Infielder Nicky Lopez, who’d been in camp with the Cubs as a non-roster invitee, triggered an opt-out in his minor league deal and has been granted his release, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports. He’s once again a free agent and can field interest from teams seeking infield depth.
Lopez, 30, is a light-hitting, premium defensive infielder who can provide strong glovework at any infield spot to the left of first base. He’s had a strong spring showing with the Cubs, too, hitting .450/.542/.550 in a tiny sample of 30 plate appearances. The Cubs’ late signing of Jon Berti and promotion of top prospect Matt Shaw — plus the presence of Rule 5 pick Gage Workman and out-of-options utilityman Vidal Brujan — narrowed any realistic pathways for Lopez to crack Chicago’s major league roster, however.
Lopez spent the 2024 season with Chicago’s other club and posted a .241/.312/.294 batting line in 445 plate appearances for the White Sox. That output is right in line with his career marks of .248/.312/.314, which come in a notable sample of 2346 plate appearances. Lack of punch notwithstanding, Lopez is generally good for a league-average walk rate and possesses plus contact skills, evidenced by a career 14.3% strikeout rate.
Metrics like Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average both feel Lopez is a superlative defender at second base and third base alike. There’s more of a gap with regard to his shortstop defense, though his middling DRS rating is due primarily to a brutal -9 grade in just 344 innings there last year. Outside of his 2024 performance, DRS has continually felt he’s been at least average at short. Statcast’s OAA has consistently touted his defensive acumen there, highlighted by a +25 mark back in 2021.
He’s so bad, I see a White Sox reunion in his near future.
DJT says of Nicky: “She’s hot.”
“Says of Nicky”..A pretty far reach for a very unfunny Trump joke. Maybe you should head back to Hollywood in search of some better material.
Besides, I do believe political commentary is pretty much frowned upon here.
I agree on both of your points @mlb. It wasn’t funny or appropriate.
youtube.com/watch?v=LoqPxMLvifs
Not political commentary, just hilarious when POTUS 45/47 spoke of male Reggaeton Latin pop Nikky Jam, saying, “She’s hot”. Doesn’t make him a good or bad POTUS, just funny as can be when he stepped his foot in it.
“Not political commentary”…When people have no idea what you’re even talking about, that usually means that you didn’t read the room or make relevant, funny jokes. This isn’t 9th grade study hall you know.
At least we can all agree than Guggenheim spending and development has made baseball more exciting and relevant on a global stage.
Braves need him back
He’d be an upgrade over Arcia
Is it Nicky “Two Strikes” López or Madrigal?
Ray: Madrigal. I believe Lopez is “Nicky Three Strikes “
Wow, he didn’t make the team, with a .450 average and only two K’s in spring training? Does that not show that his eyeballs improved over the offseason? Man, all those carrots and broccoli for nothing…Have fun reading in 2025 Nicky!
Sure because it was way more important for guys like Lopez and Jankowski to get Cactus League reps than real prospects who could have used the reps to get a little better. Because trying to win the Cactus League and NL Central is the goal right? If it isn’t you could have fooled me. I mean the Dodgers beat the Cubs with their 3rd and 4th Starters and didn’t even start Snell and Glasnow and didn’t have 2 of their 3 best hitters and won pretty easily. So all the dreamers who say hey just make the Playoffs anything can happen………Ehh not so much. Another Hoyer Shyte Show is what it is.
You do realize that teams play multiple games a day, right? There are minor league games, B games. Any given player has multiple opportunities at in-game reps that Nicky Lopez, or any other veteran player isn’t blocking them from.
Well said tastee—-so far the Cubs have used 47 different position players and 44 different pitchers in Spring Training games this year..
I would be willing to bet all the “reps” that they need are being taken, multiple times on the numerous backfields that they utilize.
Sure because games in the back fields are exactly the same as playing the real games and facing MLB pitching is exactly the same right? Wow
Uncle–my point is that the guys you are talking about get many more reps away from game action than against a bunch of non major league pitchers that get loads of innings during this time.
Nicky Lopez getting 8 or 10 at bats during games is not going to stunt the progress of James Triantos. Triantos will get many of reps during the spring.
That’s my point.
Cubs need too much to go right this season, PCA, Busch, Amaya, Shaw all need to play like veterans. Their rotation is a crap show but at least we didn’t give up too much for Tucker….
