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Ricketts Discusses Hoyer, Cubs’ Payroll

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The Cubs missed the postseason for the fourth consecutive season. Chicago finished 83-79 for a second straight year. That’s a frustrating outcome in a down NL Central — especially since Chicago added around $30MM to its Opening Day payroll relative to 2023, per Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

Owner Tom Ricketts spoke with Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune about the team’s payroll outlook. Ricketts confirmed that the Cubs narrowly exceeded the $237MM base competitive balance tax threshold — as president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer suggested they would in August. Like most owners, Ricketts didn’t provide a clear answer as to whether he’d be willing to pay the tax for a second straight year.

“The penalties on CBT, they grow over time and so you want to be careful when you do it,” Ricketts said. “And so if there’s ever some point in the future where there’s a large financial commitment you want to make midseason, you have to be thoughtful about it.” Ricketts is referencing the escalating penalties for teams that pay the tax in consecutive seasons. The Cubs stayed below the CBT threshold in 2023, so they’re first-time payors this year. That’ll subject them to a 20% tax on their first $20MM in overages. Cot’s estimates that they were only about $300K over the line, so the actual tax payment (roughly $55K) is more or less a rounding error for an MLB team.

Paying at all means the Cubs would be taxed at a 30% rate for their first $20MM in overages if they surpass the threshold next season. That jumps to 42% for the next $20MM and comes with higher penalties (75% and 90%) for the respective $20MM after that. The penalties would increase if the Cubs paid the tax for a third straight year.

The CBT also includes higher penalties for teams that lose or add a free agent who declined a qualifying offer. The Cubs don’t have any impending free agents who’ll get a QO. If they signed a qualified free agent, they’d forfeit their second- and fifth-highest selections in the 2025 draft and $1MM in international bonus pool space.

Next year’s base threshold climbs to $241MM. Cot’s projects the Cubs around $150MM in CBT obligations. That assumes Cody Bellinger will not opt out of the final two seasons on his contract but does not include arbitration projections. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects the entire arbitration class to cost around $33MM if they were all tendered contracts. Moving on from some or all of Patrick Wisdom, Yency Almonte, Christian Bethancourt, Julian Merryweather, Nick Madrigal, Trey Wingenter, Jimmy Herget and Colten Brewer could knock that down to the $20MM range.

That’d leave approximately $70MM before the lowest threshold, so there’s a lot of payroll room before the tax becomes a concern. Ricketts’ note about the potential for midseason acquisitions could point to a preference to stay below the tax line during the offseason. A team’s CBT number isn’t calculated until the end of the season. Salary acquired in midseason pickups counts on a prorated basis in the calculation.

Allocating those resources will be at Hoyer’s discretion. The front office leader is entering the final season of the five-year extension that he signed in 2020. Chicago is still seeking its first playoff appearance since Theo Epstein turned the reins to Hoyer after the ’20 season.

It’s relatively common for teams to sign executives and coaches to extensions before the final year of their deal, thereby preventing from operating in a lame duck situation. Ricketts sidestepped a question regarding a potential Hoyer extension. “He’s under contract, that’s the way I see it,” the owner told Montemurro. “I think he’s motivated. … I think Jed’s going to have a great offseason and put us back in the playoffs next year.”

Cubs, Third Base Coach Willie Harris To Part Ways

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The Cubs and third base coach Willie Harris are parting ways, per Bruce Levine of 670 The Score on X. Levine characterizes the split as mutual with the sides on good terms. He adds that Harris is open to other coaching positions.

Harris, 46, played in the majors from 2001 to 2012, suiting up for the Orioles, White Sox, Red Sox, Atlanta, Nationals, Mets and Reds. After his playing days were done, he moved into coaching, spending some time in the minors. The Cubs hired him as third base coach going into the 2021 season, working under manager David Ross.

Craig Counsell took over as the Cubs’ skipper coming into 2024, inheriting Mike Napoli as first base coach with Harris at third. It was reported last week that Napoli and a couple of other coaches won’t be returning and today’s news means the Cubs have yet another coaching vacancy to fill.

