Cubs MLB Roster

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40-Man Roster Info

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

28 players on MLB RESERVE LIST are ACTIVE, and twelve players are on OPTIONAL ASSIGNMENT to minors. 

Last updated 3-26-2024
 
* bats or throws left
# bats both

PITCHERS: 15
Yency Almonte
Adbert Alzolay 
Javier Assad
Jose Cuas
Kyle Hendricks
* Shota Imanaga
Caleb Kilian
Mark Leiter Jr
* Luke Little
Julian Merryweather
Hector Neris 
* Drew Smyly
* Justin Steele
Jameson Taillon
* Jordan Wicks

CATCHERS: 2
Miguel Amaya
Yan Gomes

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

OUTFIELDERS: 4
* Cody Bellinger 
Alexander Canario
# Ian Happ
Seiya Suzuki
* Mike Tauchman 

OPTIONED: 12 
Kevin Alcantara, OF 
Michael Arias, P 
Ben Brown, P 
Alexander Canario, OF 
Pete Crow-Armstrong, OF 
Brennen Davis, OF 
Porter Hodge, P 
* Matt Mervis, 1B 
Daniel Palencia, P 
Keegan Thompson, P 
Luis Vazquez, INF 
Hayden Wesneski, P 

 



 

Minor League Rosters
Rule 5 Draft 
Minor League Free-Agents

Where is the Cubs Offense Going?

UPDATE: I added two new charts at the bottom in the appropriate bar format as requested.


The Cubs are about a month into the season, let's take a look at some of their offensive peripheral numbers to see who's likely to regress or progress.

The first chart is their strikeout percentage per plate appearance. Once you start getting over 25%, there's some worry, although you want to compare it to that players' career numbers as well. For Tyler Colvin, I use his career minor league numbers for all the charts.. The Derrek Lee numbers overlap, but it's 23.0% for his career and 23.2% for 2010.

Fontenot has really cutdown his strikeouts so far and it can't all just be contributed to almost exclusively seeing righties. For his career, he has a 16.7% K rate against righties, so the improvement is real...well at least for a month. Byrd, Fukudome and Baker have also showed measured improvement to this point with Aramis Ramirez just a complete mess.

I usually like guys in the 10% or over range and the Cubs just have 3 guys at the moment with Soto, Colvin and Fukudome with Soriano just missing at a surprising 9%. Fontenot, Theriot and Byrd have dropped off the most, but all enjoyed a good month, although Fontenot's power numbers are off. A look at the next chart will show that Theriot and Byrd are probably going to fall and fall hard if they don't find some patience.

Players usually hover in that .290-.330 range as the career line shows, although random spikes will happen within a season. They're not random enough though to hope that Theriot has any hope of sustaining his .350/.390/.400 line though, unless he starts taking some more walks. A .370 BABIP over a season can happen, although it's pretty rare and I would guess even more rare for someone with such a small walk percentage like Byrd has had so far this year. The good news is that Lee just looked like he had a bad month and Ramirez much the same, although Ramirez's elevated K totals are definitely worrisome.

To sum up, what I would expect for the rest of the year based off these numbers. The more arrows, the more I would expect for there to be improvement or regression.

Soto

Lee

Fontenot or

Baker

Theriot

Ramirez

Soriano

Byrd

Fukudome ↔ or (just because he always hits well in April)

Nady

Colvin

By my new sophisticated up/down/sideways arrow computation (UDSA for short), you can add up the up and down arrows and expect the Cubs offense to produce about the same the rest of the year. It's the new UZR in advanced metrics.


Update: I added HR/FB% and iso slugging charts. The average for HR/FB% is around the 10-12% range, but power hitters bring that average up and the Ryan Theriot's of the world bring it down.

Those are 0% for Fontenot and Theriot. I'm not sure how relevant Marlon Byrd's career numbers are in this case and I can't guarantee the accuracy of Tyler Colvin's minor leage rate(Minor League Splits says he had a 42.1% FB rate in the minors which I multiplied by his AB's and then divided that number by his total home runs in the minors) .  Fukudome and Soto should expect a drop unless the wind blows out all summer.

CORRECTION: I believe I should have subtracted K's from Colvin's AB's which makes it 9.6%.

Not so bad for Soto when you look at iso slugging, maybe some of those balls that don't end up home runs go as doubles instead. Fukudome, Byrd, Soriano and Colvin playing a bit over their heads, but Ramirez and Lee should pick up a lot of that slack...hopefully.

