Cubs MLB Roster

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40 players are on the MLB RESERVE LIST (roster is full), plus one player is on the 60-DAY IL 

26 players on MLB RESERVE LIST are ACTIVE, twelve players are on OPTIONAL ASSIGNMENT to minors, one player is on the 15-DAY IL, and one player is on the 10-DAY IL

Last updated 3-28-2024
 
* bats or throws left
# bats both

PITCHERS: 13
Yency Almonte
Adbert Alzolay 
Javier Assad
Jose Cuas
Kyle Hendricks
* Shota Imanaga
Mark Leiter Jr
* Luke Little
Julian Merryweather
Hector Neris 
* Drew Smyly
* Justin Steele
* Jordan Wicks

CATCHERS: 2
Miguel Amaya
Yan Gomes

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

OUTFIELDERS: 4
* Cody Bellinger 
# 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 

10-DAY IL: 1 
Patrick Wisdom, INF 

15-DAY IL: 1 
Jameson Taillon, P 

60-DAY IL: 1 
Caleb Kilian, P 

 



 

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Rule 5 Draft 
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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.

[ ]

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

  • crunch (view)

    steele MRI on friday.  counsell expects an IL stint.

    no current plans for his rotation replacement.

  • hellfrozeover (view)

    I would say also in the bright side column is Busch looked pretty good overall at the plate. Alzolay…man, that hurts but most of the time he’s not giving up a homer to that guy. To me the worst was almonte hanging that pitch to Garcia. He hung another one to the next hitter too and got away with it on an 0-1. 

  • crunch (view)

    amaya blocked like 6-8 of smyly's pitches in the dirt very cleanly...not even an exaggeration, smyly threw a ton of pitches bouncing in tonight.

    neris looking like his old self was a relief (no pun), too.

  • TarzanJoeWallis (view)

    In looking for bright spots the defense was outstanding tonight. The “stars” are going to need to shine quite a bit brighter than they did tonight offensively though for this to be a successful season.

  • Eric S (view)

    Good baseball game. Hopefully Steele is pitching again in April (but I’m not counting on it). 

  • crunch (view)

    boo.

  • crunch (view)

    smyly to face the 2/3/4 hitters with a man on 2nd in extras.

    this doesn't seem like a 8 million dollar managerial decision.

  • crunch (view)

    i 100% agree with you, but i dunno how jed wants to run things.  the default is delay.  i would choose brown.

    like hellfrozeover says, could be smyly since he's technically fresh and stretched.

    anyway, on a pure talent basis....brown is the best option.

  • Childersb3 (view)

    Use pitchers when you believe they're good. Don't plan their clock.

    I'm sorry. I'm simply anti-clock/contract management. Play guys when they show real MLB potential talent.

    If Brown hadn't been hurt with the Lat Strain he would've gotten the call, and not Wick.

    Give him a chance. 

    But Wesneski probably gets it

  • crunch (view)

    alzolay...bro...