Back in August, Scott Merkin of MLB.com spoke to Harris about the managerial job with the White Sox, shortly after Pedro Grifol had been fired with Grady Sizemore taking over on an interim basis. Harris said that he would be interested in being the skipper of the White Sox but it’s unclear if that interest runs the other way.

“I would absolutely love it if they showed interest in me being the leader of this organization, this team,” Harris said. “But I also understand how it goes. It’s a waiting process. If they call, great, I’ll be ready. I’ll be prepared.”

Offseason Outlook: Chicago Cubs

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The Cubs enter 2025 with an excellent opportunity to make the playoffs for the first time under Jed Hoyer.  Cody Bellinger's decision will help determine Hoyer's path, but the club will be seeking help at catcher and in the rotation and bullpen.

Guaranteed Contracts

Option Decisions

  • Cody Bellinger, RF/CF/DH/1B: $27.5MM player option with a $2.5MM buyout.  Also has a $25MM player option for '26 with a $5MM buyout
  • Drew Smyly, RP: $10MM mutual option with a $2.5MM buyout

Arbitration-Eligible Players (service time in parentheses; salary projections via Matt Swartz)

Free Agents

The Cubs' splashy hiring of Craig Counsell last November had minimal impact this year, as the club posted the same 83-79 record it had under David Ross in 2023.  A 17-10 April record created some optimism, but the Cubs went 65-67 thereafter and were mostly out of the playoff race by July.  Let's take a look around the Cubs' roster and figure out how president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer might go about creating a 90-win team for 2025, a particularly ripe opportunity with the Cardinals taking a rare step back.

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The Surprise Ace Of Last Year’s Free Agent Class

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As the 22 teams that aren’t currently focused on capturing the 2024 World Series title gear up for the coming offseason, many will surely be keeping an eye on the number of high-profile free agent starters set to hit the market this winter with Corbin Burnes, Blake Snell, Max Fried, and Jack Flaherty among the consensus top arms. It’s a class that’s not entirely dissimilar from last winter’s group of top arms, which was headlined by a quartet of Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Aaron Nola, and Jordan Montgomery.

Those top free agent arms garnered a combined guarantee of more than $600MM last winter, and the results were generally commensurate with that production. While Montgomery struggled badly with the Diamondbacks, Nola put up a fairly typical season by his standards with the Phillies this year (albeit with slightly diminished peripherals) and both Snell and Yamamoto fought through injury woes to dominate as expected when healthy. That said, a starter who was looked at more as a mid-rotation type of arm last winter surprised the baseball world by emerging with numbers comparable to those at the very top of the class.

That hurler was Cubs lefty Shota Imanaga, who was generally looked at as a tier below the aforementioned group alongside Eduardo Rodriguez, Lucas Giolito, and Sonny Gray. In spite of rumors that Imanaga’s market could top $100MM when all was said and done, the southpaw lingered in free agency into the new year before eventually signing with Chicago on a deal that fell far below expectations. While the deal maxes out at five years and $80MM, just a stone’s throw away from MLBTR’s prediction of $85MM over five years, the deal came with a complex structure that only guaranteed Imanaga $53MM, or roughly two thirds of that $80MM total figure.

It’s not hard to see why teams were seemingly bearish on Imanaga. After all, the 30-year-old lefty was coming over from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball at an age that’s roughly in line with a typical MLB free agent rather than the younger age many NPB players such as Yamamoto and teammate Seiya Suzuki make their way to the majors at. Yamamoto was marketing his age-25 season last year, while Suzuki marketed his age-27 season over the 2021-22 offseason. With many of Imanaga’s prime years already behind him, he maintained all the risk of providing a hefty sum to a player with no MLB experience without much of the perceived upside that would come with signing a player in their mid-20s.

Even aside from Imanaga’s age, it’s also worth noting that the lefty’s profile as a pitcher drew significant questions. The southpaw doesn’t throw especially hard, having averaged just 91.9mph on his heater this year, and some scouting reports (including one from Brandon Tew of Sports Info Solutions) raised questions about his ability to manage home runs at the big league level due to his fly ball-oriented profile. While Imanaga’s deep pitch mix and high-end stuff metrics offered reason for optimism regarding his future in the big leagues, the lefty nevertheless entered his first MLB season with plenty of questions surrounding him.

