Cubs MLB Roster

Cubs Organizational Depth Chart
40-Man Roster Info

40 players are on the MLB RESERVE LIST (roster is full) 

42 players are at MLB Spring Training 

31 players on MLB RESERVE LIST are ACTIVE at MLB Spring Training, and nine players are on OPTIONAL ASSIGNMENT to minors. 
11 players are MLB Spring Training NON-ROSTER INVITEES (NRI) 

Last updated 3-17-2024
 
* bats or throws left
# bats both

PITCHERS: 17
Yency Almonte
Adbert Alzolay 
Javier Assad
Jose Cuas
Kyle Hendricks
* Shota Imanaga
Caleb Kilian
Mark Leiter Jr
* Luke Little
Julian Merryweather
Hector Neris 
Daniel Palencia
* Drew Smyly
* Justin Steele
Jameson Taillon
Hayden Wesneski 
* Jordan Wicks

NRI PITCHERS: 5 
Colten Brewer 
Carl Edwards Jr 
* Edwin Escobar 
* Richard Lovelady 
* Thomas Pannone 

CATCHERS: 2
Miguel Amaya
Yan Gomes

NRI CATCHERS: 2  
Jorge Alfaro 
Joe Hudson 

INFIELDERS: 7
* Michael Busch 
Nico Hoerner
Nick Madrigal
* Miles Mastrobuoni
Christopher Morel
Dansby Swanson
Patrick Wisdom

NRI INFIELDERS: 3 
David Bote 
Garrett Cooper
* Dominic Smith

OUTFIELDERS: 5
* Cody Bellinger 
Alexander Canario
# Ian Happ
Seiya Suzuki
* Mike Tauchman 

NRI OUTFIELDERS: 1 
* David Peralta

OPTIONED:
Kevin Alcantara, OF 
Michael Arias, P 
Ben Brown, RHP 
Pete Crow-Armstrong, OF 
Brennen Davis, OF 
Porter Hodge, RHP 
* Matt Mervis, 1B 
Keegan Thompson, P 
Luis Vazquez, INF 

 



Minor League Rosters
Rule 5 Draft 
Minor League Free-Agents

Some Cubs Videos

I don't have any thoughts on a post today, but I was playing around with adding an easier way to embed videos on the site. Here's Starlin Castro during the Arizona Fall League.

 

A clip from Bill Murray in 1984, bummed out that they didn't let him sing the national anthem before one of the playoff games.

Finally, I'll finish up with some of the members of the 1969 Cubs singing "Pennant Fever".  A lot better voices than the '85 Bears, but not quite the same end result.

The cover is a bit tough to make out, but I believe it's (from left to right): Nate Oliver, Willie Smith, Billy Williams, Ron Santo, Don Kessinger, Randy Hundley and Gene Oliver.

There was also a jazzy B-side of an instrumental titled "Slide".

Comments

AZ PHIL: On the chance that you're the gentleman in the Castro video sitting in the front row by himself. I just wanted to say how much I like your straw hat. Anyways, maybe that's not Phil, but I guess if I ever went to an AFL game, that's where I'd expect to see him.

MEX vs. VEN on MLB Network in a few minutes. I missed the 3:30 game (PR vs. DR). Woo!!! Live wood bat baseball!

[ ]

In reply to by crunch

elvis andrus playing CF to let gregor petit play SS...end of their 4th in the field, petit with 2 errors and andrus has had 1 fly over his head.

[ ]

In reply to by crunch

feb 2nd and there's live wood bat baseball on tv...so...awesome.

Gregg signing at $2.75 with the Bluejays might be the trigger that makes one of their relievers more available (Jason Frasier)? Not making financial sense to me though...isn't Frasier less expensive?

[ ]

In reply to by Cubster

If you get a MLB ready player for Frasier who you only have to pay $400K to, then in theory it can make sense. I think half-assed rebuilding is probably a bad idea, but a lot of teams try it.

[ ]

In reply to by Cubster

Submitted by Cubster on Tue, 02/02/2010 - 9:48pm. Gregg signing at $2.75 with the Bluejays might be the trigger that makes one of their relievers more available (Jason Frasier)? Not making financial sense to me though...isn't Frasier less expensive? =========================== CUBSTER: Jason Frasor signed for $2.65M (avoiding arbitration), so he's less expensive than Gregg in 2010, but only by $100K. So I would think after signing Gregg that the Jays would now be more-willing to trade Frasor (who will be a FA post-2010). It's only a matter of whether the Cubs will give up what the Jays would want back for Frasor (whatever that is). Like ROB G, I have speculated that it would probably be Angel Guzman, but I suspect the Cubs would prefer to keep Guzman and trade a couple of their less-proven but still MLB-ready (or near-ready) young pitchers (like Berg, Stevens, Parker, et al).

