The Cubs are placing outfielder Seiya Suzuki on the 10-day injured list to begin the season, manager Craig Counsell confirmed to reporters Monday (link via Patrick Mooney of The Athletic). He’s been slowed by a sprained posterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. The Cubs were already planning to select the contract of non-roster Michael Conforto with Suzuki ailing, but it wasn’t yet clear whether he’d require a stint on the IL or just be unavailable for the first series of the season or so.
On the pitching side of the roster, the Cubs optioned righty Javier Assad to Triple-A Iowa, where he’ll continue to work as a starter. He’d been in consideration for a bullpen role but will stay stretched out in Des Moines. Right-hander Ben Brown has nabbed the final bullpen spot behind Daniel Palencia, Phil Maton, Hunter Harvey, Hoby Milner, Jacob Webb, Caleb Thielbar and Colin Rea.
Suzuki, 31, played in a career-high 151 games last season and slashed .245/.326/.478 with a career-high 32 home runs in 651 plate appearances. It was the former NPB star’s fourth above-average season at the plate in four years since coming over from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. He’s entering the final season of a five-year, $85MM contract and will once again be a free agent following the 2026 season.
With Suzuki shelved, the Cubs will turn to Conforto and perhaps a combination of non-roster invitee Dylan Carlson and/or former top prospect Kevin Alcantara. Both are still in camp and are candidates for a bench mix that has yet to be finalized by the team. Conforto and Carlson signed minor league deals hoping to rebound from career-worst performances with the Dodgers and Orioles, respectively, in 2025. Alcantara has long ranked among the top prospects in Chicago’s system, but his stock has slipped in recent years as he’s shown a huge penchant for strikeouts in Triple-A.
Assad, 27, missed more than half the 2025 season with a severe oblique strain. He pitched only 37 MLB frames and worked to a 3.65 ERA with a poor 15% strikeout rate but quality walk and ground-ball rates of 7.8% and 47.8%. Since making his MLB debut back in 2022, Assad has bounced between the rotation and the bullpen, combining for a 3.43 ERA. He’s typically posted strikeout and walk rates a bit worse than league average. Assad is being paid a guaranteed $1.8MM this season and is controllable for two more years via arbitration. This is the second of the Cubs’ three minor league option years on Assad.
Brown, 26, was hit hard in 106 1/3 innings last year, yielding a 5.92 ERA. Brown showed slightly better results as a reliever (4.99 ERA) than as a starter (6.30 ERA), but his rate stats out of the bullpen were vastly superior. Most notably, he fanned 23.8% of opponents as a starter but 30.5% as a reliever. He also allowed far fewer home runs working out of the bullpen. Brown has one minor league option remaining and is controllable for five more seasons.
Owen Caissie to the rescue! Oh wait, they traded him for an inconsistent starting pitcher who is consistently an injury risk. Oops…
That was almost clever.
If by clever you mean spot-on, then yes.
It’s hard to be rescued by a guy that will strike out a third of the time
That wasn’t clever at all.
I’m. No.
What’s Owen’s Caissie batting avg this spring?
Gambler: He hit .250 including the WBC with Team Canada. That includes a few doubles, a homer and two steals.
Here’s some other guys’ spring averages:
.192 Nick Kurtz…
.222 JJ Wetherholdt…
.171 Konnor Griffin…
Batting average in spring training is meaningless.
I hope he does great but my gut instinct says 4th outfielder
@Fred : Your comments are meaningless, also.
White Sox?
Cubs said they were going to have Brown and Assad keep stretched out in Iowa. Guess what they lied again. They do that a lot. If you want a reason why the Brewers beat the Cubs look no further than the Brewers draft and play their prospects and the Cubs keep spending money on washed losers every year and throwing money away. Terrible Management. Maybe Ricketts owns half of Iowa too. It’s probably cheap enough because that’s where careers go to die.
@Uncle: Agree. But it’s also that the Cubs’ prospects are not as good as the Brewers’ in the first place.
You don’t know that because they never get a chance. Oh maybe a week here a week there. Whenever a guy should get a chance he gets shuffled out somewhere. For another Jed shiny object.
Why do you guys continually say the prospects never get a chance?? That is a blatantly false statement.
What is Happ? Hoerner? Busch? PCA? Shaw? Amaya? Ballesteros?
Do you really not count these guys as prospects given a chance because they are not 23 any more. Every single one of them fits the definition of a prospect given a chance.
And–for those not given a chance—please name a Cub “prospect” that plays every day, or close to, that is better than any of Bregman, Swanson, or Suzuki. I think the only “qualifying” answer that I can think of is Schwarber and he certainly falls into the definition of having been given a chance.
Heck, Morel was given a chance and we all see what happened—and it got even worse went he went on.
Lobby all you want for the Canarios and Workmans of the world, but with the exception of some pretty solid bullpen emergences, they haven’t done too badly with the every day guys.