Fortunately for both Imanaga and the Cubs, he answered those questions in resounding fashion with an excellent rookie campaign. Overall, the lefty posted a 2.91 ERA (37% better than league average by ERA+) with a strong 25.1% strikeout rate that was 16th-best among qualified starters this year. He paired that strikeout stuff with excellent control, walking just 4% of opponents faced this year. That’s a figure topped by only George Kirby, Miles Mikolas, and Zach Eflin among all big leaguers this year and leaves him with a fantastic 21% K-BB that leaves him sandwiched between ace righties Zack Wheeler and Dylan Cease on the NL leaderboard.

That being said, not everything about Imanaga’s 2024 performance was dominant. His 3.72 FIP is rather pedestrian (just 6% better than league average by FIP-) and more advanced metrics such as xERA and SIERA, while more bullish than FIP on his performance, nonetheless see him as more of a 3.50 ERA pitcher than the 2.91 figure he actually posted this year. The main culprit for that discrepancy between results and metrics is the very same weakness that drew some skepticism last winter: his proclivity for giving up homers. Imanaga surrendered 27 home runs this year, tied with Twins righty Bailey Ober for ninth-most among all qualified starters in 2024.

While that’s certainly not a completely untenable figure, it would certainly be fair to wonder if Imanaga is due for some regression heading into next season. Of the eight pitchers who surrendered more homers than Imanaga this year, none came close to his sterling ERA with only Nola (3.57) and Jose Berrios (3.60) posting an figure that was even within a full run of Imanaga’s 2.91 mark. Between his hefty home run rate and an above-average 80.2% strand rate this year, it would hardly be a surprise if the emergent ace put up numbers closer to the mid-rotation ceiling he was thought to have this time last year come 2025.

Of course, even a step back that aligns Imanaga’s performance more closely with his advanced metrics would leave the Cubs with an excellent #2 starter behind ace Justin Steele who they should have no concerns about starting in a hypothetical playoff series. Barring dramatic regression on the part of Imanaga next year, it seems very likely that the Cubs will guarantee the lefty the full $80MM value of his contract rather than risk him opting out following the 2025 campaign, which he would be able to do if the Cubs decline to guarantee the full contract.

Cubs Part Ways With First Base Coach Mike Napoli

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The Cubs are making some coaching changes, as relayed by Jesse Rogers of ESPN on X. The club is letting go of first base coach Mike Napoli, assistant hitting coach Jim Adduci, bullpen coach Darren Holmes and “a couple of strength coaches.”

All three of the coaches are former major league ball players. Napoli was in the majors from 2006 to 2017, mostly as a catcher and first baseman. After retiring, he joined the Cubs’ coaching staff going into the 2020 season as quality assurance coach. He became the club’s first base coach going into the 2022 season.

Adduci’s major league career spanned from 2013 to 2019, but with a two-year stint in the KBO sandwiched in there, as he played in Korea in 2015 and 2016. The Cubs hired him going into 2021 with the title of run production coordinator, though his current title is listed on MLB.com as “assistant hitting coach, game planning.”

Holmes pitched in the majors from 1990 to 2003. He has worked as a bullpen coach for multiple organizations in recent years, taking that title with the Rockies from 2015 to 2019, the Orioles from 2020 to 2023 and the Cubs in 2024.

The Cubs hired Craig Counsell to be their manager in November of last year. His first season in Wrigley resulted in a record of 83-79, the same mark the club posted last year. It’s always difficult to tell how much blame/credit should go to any individual coach when staffs are composed of dozens of people, but it seems Counsell and the Cubs have decided to make a few changes as they look to take a step forward next year.

Cubs Release Shawn Armstrong

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September 26: Armstrong has been released, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com.

September 20: The Cubs announced that they have activated right-hander Hayden Wesneski from the 15-day injured list, with fellow righty Shawn Armstrong designated for assignment in a corresponding move. Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic was among those to relay the moves on X.