Rob HERE: The videos aren't loading onto the latest version of IE8. They work fine with Chrome, Safari, and FireFox on the same platform.

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In reply to by Rob G.

Same results as above. Works fine in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. But only boxes with little red X's in IE 8.

[ ]

In reply to by navigator

~shrug~ again, two completely different ways to embed video, so that's just odd and furthers my belief that IE is the devil's work. I suppose you're not running an ad-blocker in IE or something, it could block these videos as they are flash based. if anyone else is running IE8 and is having the same problem, let me know.

[ ]

In reply to by Rob G.

Okay, after checking all the IE 8 optional settings and coming up empty, I manually installed the latest update to IE Flash (version 10.0.42.34) using "getflash" and all is well. Why this was necessary is a Microsoft and Adobe mystery. Somehow every other browser but IE8 updated itself. Apparently the automated Windows 7 updates have gotten out of sync.

[ ]

In reply to by Rob G.

I've been on a Mac for 4-5 months now, and once in a blue moon have to go over to my 1 year old Windows quad core machine. It only takes about 10 seconds back in Windows for me to remember how much I hate Windows and the many reasons why I switched.

[ ]

In reply to by Ryno

I can literally open Chrome, check Gmail and Google Calendar before Internet Explorer finishes loading.

[ ]

In reply to by Ryno

yeah, I've been using Chrome sparingly over the last few weeks and I'm impressed. May have to switch from Firefox.

The Sporting News says Dusty Baker has decided on his 1,2 hitters out machines. 1. Drew Stubbs .323 OBA last year in limited action 2. Orlando Cabrera .316 OBA last year

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In reply to by Paul Noce

Nope. Effin' baseclogger.

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In reply to by JoePepitone

lol

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In reply to by Rob G.

Every now & then, it's probably good for a GM to actually go all the way to an arbitration hearing, just so arbitration-eligible players don't think the GM will automatically always ultimately compromise at the mid-point between the club's offer and the player's figure. If a GM is afraid to take the salary dispute to a hearing and is always willing to compromise at the mid-point, it could motivate an arb-eligible player to request a higher salary than he may be reasonably worth, just to make the mid-point higher, even if the player would be unlikely to win in arbitration and receive his requested salary from the panel. So Hendry might not back down this time and compromise at the mid-point, even if going to a hearing would mean the relationship between Theriot & the Cubs will become a bit strained. After all, it's probably fairly likely that Theriot will not be a Cub by this time next year. Marmol's case might be a bit different, though, because he is more likely to remain with the Cubs beyond the 2010 season, but Hendry might decide to challenge Marmol anyway. Since the arbitration panels seem to side about 50/50 with the player and the club (sometimes it almost seems like they just flip a coin), the Cubs might figure they'll most-likely win one and lose one, and essentially break even.

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In reply to by Arizona Phil

"GM to actually go all the way to an arbitration hearing, just so arbitration-eligible players don't think the GM will automatically always ultimately compromise at the mid-point between the club's offer and the player's figure." 17 straight years is pretty much automatic.

Baseball Prospectus' C. Karhl's take on the Nady acquisition...
n short, I'd suggest that Nady's beaten his platoon rap, and before last season's early injury, he'd begun to establish himself as a decent starter in an outfield corner....
For the money, he's not a bad risk; indeed, unlike guys like Micah Hoffpauir or Reed Johnson, he's an actual everyday-quality player if healthy, not a bad thing to have around when you don't know when or how long Alfonso Soriano might need to head to the DL. The problem is whether or not he'll be healthy, to which I'll defer to Will Carroll and the Cubs' training staff. The intent, however, seems sensible, so that if the Cubs do lose a starting outfielder for any length of time, they're not short on offense.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=10007

Caribbean WS has been full of some bad/lazy D so far...some nice games, though. jason simontacci pitching for VEN...ha. been a while since i heard that name.

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In reply to by Rob G.

Cubs @ WSox - June 26th (Sat night game) That can't be right, I believe the city banned cubs vs Sox night games for Friday and Saturday nights due to fights. Joking about the ban, but I believe there is an understanding.