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4-game set starts today Wainwright vs. Hamels tomorrow, Halladay goes Thursday, Phils miss Carpenter

BP did some articles on players who maintain high (or sustain low) BABIP's, and came to the conclusion that line drives was a good thing - which we all pretty much knew already. They also went on for a while about quality of contact... which turned out to be bunk. Besides a high line drive rate, what you want are guys who are fast and who spray the ball around, which makes them hard to defend. Ground balls are also good, in particular if you're fast and you don't turn fly balls into HR's. Theriot has a 26% LD rate, which is really good, and unlikely to be maintained. He's also been spraying the ball around pretty well, as usual, though he is skewing towards the right side a bit. With his K rate and his lack of HR's, he's not going to hit .350, but I could see somewhere in the .315 range if he continues to eschew swinging for the fences, but tries to be conscious of the way he's being defended. Continue to hit him leadoff, please, Lou, so his 50% groundball rate doesn't kill us with double plays.

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In reply to by The E-Man

I haven't really followed up too much on the oil leakage thing - was it BP? British Engineering at it's best (probably Americans really). I don't have any friends or family that will be directly affected by it - other than my brother's in-laws will probably have to find alternative 4th of July plans. It's one of those things that as suprising as it is, it's really more surprising it hasn't happened more often.

fwiw, I probably should have done a 4th chart of iso slugging and could have definitely broken down BABIP by batted ball type, but I only had an hour at lunch today.

Recent comments

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    LHP Blake Weiman appears to have been the last cut from the AAA Iowa roster. He is with the Tennessee group at Minor League Camp.

     

  • crunch (view)

    bruce bochy is hobbling rather badly for a guy who's had 2 hip replacements.  his gait is extremely wonky taking the lineup card to the ump.

  • crunch (view)

    yeah, for me this isn't about who's better at 3rd.  it's madrigal, period.  for me it's about who's not hitting in the lineup because madrigal is in the lineup.

    occasional play at 3rd for madrigal, okay.  going with the steele/ground-ball matchup...meh, but okay, whatever.

    seeing madrigal get significant starting time...no thanks.

  • Dolorous Jon Lester (view)

    Yeah I am very disappointed Madrigal is starting. He has no business as a starter. He is AAA insurance, a back up at best. Sure his defense looks fine because he plays far enough in that his noodle arm isn’t totally exposed. It comes at the cost of 3B range.

    He’s garbage, and a team serious about winning would NOT have him starting opening day.

  • crunch (view)

    in other news, it took 3 PA before a.rizzo got his 1st HBP of the season.

  • Eric S (view)

    With two home runs (so far) and 5 rbi today … clearly Nick Martini is the straw that stirs the Reds drink 😳

  • crunch (view)

    madrigal at 3rd...morel at DH.

    making room for madrigal or/and masterboney to get a significant amount of ABs is a misuse of the roster.  if it needed to get taken care of this offseason, they had tons of time to figure that out.

    morel played almost exclusively at 3rd in winter ball and they had him almost exclusively there all spring when he wasn't DH'ing.

    madrigal doing a good job with the glove for a bit over 2 chances per game...is that worth more than what he brings with the bat 4-5 PA a game?  it's 2024 and we got glenn beckert 2.0 manning 3rd base.

    this is a tauchman or cooper DH situation based on bat, alone.  cooper is 3/7 with a double off eovaldi if you want to play the most successful matchup.

    anyway, i hope this is a temporary thing, not business as usual for the rest of the season.  it will be telling if morel is not used at 3rd when an extreme fly ball pitcher like imanaga is on the mound.

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    There are two clear "logjams" in the Cubs minor league pipeline at the present time, namely AA outfielders (K. Alcantara, C. Franklin, Roederer, Pagan, Pinango, Beesley, and Nwogu) and Hi-A infielders (J. Rojas, P. Ramirez, Howard, R. Morel, Pertuz, R. Garcia, and Spence, although Morel has been getting a lot of reps in the outfield in addition to infield). So it is possible that you might see a trade involving one of the extra outfielders at AA and/or one of the extra infielders at Hi-A in the next few days. 

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    18-year old SS Jefferson Rojas almost made the AA Tennessee Opening Day roster, and he is a legit shortstop, so I would expect him to be an MLB Top 100 prospect by mid-season. 

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    Among the relievers in the system, I expect RHRP Hunter Bigge at AAA Iowa and RHRP Ty Johnson at South Bend to have breakout seasons on 2024, and among the starters I see LHP Drew Gray and RHP Will Sanders at South Bend and RHP Naz Mule at ACL Cubs as the guys who will make the biggest splash. Also, Jaxon Wiggins is throwing bullpen sides, so once he is ready for game action he could be making an impact at Myrtle Beach by June.