Armstrong, 34, only joined the club three weeks ago. His results in a small sample of appearances since then have been fine and this move says more about the club than about him. He was claimed off waivers from the Cardinals at the end of August when the Cubs were within five games of a playoff spot with a month left to go. Now they’re seven games back with just over a week remaining on the schedule.

The veteran righty is an impending free agent, so the Cubs have little use for him now as they play out the string on this season. They will put him on waivers in the coming days. He wouldn’t be postseason eligible with any claiming club, so there’s little incentive for one still in contention to put in a claim as they would have to take on the remainder of his $2.05MM salary. That would be less than $100K by the time the waiver process plays out but the club would also only receive about a week of Armstrong’s services in exchange.

Armstrong has already pitched for three teams this year, tossing 66 2/3 innings between the Rays, Cardinals and Cubs. His 4.86 earned run average isn’t terribly impressive but his other numbers paint a nicer picture. His 22.4% strikeout rate and 8.5% walk rate are both fairly close to league average. His .362 batting average on balls in play seems to be hurting him, which is why his 3.58 FIP and 3.95 SIERA are significantly better than his ERA.

The Rays got good results out of Armstrong in the previous two seasons. He tossed 55 innings for them in 2022 with a 3.60 ERA. Last year, he gave the Rays 52 innings with a tiny ERA of 1.38. That number is surely a little misleading, as his .250 BABIP and 80.9% strand rate helped him out, but he did post a 26.1% strikeout rate and 5.3% walk rate.

This year, as mentioned, his ERA hasn’t been as strong. But the Cardinals evidently believed in the under-the-hood numbers, as they sent two-plus years of Dylan Carlson to the Rays in order to get Armstrong prior to the deadline. Just a few weeks into August, they had slid enough in the standings that they put Armstrong on waivers and saved a bit of money by having the Cubs claim him.

If Armstrong goes unclaimed in the coming days, he has enough service time to reject an outright assignment and keep what’s left of this year’s salary, so perhaps he will get his offseason started a few days ahead of schedule. That is unless some team in a tight playoff race will be interested in snagging him off the wire for the final week of the season.

Cubs Recall Kevin Alcantara For MLB Debut

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The Cubs recalled top outfield prospect Kevin Alcantara to the active roster this afternoon and optioned infielder Miles Mastrobuoni to the minor leagues in a corresponding move. Alcantara’s first appearance in a game will be his big league debut.

The 22-year-old was first acquired by the Cubs at the trade deadline in 2021 as the headliner going back to Chicago in the deal that sent longtime first baseman Anthony Rizzo to the Yankees alongside right-hander Alexander Vizcaino. Since then, Vizcaino was released by the Cubs after just six games in the organization and is now out of affiliated ball. Fortunately, Alcantara has blossomed with the Cubs into an impressive player on both sides of the ball and even become a consensus top-100 prospect in the sport: the hulking, 6’6” outfielder ranks 60th at ESPN, 69th at MLB.com, and 77th at Baseball America as of each service’s most recent update.

The outfielder has never posted a wRC+ below 123 at any level of the minor leagues since donning a Cubs uniform for the first time, and though he’s not yet hit more than 15 homers or stolen 15 bases in a full season of minor league action to this point in his career scouts have routinely lauded his plus power and speed potential. In 111 games at the Double- and Triple-A levels this year, Alcantara has slashed a solid .278/.353/.428 with 14 homers and 14 steals, including a hot streak in 35 games at Triple-A that’s seen him hit .292/.378/.469 in his first 148 trips to the plate at the highest level of the minors.

One potential red flag in his profile is his tendency towards swing-and-miss: he’s struck out in 25.1% of his plate appearances at the Double-A level throughout his career, and so far in Triple-A that number has jumped up to 29.1%. It’s a flaw Alcantara will surely need to work on in order to reach his potential as an above-average regular in the majors, though his tools still leave plenty of room for optimism about his ceiling. He’s paired that exciting offensive potential with a strong glove that receives positive marks in center field, though scouts have long noted that his strong arm is more than enough for right field as well should he ultimately move to a corner.