Haven’t we had just about enough of Suzuki’s annual avoidable long-term injuries? How can a player reach his level without having learned to slide without hurting himself? And this time he didn’t even do it for the Cubs, but for some ersatz gimmick team in the World Baseball Yawn-fest. He is a lot more trouble than his occasional short stretches of good hitting are worth. It will be good to see him go after this season.
As for Assad, I suppose he will be back soon, but I won’t miss him in the meantime. He tries hard, but his ceiling is so low. On his very best days he’ll go 5.1 innings and give up 2 runs and leave with runners on second and third. That’s not good enough.
What makes you think Suzuki is leaving? They’ll re sign him. I probably won’t live to see the Kepley, PCA, and Conrad OF but it’s probably a dream anyway because they’ll be traded for rentals and dregs like the rest.
Alan—so now you are adding Assad to your punching bag list. Duly noted.
Pretty sure if Assad (or any of the starters) give up two runs in just over five innings every game, the should clock in with about 114 wins coming late September.
I always wonder if the throngs that have muted you miss you.
I honestly don’t mind the comedic relief.
@mike: The problem is, the inherited runners often score, or the relievers have to work too hard to strand them. Assad isn’t terrible, but he isn’t seen as un homme serieux by national observers, and rightly. He is borderline; we need better than borderline.
I wish that your hatred of me was my worst problem in life.
OK–Alan—let’s say those two guys score at the rate he gave up before he left. (Because you are replacing him with someone better than borderline based on your opinion of him)
Before he left he gave up 2 runs in 16 outs. 16 more outs to finish it to six inning would jack take eight games. 2 more total runs in eight games brings the Cubs win total down to 109. I’ll take it.
AND—if you are getting that out of your SEVENTH starter—all is well.
Assad > Brown
I would say Brown>Assad.
Brown has better “stuff”, but Assad gets by with what he has.
You’re talking about the guy with 87 HR and a 129 OPS+ over 532 games the last four seasons, right? Yeah, who would want someone like that to stick around?
This is the same guy who kept bad-mouthing Kyle Tucker last year, despite the 143 OPS+ he attained with the Cubbies.
@Hank: I think it really is time to stop arguing about Tucker; he’s not on the team anymore. If you think that Tucker, with his poor clutch hitting, timorous fielding, and aloof–there are less polite words for it–personality, was an impact player for the Cubs last season, then you have the right to your opinion. For my own part. I agree with the fans at Wrigley Field last August and September. Stats, even cooked stats like bWAR, have their value, but you only really know when you watch the player play.
Now I’m curious what stats aren’t “cooked.”
Just wondering how you ” Cook stats “? I mean you can present them differently but the term cook stats implies you’re changing them to suit whatever narrative you’re trying to pull off. As far as the WBC goes I love it, I just don’t really care for ” When ” It’s played. It should be played AFTER the season either after the WS or should be AFTER the season and not include the Playoff players if you do it that way. Might even be fairer to the smaller nations who might be out a few guys. Having it in the middle of ST is just a bad idea.
It obviously isn’t a bad idea having it in Spring Training. It outdrew five teams total attendance from last year.
Playing it after the World Series would simply put it up against the NFL—and no mater what, they won’t win that battle.
@Uncle:That seems to have hit some nerves. What I meant was selectively presenting them, probably I chose the wrong word.
Look there are only certain stats I even pay attention to, And they’re the oldies and goodies. BA, Runs, RBI’s, Stuff like that on the hitting side and ERA, Wins, Saves, K’s and stuff like that. All the other crap like WAR and F WAR for the guys who decided they didn’t like WAR so they came up with their own formula are just crap to me. There are 30 teams. You could go to 30 different teams and find out 30 different ways they all decide to calculate players profiles and values. It’s taking numbers and pushing them around to suit your own personal narrative. If that’s what you mean by cooking stats then I agree. But it did sound like you meant that people were changing ACTUAL numbers to suit their own purpose so then I don’t agree. But otherwise that’s my take on the whole numbers game. When it comes to that I stick to the ones that matter to me.
Hey Alan. Gee the WBC was good this year, excited players just loving the competition and the act of representing their people. An extremely poetic result. Awesome viewing. What did you think of it all ? Just curious.
@foppert: I posted an essay of sorts about why I am PHILOSOPHICALLY opposed to the WBC and anything that reshuffles the players and detracts from the sacredness–not too strong a word, IMO–of the established major-league teams. Sorry you missed it. From my viewpoint, it doesn’t matter if the games were good and so on; the concept is bad. It cheapens baseball and suggests that all of our caring about our teams doesn’t really matter.
From my viewpoint, the WBC is simply another way to enjoy baseball, cheapening nothing. To each their own.
Nah mate. It heightens baseball. You just don’t see it because are extraordinarily self centred, do not care one iota about the desires and enjoyment of the players, and as an older American, do not realise there is a big wide world out there of non Americans who love baseball and love the tournament. Your take indicates one thing, you only care about yourself. If you aren’t having fun and other people are, it’s a catastrophe. Absolutely crazy that a man of senior years still thinks like that.