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In reply to by Rob G.

"Cubs @ Rangers - May 22nd (Sat night game)" 1st nationally televised game because of the huge grudge match potential of facing Byrd and Jaramillo's former squad!

Interesting line buried in Jon Heyman's article, which condemns the Mets and Cubs for not spending enough money this offseason: "...and Alfonso Soriano proved to be even more untradeable than (Luis) Castillo." http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/jon_heyman/02/03/winter.l… So is he actually implying the Cubs at some point shopped Fonzi on the down low? Or just stating the obvious, that Fonzi's contract is unmovable? I've personally always dismissed Heyman as SI's version of Phil Rogers, but once in a blue moon he does get something right. I don't believe it's this time, however.

Bruce Miles, Herald paints a vision of the Hendry-Theriot arbitration hearing:
So here we go. The Cubs and maybe GM Jim Hendry are likely to say: “Obviously, Ryan, we love you. Obviously, you scrap and scrape and do all those little, gritty things this organization loves. But since we do pay attention to stats, contrary to what some may believe, we’ll present these to the arbitrator: “From 2008 to 2009, Mr. Theriot’s offensive line went from .307/.387/.359 to .284/.343/.369. His wOBA (yeah we know what that is, too), went from .338 to .318. More alarmingly, his flyball percentage jumped from 20.2 percent to 30 percent, and we don’t pay Mr. Theriot to hit flyballs, no matter what our manager (and we love him, too) thinks. On top of it, Mr. Theriot’s walks total dropped from 73 to 51 while his strikeouts spiked from 58 to 93. Or, put another way, Mr. Theriot’s BB/K ratio went from 1.26 to 0.55 in a year’s time. We rest our case.”
and some of the Theriot side:
“I hear a lot of talk about my defense and range being lacking. You forgot something, there, across the table, when you cited all your fancy stats. How about my UZR going from 0.4 to 7.7 and my UZR/150 going from 0.7 to 8.3 in a year's time?
http://blogs.dailyherald.com/node/3380

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In reply to by Cubster

Why let stats inform your opinion when you can just find a stat to back up what you already believe? This is the biggest problem with the mess of stats in baseball and why I trust my eyes more than I do some douchebag on the internet telling me about zone ratings. Anyways, if you've been paying attention you'll know intuitively that Theriot isn't a wizard in the field, that he didn't work the count in '09 like he had in previous years, and that he didn't hit those outside pitches to the right fielder in '09 as much as he did in previous years. You don't need stats to tell you this stuff.

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In reply to by Ryno

"...and why I trust my eyes more than I do some douchebag on the internet telling me about zone ratings." Ironically, my problem is the douchebags on the Internet who tell me to trust their eyes. Not that you were doing so.

CarrieMuskat: #cubs sign Carlos Marmol to one-year $2.125 mill contract, thus avoiding arbitration. Also, Kevin Millar Minor deal is finally official

"The Cubs will also air eight games on WCIU-Ch. 26, including the season opener in Atlanta on April 5." So the first game of the year will not be available to anyone outside Chicago. Unless we're able to pick up the Atlanta broadcast on TBS.

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In reply to by Osiris

Yes, the Cubs still haven't figured out that getting an extra $50K on local contracts hurts their long term profitability by removing national telecasts. This type of short-term decision making is what will eventually turn the Cubs market value into the same as the White Sox.

Recent comments

  • crunch (view)

    SF snags b.snell...2/62m

  • Cubster (view)

    AZ Phil: THAT is an awesome report worth multiple thanks. I’m sure it will be worth reposting in an “I told you so” in about 2-3 years.

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    The actual deadline to select a post-2023 Article XX-B MLB free agent signed to 2024 minor league contract (Cooper, Edwards, and Peralta) to the MLB 40-man roster is not MLB Opening Day, it is 12 PM (Eastern) this coming Sunday (3/24). 

    However, the Cubs could notify the player prior to the deadline that the player is not going to get added to the 40 on Sunday, which would allow the player to opt out early. Otherwise the player can opt out anytime after the Sunday deadline (if he was not added to the 40 by that time). 

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    Today is an off day for both the Cubs MLB players and the Cubs minor league players.  