With defensive standout Pete Crow-Armstrong having taken over center on a full-time basis in Chicago, it seems likely that right field would be Alcantara’s long-term defensive home in the majors in the event that he manages to work his way into a regular role with the club in the coming years. That may be easier said than done, however. After all, the club’s outfield mix is currently loaded with talent at the big league level with Crow-Armstrong set to patrol center at Wrigley for the next half decade and both Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki locked into the outfield corners through at least the 2026 season. Cody Bellinger has been the club’s regular right fielder since Crow-Armstrong’s arrival, pushing Suzuki to DH and potentially opening a path for Alcantara to work his way into the outfield mix should Bellinger opt out of his contract and return to free agency this winter.

Bellinger opting out of his deal in Chicago is hardly a guarantee, however, and Michael Busch has seemingly locked down his other position of first base for the foreseeable future. Fellow top outfield prospect Owen Caissie is also at the Triple-A level and could debut as soon as next season, further adding to the logjam of outfield options in Chicago. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Cubs look to leverage their outfield depth in an offseason trade this winter to address other areas of the roster given the relative lack of opportunity available to Alcantara (and, for that matter, Caissie) at the big league level, particularly if Bellinger decides to opt in. Both Happ and Suzuki have no-trade clauses, however, somewhat limiting the club’s options to explore trades in that regard.

Cubs Claim Enoli Paredes

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The Cubs have claimed right-hander Enoli Paredes off waivers from the Brewers, per Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune on X. The righty had been designated for assignment by Milwaukee last week. The Cubs had a 40-man vacancy after righty Shawn Armstrong was designated for assignment last week and won’t need to make a corresponding move in that regard.

Paredes, 28, started the year with the Brewers on a minor league deal. He kicked things off with a complete lights-out performance in Triple-A. He tossed 20 2/3 innings over 18 appearances for Nashville with a 1.31 earned run average. He walked a fairly high 11% of batters faced but also struck out 41.5% of opponents and kept 56.8% of balls in play on the ground.

He was added to the big league roster in May and has had mixed results since. Forearm inflammation sent him to the injured list for about two months from July to September. Around that, he made 17 appearances for the Brewers with a 1.74 ERA. Though that number looks nice, his 16.7% strikeout rate and 11.9% walk rate were subpar, with his 44.8% ground ball rate around average. A tiny .224 batting average on balls in play and 84% strand rate were helping him out, which is why his 3.55 FIP and 4.95 SIERA aren’t nearly as nice as his SIERA.

The Brewers decided to quit while they were ahead and move on. Since Paredes exhausted his option years while with the Astros earlier in his career, they had to remove him from the 40-man entirely to get him off the active roster.

The Cubs are eliminated from the postseason picture this year and have presumably grabbed Paredes as a long-term play, looking at his early Triple-A results and window of control. He has just over two years of major league service time and still won’t be arbitration eligible by this winter. Though he is out of options, he can be retained for four more seasons if he manages to hang onto his roster spot.

Cubs Planning To Add Starting Pitcher In Offseason

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The Cubs are planning to add an established starting pitcher to their rotation this winter, reports Patrick Mooney of The Athletic. The club has Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon and Javier Assad in four spots. Per Mooney’s report, adding one more name into that mix would push guys like Ben Brown, Cade Horton, Jordan Wicks and Hayden Wesneski down the depth chart.

“In one sense, you feel like you’re in a solid position because we have a number of young pitchers (who) have had success in the big leagues,” Manager Craig Counsell is quoted as saying in the piece. “Now with all of them, there’s been injuries. And it’s not a big sample as of yet. But that’s also kind of the nature of pitching. It’s the nature of young pitching. So we’re in a good spot in terms of that area of depth. But as we saw this year, it disappeared quickly.”

The quartet of Imanaga, Steele, Taillon and Assad have been the club’s best starters this year, both in terms of quality and quantity. Each of that group has an ERA of 3.41 or lower at the moment and all of them have tossed between 130 and 175 innings on the season thus far.