I hope whoever replaces Hoyer picks a direction.
Joke on Tucker? Sarcasm is hard to see in print. LOL Every time Hoyer makes a move I see Moe from the Three Stooges going, ” You know it was my idea, But I don’t think much of it”.
Borrowing a phrase from the other side of town, being “mired in mediocrity” rests on the shoulders of Cubs Chairman/owner Tom Ricketts. Instead of emulating other big market franchises including the mighty Dodgers, Tom is quite content to keep printing money and not invest it to the same degree in his on the field product.
At least White Sox fans have a glimmer of hope with potential billionaire owner Justin Ishbia taking the reigns soon from 89-year old Jerry Reinsdorf. Cubs fans have no such “imminent” hope on the north side of town with 61-year old Tom and his 3 other siblings owning the Cubs.
Btw: There is another “glimmer of hope” with today’s lineup versus the Padres. Nico Hoerner is scheduled to make his official Cactus League debut and is also slated to play 2B. 🙂
A healthy Hoerner pushes Jon Berti to his ideal role as a Swiss army knife utility player. A healthy Hoerner also gives Jed Hoyer an opportunity to utilize him in a trade and that coukd open up Matt Shaw to his ideal position of 2B.
Aaron
Thanks for a useful post! Nico playing is a big deal.
If you mean in the sense of he’s the guy who hires the POBO to run the club we agree. I have no problem with them running out a Luxury Tax compliant team every year. It can be done but the guy making the decisions has to have a sense of young and old and prospects and FA’s blending together long term. Keeping money for the deadline to make moves, Trading the right prospects for team needs right away and long term salary planning. The Cubs have NONE of that in Hoyer. Absolutely NONE.
Bottom line: Chairman Tom signs the checks and approves all major acquisitions. This is hardly news when it comes to MLB teams or any other big business.
Jed Hoyer was Theo Epstein’s right-hand man when the Cubs finally reached the promised land in 2016. Both POBO’s have had their share of good and bad moves, be it trades, free agent signings or prospect development. Jed played a big part in the Cubs championship “success” and in my mind hasn’t done things too much differently since taking the reigns from Theo. The Cubs farm system has generally had the same results for each POBO, solid position prospects with less success on the pitching end. Theo might have drafted a bit better with Hoyer perhaps doing a better job of acquiring top prospects in trades when the Cubs decided a retool was necessary. Any sustained success still falls on Tom and in my mind he has failed the faithful.
That’s completely naive on your part. If the Cubs didn’t waste money on idiotic contracts like Boyd, Suzuki, Happ, Swanson Mancini, Bellinger they would have the money to re sign a guy like Tucker. it probably wouldn’t let you play in the Soto category but are those contracts even smart anyway? You could have 4 30-35 million dollar guys on your team if you were smart how you blended the youth in to go with it.. Hoyer gets no credit for anything in my book. I think the garbage man had more to do with 2016 than Hoyer because he kept the building from smelling You give the GMINO way more credit than i do. But have fun with that. I’ll keep bleating for his firing until he’s gone and I’ll get drunk for the first time in 10 years.
It’s the “value” signings that make no sense when they needed impact.
Happ, Suzuki, Swanson and Bellinger are all really good players who round out rosters. Not guys you build rosters around. That the Cubs, aside from Tucker, who they have for a year, they have no guys to build around.
Yep and to get that one year of Tucker, they may have traded a guy that Cubs fans will regret they didn’t build around.
Silly to do that deal unless it was contingent on an extension & even then, acquiring another outfielder, even one as good as Tucker, seemed like the wrong position to trade a top prospect for.
Yes, and in fact Tucker is himself not as good as people–Brett Taylor and other jock-sniffers–say: he is probably only about as good as Bellinger, so no gain.
As for Cam Smith–and Canario and Hope and Arias and Velasquez and Morel and others–Hoyer finds it very easy to trade or release dark-skinned players, especially those who have a little swagger. They are always the first to go. He is not, I think, a conscious, overt racist; his is more a kind of “soft” racism. When he pictures a team player, when he pictures a good player, he pictures a white player. The pattern is clear.
How many players in MLB qualify as “guys you build rosters around”? Are those players the noted superstars? How many teams aside from the Dodgers even have more than one of that type of position player?