@gbs: Sure. Unlike some folks here, I don’t demand that everyone agree with me. But the crux of it might lie in your word choice. The difference between you and me is that I don’t “enjoy” baseball; I love it. I enjoy Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Faulkner and Dostoyevsky and swimming and road trips, and watching the Bears and Bulls, for that matter. But I love baseball, for its inherent beauty and its cultural resonance, and I love the Cubs, who have been part of my life for seven decades. So I don’t want to see it and them insulted by a cynical gimmick that devalues the glue that binds fans to teams, perhaps especially a gimmick that is based on the falsest of false gods, a performative nationalism.
I suppose the WBC is OK for casual fans. That ain’t me.
What rubbish. If you loved baseball you would be cheering for the wbc and the games international growth. You would be loving the excitement and passion of it. You care about mlb and yourself. Full stop. Stop kidding yourself and pretending your stance is somehow about the betterment of the game. It’s weak and ridiculous.
@Alan, I didn’t say I enjoy baseball. I was referring more broadly to the hundreds of millions of spectators who watch the game worldwide.
I also love baseball, and I still play: vintage/1860s rules. I love the Cardinals, who have been a part of my life for five decades. I don’t see national pride being a lesser reason to bind fans to teams than capitalism, the foundation of MLB and as false a god as any ever imagined.
foppert, I enjoy the WBC, so all I ask is you not lump all older Americans together. I don’t have Alan’s seven decades of fandom, but I do have five of them.
Great point. Ran with the stereotype. Apologies.
@fop: Well, almost all of what you say is false, and of course it is, because people who aren’t very smart never can understand people who are, but one thing you say is true: I do not care about “the desires and enjoyment of the players.” I am not a jock-sniffer like so many here. I am a representative of a better kind of fandom, the kind that Roger Angell expressed so well, and I am proud of that.
foppert, no worries. Best of luck to your team, which I’m guessing is the Giants based on your username.
@gbs: The issue is what they call “long usage.” The Cardinals became the Cardinals and the Cubs became the Cubs and the Tigers became the Tigers and so on because of a score of decades of their being LOVED. Capitalism started them, in the age of the robber barons, to be sure, but LOVE made them what they are. They were not forced into meaningfulness by P.R. departments or Manfred’s bean counters. LOVE did that. That is why silly gimmicks like the WBC don’t have any goodness or value, and the Cardinals and the Tigers and Cubs do.
I guess foppert is an Aussie? And sure, it’s nice if baseball is taking hold in other countries. They should grow their leagues and grow the love there, and that makes me happy. But it is not my job to concern myself with the international growth of baseball. I am not in the business of baseball. It is my job to love the Cubs and pass that on to later generations, and I have done that. I am the furthest thing from self-centered or xenophobic about baseball. I am a fan.
Of course Alan. You are just too smart for me. I’ll give you one thing, you have absolutely nailed the ugly American stereotype.
I love watching men representing their country with pride and passion. Don’t matter who. The feel good I get just washes over me. If that makes me a jock sniffer, I’m a jock sniffer. You are missing out old man. Watching other folks have a great time is very cool. See if you can’t get yourself out of your head for a minute and give it a go.
A lot of teams would love that
Ben Brown “has one minor league option” will separate the men from the boys.
Kevin Alcantara has also been optioned today according to the Cubs transaction page on MLB.com. So, it’s looking like Conforto, Carlson and Chas McCormick could all make the opening day active roster.
No, McC is hurt. It looks like Kingery.
Hey Bucket you have a 29 man roster in your back pocket? You only get 4 bench guys and Amaya, Ballesteros and Shaw are locks and so is Conforto. So explain to me how Conforto, Carlson and McCormick fit in one spot? Are they contortionists?
Consider Shaw and Ballesteros starters with Suzuki on the IL. Bench of non-catchers is Conforto, Carlson, and Kingery. They will have to mix and match DFAs or 60 day IL placements to fit those three on the 40 man. Austin and maybe Steele go on the 60 day. Dean, Cowles, or one of their many optioned relievers are candidates for a DFA.
Pitching staff is set with Wicks and Hodge going on the IL and Assad optioned.
The Cubs just completed one of their beloved annual traditions–right up there with singing “Go Cubs Go” and pretending we think Will Ferrell’s Haray Caray imitation is any good. (No, Will, Harry did not have a Southern accent.) I am referring of course to humiliating / taunting Kevin Alcantara by sending him down at the last possible moment.
It’s kind of funny: national observers, and some of you, are fooled every off-season into thinking Alcantara will make the team. It SEEMS to make sense. But it never happens, or will.
Oh, they’ll call him up at some point–to sit on the bench for a couple of weeks, and then to be released or traded to the Pirates or Royals, or some other team that has more tolerance for a player with dreads.
More like Hoyers complete lack of vision than any conspiracy theory and his stupid belief that any veteran no matter how bad is better than any prospect no matter how good. A thought that I assumed went out with the trash and when Leo Durocher left.