But as Counsell alluded to, there were also some challenges. Steele made a couple of trips to the injured list, one for a left hamstring strain and another for left elbow tendinitis. The Cubs had picked up a $16.5MM club option to bring back Kyle Hendricks but that ultimately proved to be a misstep. Hendricks struggled badly enough to get moved to the bullpen. He eventually retook a rotation spot but has a 6.28 ERA for the year overall. Wicks is currently on the IL for the third time this year, having gone on the shelf for a left forearm strain and then two separate stints for right oblique strains. Brown hasn’t pitched since June due to a stress reaction in his neck. Horton last pitched in May, getting shut down with a subscapularis strain and suffering a setback while trying to return the mound.

An argument could be made for rolling into 2025 with the same front four, letting the group of Wicks, Brown, Horton and Wesneski fight for the fifth spot. But with so many issues in 2024, adding some more security makes plenty of sense. None of those four are fully established. Wesneski is the only one with more than 81 big league innings pitched, and his 186 frames have been split between the bullpen and rotation. Wicks, Brown and Wesneski all still have options, meaning they could be stretched out in Triple-A if not needed on the big league staff. Horton isn’t yet on the 40-man and doesn’t need to be protected from the Rule 5 draft until December of 2025.

The Cubs also might not have much else on their winter to-do list. Even if Cody Bellinger eventually opts out, the outfield will still have Ian Happ, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Seiya Suzuki and Mike Tauchman, with Alexander Canario, Owen Caissie, Kevin Alcántara and Brennen Davis at Triple-A. The infield has Isaac Paredes, Dansby Swanson, Nico Hoerner and Michael Busch, with Matt Shaw knocking on the door. Miguel Amaya has shown some progress at the plate and Christian Bethancourt can be retained for next year if the Cubs believe in his recent performance. Moises Ballesteros will also be pushing for a job soon.

The bullpen arguably should be a focus but president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer had made it clear he would prefer to not to make free agent splashes there. As shown on MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, since Hoyer was hired in November of 2020, the club hasn’t given a multi-year deal to any reliever. And of the one-year deals they have given out, the only guy to get more than $5MM was Héctor Neris, who got $9MM.

Unless a change is coming in terms of the approach to bullpen construction, starting pitching is a logical target with the position player group in strong shape. And there should be some powder dry for reinforcements. The club went narrowly over the $237MM competitive balance tax this year, with RosterResource currently pegging their number a bit over $238MM. Next year’s tally is only at $126MM right now. Arbitration raises for guys like Paredes and Steele will certainly add to that number and it will grow significantly if Bellinger decides to stay, but there will still be room for a notable contract.

Hoyer hasn’t played at the top of the market in terms of starting pitching but has given out some mid-market deals. As shown in the MLBTR Contract Tracker again,  Imanaga, Taillon and Marcus Stroman have each received guaranteed between $53MM and $71MM, the largest guarantees the Cubs have given to starting pitchers in the Hoyer era.

This winter’s starting pitching class will be topped by guys like Corbin Burnes, Max Fried, Jack Flaherty and Blake Snell, assuming Snell stays healthy and opts out of his deal. Signing any of those guys would likely require the Cubs to go to a new level of spending, getting into nine-figure territory. If they want to stay in that Stroman/Taillon/Imanaga tier, they’d probably be debating names like Luis Severino, Sean Manaea, Nick Pivetta and others. Hall-of-Fame-bound veterans Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander will be limited to short-term deals since they are both in their 40s and coming off injury-plagued years in 2024.

The trade market will be another option for the Cubs. The White Sox didn’t end up flipping Garrett Crochet at the deadline but could perhaps make him available again in the winter. The Marlins lost almost all their rotation options to injury this year but it’s possible to see them considering deals as the group gets healthier for 2025. Somewhat similarly, the Rays seem to have an abundance of rotation options with Jeffrey Springs, Shane Baz and Drew Rasmussen returned from long absences, with Shane McClanahan to join them next year. Other possibilities will surely emerge as the winter goes on.