The Yankees have 1: Aaron Judge.
The Mets have 1: Juan Soto.
The Phillies have 1: Bryce Harper
The Blue Jays have 1: Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
The Padres have a couple in Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. when they are healthy or not being suspended for a banned substance.
The Astros had two or three at a time during their long run with only Jose Altuve remaining. Of course, they also benefited from measures most teams refused to utilize.
The Orioles have the potential for multiple superstars if they manage to reach their ceilings in the coming years and ownership finally ponies up to keep them.
The same might be true with the new wave of Red Sox who have recently debuted or will very shortly. Currently only Rafael Devers might qualify if you consider a one dimensional player a superstar. Perhaps Alex Bregman will also qualify with a return to his earlier self, a player the Cubs could have easily signed if it weren’t for stingy Tom.
Uncle, do you think it is possible that the Cubs are not as good as we think they are, and won’t even contend? I know I am a pessimist, but I think the attitude that some have of,”sure, they’ll win the division, but they won’t go very far in the playoffs” is kinda countin’ chickens. You’re smart and know the game, so I wonder what you see as the range of outcomes.
IDK. I think they’re good enough to win the NL Central but that’s it. What do you think they are capable of?
Alan thinks you’re smart, Unclemike. I think you’re angry—all the time. Why is that?
Wait, Aren’t you the guy who told me the Bulls were winning and I should just watch? 30-40 is winning? I guess for them it is. You can just go along with everything people tell you. I’m just a Chicago fan who is tired of the BS all the time. I was taught to think for myself at an early age and will keep doing so until the end. So if I see something I don’t like I’ll say so and this is a forum I can do that. Angry? Not really. Tired of the same old same old? Probably. You can follow the sheep. I’ll keep being the farmer who owns the sheep. Oh and by the way, The TV station is such a piece of garbage, I can’t watch anyway and it’s cool.
I think they are going to be overwhelmed by the remarkably tough early-season schedule they face and never recover. I think they are going to go about 8 and 21 in their first 29 games and, though they’ll come back some from that, they still will never even approach .500 and finish with about 75 or 76 wins, or maybe worse if they sell enough at the deadline.
Painful as that will be, it will have 2 good effects: it will strike Brett Taylor dumb (well, mute; he is already dumb, though not too dumb to take the money from ambulance chasers and gamblers), and it will finally get Hoyer and Hawkins fired.
The Cubs are capable of winning the division, probably favorites but they certainly are not a lock. I think it’s between the Reds, Brewers and Cubs but the Pirates, if they ever figure out how to ride their early hot streaks, are dangerous too.
I don’t understand Hoyers offseason, adding Tucker, who’s great, when you already have two right fielders made zero sense. Especially at the cost of Paredes, Wesneski and Smith. Not improving the rotation made even little sense. Boyd, okay, he’s a high risk/high upside guy but they still needed another TOR starter. Cubs added talent to the bullpen but the make up is garbage. How the heck do they think they can survive having only two spots where guys can be optioned?
It’s just like all his other off seasons. Signing Swanson for 7 years when they already had Nico getting the job done there. Cubs top 30 has 15 SS’s or guys who were drafted as SS’s at least. Last time I checked the roster has 1 SS and 13 P’s on it but let’s spend the Intl. money on more SS’s when we could trade it for pitching prospects. Then the few good prospects they do have they trade for 1 year rentals. Doing that makes ZERO sense if you have ZERO intention of re signing the guy. Like I said, The Cubs COULD re sign Tucker and make it worthwhile, They can’t because of the ridiculous signings and wasted salary on things they don’t need. Wicks is Boyd only cheaper, Suzuki is not needed if you have Tucker so that’s wasted money, Happ is a nice player but never should have been extended for that long and do I have to mention the NMC’s? It’s just shiny bauble of the year with no thought at all. I can’t wait until they’re gone. If they re sign him it will be more of the same. Have you ever heard them speak? There’s nothing more useless than a Hoyer press conference.
