Cubs MLB Roster

Cubs Organizational Depth Chart
40-Man Roster Info

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 

 



 

Minor League Rosters
Rule 5 Draft 
Minor League Free-Agents

Ernie Banks

Just How Good Was Ernie Banks?

A lot of ink has been spilled the last few days remembering and honoring the late, great Ernie Banks. Besides being, by all acounts, a wonderful person and ambassador for the game, he was also undoubtedly one of the best baseball players ever, as his many accolades attest. First Ballot Hall of Famer. 14X All Star. Two-Time National League MVP. Gold Glove Winner. His appearances on the major career leaderboards further illustrate his legacy. More than 40 years after he retired he is still 22nd in Home Runs, 29th in RBI, 35th in Extra Base Hits, 34th in Total Bases, 14th in Intentional Walks. More advanced metrics paint an even stronger picture: Banks is in the top 100 all time in Runs Created, Win Probability Added, and MVP Shares, and Baseball Reference has him ranked as the 119th best player in baseball history and the 82nd best position player in history by WAR.

What makes all of this even more impressive is that Banks really had two careers. The first was as an elite short stop. The second, following a knee injury, was as an above average first baseman. While he continued to put up impressive counting stats and had a few good seasons after the switch, the vast majority of his career value occurred prior to the move. To illustrate, Banks accumulated 54.8 WAR through 1961 (his age 30 season) and then only 12.3 WAR over his remaining 10 seasons. His early peak was so good, if he had simply retired following the 1961 season he would still rank as the 146th best position player of all time--just between Enos Slaughter and Billy Herman, two Hall of Famers.

To more deeply examine just how talented Banks was in his prime, I examined his peak WAR at short stop historically. I followed the Baseball Reference definition of "peak" as a player's 7 best seasons--but I restricted it to a player's seven best season at short stop (a season in which they played more games at SS than any other position). The 7 seasons did not have to be consecutive, though in Banks' case they were. From 1954-1960 Banks was primarily a short stop and he accumulated 49.7 WAR. You can see in the table below how he stacks up historically. If you had to select a short stop and could select any player in history in the prime or peak of his career, Banks would certainly be a top five pick, behind only Wagner, A-Rod, Ripken, and Vaughan.

HERO

I never thought Ernie Banks passing would affect me like this. I'm not the type to be openly weeping but I am. Listening to the radio and hearing story after story of people that wanted to share their personal stories of meeting Ernie and the uplifting impact he had on everyone he touched. We are all little kids somewhere inside and Ernie was magic when it came to Cub fans. He was Chicago's treasure from the 1950's to the present.

The Top 10 Best Seasons Ever by a Cub

As part of this Cubs history kick that started with Wiklifield, I had this idea of trying to figure out what was the best individual season by a member of the Cubs. As I started pouring through the research I decided that the burden of annointing the best Cubs' season ever was too much for this humble Cubs fan. Now I realize as a blogger and top 10 list-maker, I'm suppose to just present my opinion as fact and not accept any other arguments, but I decided for this instance to enlist the rest of the TCR writers.

I put together a list of 27 great Cubs seasons and put it to a vote and would weigh it MVP-style (10 pts for a first place vote, 9 for a second place vote, etc). The criteria for this list were all the Cubs' NL MVP seasons and Cy Young winners and then the best of the rest based on sabermetric dominance in either WARP-3 or Win Shares (Lee in 2005) , historical signifcance  (Wilson's RBI record in 1930) or place in Cubs history (Sutcliffe in 1984). Now there may have been a few names that deserved to be in that original top 27 list over some other names, but I'm sure I didn't miss the top season. As I mentioned in the poll, just think of it as the NCAA tournament...there's a lot of arguments on who deserved to be in the original 65 picks, but those that are left out never really had a chance to win the whole thing. 

The only instruction I laid out for their votes was to use whatever criteria each writer saw fit. Some of us have a sabermetric slant to the world, some like MVP trophies, some just remember what we saw and its impact at the time and so forth and so on. Transmission, Cubnut, Dr. Hecht and myself ended up participating and our ballots are listed at the end of the post. The final results for the readers voting is also at the end. We by no means believe this is the list to rule all lists, but it was an interesting exercise nonetheless. I mean if Arizona Phil or Christian had submitted their ballots, the final results could have been very different. Also, we tend to believe with our eyes and hearts and I don't think any of us saw much baseball before 1950 - and for some of us - not much before 1980. Speaking for myself, I had a hard time giving double credit for a player, generally focusing on what I felt to be their best season, even if they had a second or third great season that deserved to be recognized. But this is more art than science and the final results certainly are skewed by a small sample size.

Recent comments

  • 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...

  • crunch (view)

    wow.  what a blown call.  go cubs, i guess.