It will be an interesting offseason for the Cubs. Their signing of Swanson heading into 2023 seemed to signal a wish to return to contention after a couple of rebuilding years. They had a solid but unspectacular year in 2023, winning 83 games. They may top that here in 2024, currently at 80-76, but will miss the postseason again. Pressure figures to be high for a club that hasn’t made the postseason in a full campaign since 2018, but a lot of good elements are in place and a few finishing touches could perhaps get them over the hump in 2025.

Cody Bellinger Remains Undecided On Opt-Out

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Cody Bellinger has one of the more significant opt-out decisions of the offseason. The Cubs center fielder/first baseman needs to decide whether to bypass the remaining two years and $50MM on the three-year, $80MM contract he signed late last winter. If he foregoes this year’s opt-out, he’d have another out clause during the 2025-26 offseason (when there’ll be $20MM left on the deal).

Last weekend, Bob Nightengale of USA Today wrote that Bellinger was “fully expected” to bypass this winter’s opt-out. That doesn’t seem to be set in stone, however. Patrick Mooney of the Athletic reported this evening that Bellinger has yet to decide whether he’ll test the market.

Bellinger is wrapping up a solid if slightly disappointing year. He’s hitting .268/.328/.432 with 18 home runs over 545 plate appearances. He has essentially maintained the career-best pure contact ability that he showed in 2023. Bellinger has fanned in 15.8% of his trips this year, marginally higher than the 15.6% strikeout rate he managed during his first season on the North Side.

The downturn has been in his power output. Bellinger had eight more home runs and 13 additional extra-base hits a year ago. He has another week to add to this season’s totals but isn’t going to make up that much ground. His slugging percentage is down more than .090 points from last year’s excellent .525 mark. The sustainability of last year’s power production was always the biggest question. Bellinger got to his impressive 2023 output despite a below-average 31.4% hard contact rate and 87.9 MPH average exit velocity. This year’s batted ball metrics are similarly middling and the results have indeed regressed.

There’s nevertheless still a lot to like in the profile. Bellinger has proven to be an above-average contact hitter. He’s another season removed from the dismal 2021-22 run that led the Dodgers to non-tender him before his final arbitration year. It’s safe to say that his 47-homer MVP form isn’t coming back, but Bellinger is a productive hitter. He’s still capable of playing center field, although the Cubs have used him increasingly in right field and at first base.

Bellinger has graded as an average defender in a little more than 400 center field innings. He has posted similar marks in more than 350 innings in right. The Cubs’ best outfield has defensive wunderkind Pete Crow-Armstrong in center. Another team could give Bellinger more consistent reps up the middle for at least a season or two.

The two-time All-Star remains one of the younger possible free agents in the class. Bellinger turned 29 in July. He’s more than a year younger than Harrison Bader, who’d probably be the top center fielder if Bellinger stays in Chicago. He’s nearly a year younger than Anthony Santander and about the same age as Tyler O’Neill. While there’s a decent amount of corner outfield talent — headlined, of course, by Juan Soto — the center field class is not strong. Bellinger declined a qualifying offer last winter and is no longer eligible to receive one, so there’d be no draft pick forfeiture this time around.

That’d work in Bellinger’s favor if he opted out. Between his age and decent all-around production, he’d have a decent argument for a four- or even five-year deal. If he simply wanted to maximize the guarantee, he shouldn’t have an issue beating the $50MM remaining on his current contract. That’d require taking a paycut next season though. Bellinger wouldn’t match next year’s $27.5MM salary on an annual basis over four or five years.

If Bellinger and his camp at the Boras Corporation expect his power to rebound, bypassing the opt-out would be the likely decision. He’d have another chance to retest the market in advance of his age-30 campaign in 12 months. Staying in Chicago may require playing right field for a full season in deference to Crow-Armstrong, though, potentially raising questions among other teams about his long-term viability in center field.

From the Cubs’ perspective, an opt-out would probably be the better outcome. That’d enable them to play Seiya Suzuki more frequently in right field instead of limiting him to designated hitter — where he’d need to play with Bellinger and Ian Happ flanking Crow-Armstrong. Michael Busch’s strong year lessens the need to have Bellinger around as a fallback at first base. The Cubs have questions at catcher, in the bullpen and at the back of the rotation.

How does the MLBTR readership expect things to play out?

 

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