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    For those of you keeping track, so far nine players have been called up to Mesa from the Cubs Dominican Academy for Minor League Camp and they will be playing in the ACL in 2024: 

    * bats or throws left 

    Angel Cepeda, INF 
    * Miguel Cruz, P
    Yidel Diaz, C 
    * Albert Gutierrez, 1B
    Fraiman Marte, P  
    Francis Reynoso, P (ex-1B) 
    Derniche Valdez, INF 
    Edward Vargas, OF 
    Jeral Vizcaino, P 

    And once again, despite what you might read at Baseball Reference and at milb.com, Albert Gutierrez is absolutely positively a left-handed hitter (only), NOT a right-handed hitter.

    Probably not too surprisingly, D. Valdez was the Cubs #1 prospect in the DSL last season, Cepeda was the DSL Cubs best all-around SS prospect not named Derniche Valdez, Gutierrez was the DSL Cubs top power hitting prospect not named Derniche Valdez, E. Vargas was the DSL Cubs top outfield prospect (and Cepeda and E. Vargas were also the DSL Cubs top two hitting prospects), Y. Diaz was the DSL Cubs top catching prospect, and M. Cruz was the DSL Cubs top pitching prospect. 

    F. Marte (ex-STL) and J. Vizcaino (ex-MIL) are older pitchers (both are 22) who were signed by the Cubs after being released by other organizations and then had really good years working out of the bullpen for the Cubs in the DSL last season. 

    The elephant in the room is 21-year old Francis Reynoso, a big dude (6'5) who was a position player (1B) at the Cardinals Dominican Academy for a couple of years, then was released by STL in 2022, and then signed by the Cubs and converted to a RHP at the Cubs Dominican Academy (and he projects as a high-velo "high-leverage" RP in the states). He had a monster year for the DSL Cubs last season (his first year as a pitcher). 

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    DJL: The only players who definitely have opt outs are Cooper, Edwards, and Peralta (Opening Day, 5/1, and 6/1), and that's because they are post-2023 Article XX-B MLB free agents who signed 2024 minor league contracts and (by rule) they get those opt outs automatically. 

    Otherwise, any player signed to a 2024 minor league contract - MIGHT or - MIGHT NOT - have an opt out in their contract, but it is an individual thing, and if there are contractual opt outs the opt out(s) might not necessarily be Opening Day. It could be 5/1, or 6/1, or 7/1 (TBD).

    Because of their extensive pro experience, the players who most-likely have contractual opt outs are Alfaro, Escobar, and D. Smith, but (again), not necessarily Opening Day. 

    Also, just because a player has the right to opt out doesn't mean he will. 

  • Dolorous Jon Lester (view)

    I love the idea that Madrigal heads to Iowa in case Morel can’t handle third.

    The one point that intrigues me here is Cooper over Smith. I feel like the Cubs really like Smith and don’t want to lose him. Could be wrong. He def seems like an opt out if he misses the opening day roster

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    Childersb3: Both Madrigal and Wisdom can be optioned without any restriction. Their consent is not required. 

    They both can be outrighted without restriction, too (presuming the player is not claimed off waivers), but if outrighted they can choose to elect free agency (immediately, or deferred until after the end of the MLB season).

    If the player is outrighted and elects free-agency immediately he forfeits what remains of his salary.

    If he accepts the assignment and defers free agency until after the conclusion of the season, he continues to get his salary, and he could be added back to the 40 anytime prior to becoming a free-agent (club option). 

  • Childersb3 (view)

    Phil, 
    Madrigal and Wisdom can or cannot refuse being optioned to the Minors?
    If they can refuse it, wouldn't they elect to leave the Cubs org?

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    In my opinion, the biggest "affirmative" mistake the Cubs made in the off-season (that is, doing something they should not have done), was blowing $9M in 2024 AAV on Hector Neris. What the Cubs actually need is an alternate closer to be in the pen and available to close if Alzolay pitched the day before (David Robertson would have been perfect), because with his forearm issue last September, I would be VERY wary of over-using Alzolay. I'm not even sure I would pitch him two days in a row!  

    And of course what the Cubs REALLY need is a second TOR SP to pair with Justin Steele. That's where the Cubs are going to need to be willing to package prospects (like the Padres did to acquire Dylan Cease, the Orioles did to acquire Corbin Burnes, and the Dodgers did to acquire Tyler Glasnow). Obviously those ships have sailed, but I would say right now the Cubs need to look very hard at trying to acquire LHSP Jesus Luzardo from the Marlins (and maybe LHP A. J. Puk as well).