of Hoyer and the Rickettses, for failing to take advantage of the Cubs’ financial edge over their NL Central compatriots. It is a simple decree that Hoyer hasn’t gotten the job done since taking over for his mentor, Theo Epstein, in 2020, and that his seat should be as warm as any executive’s in the sport. The Collective Bargaining Agreement is meant (in part) to act as a set of guardrails, to protect players, owners, and, ideally, the long-term parity of baseball. Within that lengthy legislation is a set of clauses specifically designed to level the playing field between the two prevailing classes of MLB franchises: the big-market teams and the small-market teams. Dive into the nitty-gritty of the details if you like, but the most important thing to highlight is that small-market teams receive a collection of assets to help them compete with the (should-be) freer spenders of the league. Those assets include, but are not limited to: competitive-balance picks in the amateur draft, extra cap space in their international signing bonus pool, and revenue-sharing dollars. Not all of the compensatory allowances are directly funneled into the baseball operations side of a franchise; there have been many reports of small-market owners simply pocketing their slice of the revenue-sharing pie. Regardless, the reason those teams get these accommodations in the first place is because of the hypothetical difference between their payrolls, and the payrolls of teams like the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Cubs. Spending doesn’t guarantee anything (the 2023 Mets and Padres could host a seminar on that topic), but it does create a floor. The more money allocated to the payroll, the better the players on the team will be. Inexpensive young talent will always be the lifeblood of the sport, but established veterans capable of producing at a consistent, All-Star level are required to navigate the tumult of an entire season, regardless of their cost. Thus, small-market teams field competitive rosters by leveraging their additional resources on the prospect side of things, and big-market teams do so by spending money on players who have already established themselves. In effect, the Cubs are actively putting themselves at a disadvantage by not outspending their rivals to a degree commensurate with their financial advantages. Some will be quick to point out that the Cubs do spend more than their rivals. Their payroll of roughly $227 million ranks seventh in MLB, and is more than $50 million more than the NL Central’s second-ranked team, the St. Louis Cardinals. The Brewers’ payroll is less than half of that of the Cubs, coming in at just $107.7 million. And that’s where the Cubs have failed. That allocation of resources clearly has not been wise, but it’s the team’s willingness to spend up to the brink of the luxury tax ($237 million for the first apron) without exceeding it. The Ricketts have quite clearly set a mandate that the Cubs remain below that figure, and Hoyer has found himself hamstrung by poor financial decisions he’s made in the past. The best big-market teams spend a lot of money on the best players. The Dodgers and Yankees are the obvious examples. Some big-market teams continue to just spend money until they get things right, like the Steve Cohen-era Mets have. And some big-market teams are simply content with pretending they belong in that exclusive club, like the Cubs are. These Cubs are not lovable. They are just losers. And when they sell this month - fire sale or not - we’ll know why. -
We're at the halfway point of the season, and the Cubs look like they've already thrown in the towel.
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We're at the halfway point of the season, and the Cubs look like they've already thrown in the towel. View full video
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In what's become a common theme for the Cubs this year, another starting pitcher has gotten hurt. View full video
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In what's become a common theme for the Cubs this year, another starting pitcher has gotten hurt.
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With Jordan Wicks now hurt, Kyle Hendricks now has one more chance to redeem himself. Brandon and Ethan discuss the Cubs' never-fully-healthy rotation. View full video
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With Jordan Wicks now hurt, Kyle Hendricks now has one more chance to redeem himself. Brandon and Ethan discuss the Cubs' never-fully-healthy rotation.
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Someone has put a hex on the Cubs' closer gig this year. Brandon and Ethan discuss what Counsell can do in the ninth inning with Neris struggling so badly.
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Someone has put a hex on the Cubs' closer gig this year. Brandon and Ethan discuss what Counsell can do in the ninth inning with Neris struggling so badly. View full video
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Yan Gomes has been DFA'd by the Cubs, with Thomas Nido taking his place. Brandon and Ethan discuss the Cubs' catching situation in the present and future.
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Yan Gomes has been DFA'd by the Cubs, with Thomas Nido taking his place. Brandon and Ethan discuss the Cubs' catching situation in the present and future. View full video
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Alexander Canario is on another heater at Triple-A, but he remains blocked at the major league level. Brandon and Ethan discuss what comes next for the powerful outfield prospect.
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Alexander Canario is on another heater at Triple-A, but he remains blocked at the major league level. Brandon and Ethan discuss what comes next for the powerful outfield prospect. View full video
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With Ben Brown injured, Jordan Wicks is back in the rotation. Brandon and Ethan discuss the five arms trying to save the Cubs' season. NOTE: Wicks is expected to head to the IL after exiting his last start with an injury.
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With Ben Brown injured, Jordan Wicks is back in the rotation. Brandon and Ethan discuss the five arms trying to save the Cubs' season. NOTE: Wicks is expected to head to the IL after exiting his last start with an injury. View full video
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Mere days after sparking controversy in New York, Jorge Lopez has signed with the Cubs. Brandon and Ethan discuss what he could bring to Chicago.
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Mere days after sparking controversy in New York, Jorge Lopez has signed with the Cubs. Brandon and Ethan discuss what he could bring to Chicago. View full video
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The Tennessee Smokies' catcher is having another great season, though his bat is far ahead of his glove. Brandon and Ethan analyze Ballesteros' rapidly ascending prospect stock.
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The Tennessee Smokies' catcher is having another great season, though his bat is far ahead of his glove. Brandon and Ethan analyze Ballesteros' rapidly ascending prospect stock. View full video
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It's June, and that means the hot stove is getting hotter. Brandon and Ethan take a look at a couple of notable names who could help the lineup during the dog days of summer.
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It's June, and that means the hot stove is getting hotter. Brandon and Ethan take a look at a couple of notable names who could help the lineup during the dog days of summer. View full video
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After a grueling slate in May, the Cubs get to feast on some bottom feeders in June. Brandon and Ethan break down the Cubs' upcoming schedule. View full video
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After a grueling slate in May, the Cubs get to feast on some bottom feeders in June. Brandon and Ethan break down the Cubs' upcoming schedule.