Agree. And I don’t even hate the Rea signing as much as most do….I think Hoyer has this idea that if you fill the roster with players who “trust the process,” who “don’t get too high or too low,” who “play with a controlled intensity,” who “have high floors,” etc.–he really believes in all those clichés (and yes, who are white boys from affluent Southern Californian or Arizonan backgrounds, that must be said. He is not opposed to drafting players of color, but they only get cups of coffee, and they are fodder for trades or for DFA when there is a 40-man roster issue)–if you do all that, somehow the talent will come together and the team performance will add up to x number of wins. But what really happens is, they play the Dodgers or other good teams, and no one can get the big hit and they lose. There is never any synergy with a Cubs lineup, never any quality of somehow being better than they are. There is a chronic and fatal entropy instead, and let’s hope it is fatal to Hoyer’s tenure in a few months.
Re/ “when they already have two right fielders”: they never were going to give Canario a fair shot.
With the greatest of respect, there is a reason why Hoyer is the GM and teams don’t make key staff appointments from the comments section of a website
Sure. But fans like you who think Hoyer is competent are, unwittingly of course, the biggest reason things are in the sorry state they are with the team. You give him and his fatuous yes-man Hawkins the cover they need to keep their jobs.
Poor assumption there – I’m not a Cubs fan and wouldn’t care if they lost 120 games like their friends down the street. I’m also the fan of a team with a beleaguered GM. But the reality is that MLB rewards mediocrity. As long as the Cubs keep putting butts in seats – and they will – the Ricketts have no incentive to judge the baseball department overly harshly, tear it down and start a new cycle under new leadership. They’re always going to take a more business-centric long term view to the team than fans on a message board who haven’t put the hours in baseball operations. They will be looking at it and thinking they’ve got a slightly worse than 29 in 30 chance of not winning the league, so if the team is competitive enough to maybe bother the playoffs then that’s good enough. But that’s on ownership and the top down standards they set as opposed to a club like e.g. Phillies or Dodgers, not the fans. Like it or not, Wrigley – unlike your friends down the road – isn’t going to be deserted to the degree that the fans will meaningfully force ownership’s hand.
You are right, of course. It might be simpler to say, the teams’ ownership doesn’t care about winning as much as the fans do. I have been watching the Cubs since 1960 and I love them; Ricketts hasn’t and doesn’t.
But don’t be so sure about Wrigley Field’s eternal drawing power, though. It used to be that there were NFL-like legacy waiting lists for season tickets. Now they are selling partial plans like many other teams do. Attendance will surely be down this year. Stay tuned.
I expect that someone will sign him quite quickly. Could be the Tigers they like multi position players.
Tigers need infielders who can actually catch the ball.
So I’m saying there’s a chance…
He’s better than McKinstry and Kreidler. Put him at third. They have no one else.
Back 30, 40, 50 years ago Nicky would be a regular every season. Defense isn’t as valued as it was then.
I miss those days. Now it’s all about power, power, POWER!
@Strunk agreed. I loved small ball, great pitching and defense.
If the farm system is so good, that’s the direction. But it’s not and now the roster is a mish mosh of mediocrity and other teams rejects. That’s Cubs baseball, always has been.
Well it was before Hoyer traded away DJ Herz, Jackson Ferris, Zyhir Hope, Alfonsin Rosario, Cam Smith, let Arias, Estrada, and others just walk for nothing. And all they got out of all that was Michael Busch and gardener money for Ricketts. Excellent work by the way.
I do agree with you trading an elite pitching prospect like Ferris for a 1B is a poor decision when there are cheap FA 1B available.
I can see Atlanta picking him up on the cheap.
Buckle up Cubs nation gonna be a fun summer and October.
By letting Lopez walk, the Cubs aren’t just losing an infielder. They’re forfeiting an advantage in run prevention at a time when MLB’s shifting rules have made elite defensive range more important than ever. Smart teams will capitalize—while Chicago quietly leaks extra base hits all season.
All their infielders are plus defenders. They’re not losing anything.
Cubs are now dealing with jet lag after starting 0-2 and having 2 additional opening days on road . Team will start 5 or 6 games under and spend entire first half of season getting to five hundred. No way this team will win 90!
Furthermore their excuse will be Tokyo trip putting them squarely behind others. Let another Californian team play dodgers in Japan to open but not cubs.
And every west coast team has 2 or 3 Japanese players so cubs are not that unique.
Cubs counting on thrilling but given huge and decreasing velocity, team needs another front line starter.
Cubs minor league system vastly overrated!