Cubs MLB Roster

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40-Man Roster Info

40 players are on the MLB RESERVE LIST (roster is full), plus two players are 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 4-18-2024
 
* bats or throws left
# bats both

PITCHERS: 13
Yency Almonte
Adbert Alzolay 
Javier Assad
Colten Brewer
Ben Brown
Kyle Hendricks
* Shota Imanaga
Mark Leiter Jr
Hector Neris 
* Drew Smyly
Jameson Taillon 
Keegan Thompson
* Jordan Wicks

CATCHERS: 2
Miguel Amaya
Yan Gomes

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

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

OPTIONED: 12 
Kevin Alcantara, OF 
Michael Arias, P 
Pete Crow-Armstrong, OF 
Jose Cuas, P 
Brennen Davis, OF 
Porter Hodge, P 
* Luke Little, P 
* Miles Mastrobuoni, INF
* Matt Mervis, 1B 
Daniel Palencia, P 
Luis Vazquez, INF 
Hayden Wesneski, P 

10-DAY IL: 1 
Seiya Suzuki, OF

15-DAY IL: 
* Justin Steele, P   

60-DAY IL: 2 
Caleb Kilian, P 
Julian Merryweather, P
 




Minor League Rosters
Rule 5 Draft 
Minor League Free-Agents

Bad Contracts, Milton Bradley and Other Cub Related Links

Submitted by Rob G. on

- Nick Steiner takes a look at Milton Bradley using Pitch F/X data and comes away impressed.

The fact that Bradley has such a bad year - and it wasn't even that bad - can be placed solely on a huge drop in ISO from his previously established norms. His plate discipline and contact skills were just as good as they were in 08 and the year before that, and there is no evidence that the drop in ISO is anything "real". Despite the personality problems, teams are apparently lining up to try and steal Bradley away from Jim Hendry because he is still a very good player.

You'll make no friends around here Mr. Steiner with that sort of reasoned analysis.

- Speaking of Bradley, he makes MLBTR's list of bad contracts along with Soriano and Aaron Miles. All the hype to date has been that the Cubs will have to take on one of those (or something similar) to move Bradley.

- Bruce Miles says the Cubs should pass on Gary Matthews Jr. and responds to my inquiry in the comments that there are indeed clubs interested in Bradley.

- Bruce Levine concurs with Chris DeLuca that a payroll around $140M for 2010 should be expected and save up for another ticket price increase. He also says the Cubs are in talks with "Tampa, Toronto and three or four other clubs with players with big contracts that they would like to move."

- Dave Cameron at Fangraphs is thinking about bad contracts as well and suggests a ratings bonanza would follow a GM summit where each team brought one bad contract and threw them into a pile. Then each team picks one from the pile and has to go home with it in what he has dubbed Bad Contract White Elephant.

- This one isn't so much Cub-centric from Geoff Young, but I thought an interesting look at how K/9 rates have increased over time and then contextualizing them for each era.

So, Lincecum had a much higher strikeout rate (by 1.71) in 2009 than Gooden did in 1985. But taking context into account, we see that the entire league had a much higher strikeout rate (by 1.53) in 2009 than in 1985. In today's environment, Gooden's 8.72 K/9 from 1985 would translate to 11.15 (i.e., 8.72/5.50*7.03), which looks more impressive and gives us a more proper appreciation of his accomplishments.

- You can vote for the 2009 This Year in Baseball awards at MLB.com. Carlos Marmol is up for set-up man of the year (I guess), so is Michael Wuertz (whoops). Milton Bradley forgetting how many outs is up in the Oddity category along with Mr. T's 7th Inning Stretch which I don't recall and after watching, I'm not sure what was that odd about it other than another pseudeo-celeb butchering the lyrics. A little surprised not to see Randy Wells in the Rookie category(Casey McGehee is though, another whoops) or Derrek Lee in the hitter category but neither would have won anyway. You'll be shocked to learn Hendry and Lou didn't get nominations either.

- A Q&A with Cubs Minor League Player of the Year Kyler Burke at Inside the Ivy (Subscription required)

Really the biggest thing was confidence; I got my confidence back and tweaked a few things here and there with my swing. I worked a lot on my mental approach and just went out, relaxed and had a good time and stayed consistent throughout the whole year. For me, I think the mental part was huge. There are guys that can play with the talent but you have to figure out for yourself how to take failure and also success. You can’t get too high or too low, and that’s a big thing. It’s nothing you can really do to get there; it just kind of has to happen. For me, I got a lot of confidence back this year and things went smoothly.

Burke also says he tweaked his batting stance a bit at the beginning of the year.

- For all I know, this Cubs minor league blog has been around forever, but it's new to me - Wrigley Bound.

- George Castle had an article earlier this month saying that Geovany Soto is determined to get back in shape and will be teaming up with workout fiend Ryan Dempster to do so...the article and comments also have some good things to say about Koyie Hill. Castle more recently discussed potential Wrigley Field renovations and seems to be in favor of rebuilding the entire grandstand area.

- A blast from the past as Sharapova's Thigh looks at the most undeserving Starting LIneup action figures...four Cubs make the list including the acceptable Jerome Walton, Rick WIlkins and Damon Berryhill. A Luis Salazar action figure though is a head scratcher. Supposedly there's a Marvell Wynne one as well in 1989, but not sure if that's as a Cub or Padre.

- Sam Zell says goodbye.

"I think the team should be owned by somebody who is local, somebody who is really passionate about baseball," Zell said. "I happen to be local. I'm not passionate about baseball, so I wish them all the best of luck. And maybe we'll break the 101-year curse." 

- I obviously don't get the print versions of the Chicago newspapers, so apparently the Tribune debuted a new layout recently. One of the reasons is that they've fallen behind the Sun-Times in sports coverage, which is hard for me to fathom.  More importantly, Steve Rosenbloom is the grand plan to overtake them?

- This is horrible...cubs.com is having a vote for the best single season by position but only lists the standard set of BA, HR, R, RBI and SB. At the very least you have to include a column for OBP and I sure would have at least liked to have seen OPS or OPS+. They even put Sosa's 1998 up there instead of his 2001 season. I think I'll have to examine that list in a future post with a more discerning eye.

- Cubs convention tickets go on sale on November 4th and the convention will take place January 15-17.

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Cubs News
Kyler Burke

Comments

Submitted by crunch on Wed, 10/28/2009 - 10:03 pm

"His plate discipline and contact skills were just as good as they were in 08 and the year before that" what crack are they smoking? bradley spent off/on the entire season swinging VERY noticeably (even to a novice) on top of a lot of stuff. it's one thing to smack a grounder down the lines or the middle, but he took stuff he'd drive and turned it into worm killing grounders. that's a weird ass conclusion to draw that his contact skills were just as good when he was unbalanced for a significant period of time...it's not like it was just a few weeks or a month or 2 in one single period. that's just...retarded. he had the plate discipline, but his contact was far from good and nearly incomparable to what he did in 08.

Submitted by WISCGRAD on Thu, 10/29/2009 - 10:39 am

The 1989 Wynne is a Padre. But how the 1989 Cubs Curtis Wilkerson (which I still have) did not make the list is beyond me. The earlier years have far more "bad" players because they actually did a starting lineup (thus their name) with 9 players for every team. In later years, Kenner just made figures for good players - although even then their are some misses. As you can imagine, predicting a team's starting lineup in the winter before the season started was difficult. In fact, I believe they had Wilkerson pegged to be a Cubs starting outfielder in 1989, not of course predicting the rise of Walton and Smith. The 1989 Starting Lineup Cubs were: Sutcliffe Berryhill Grace Sandberg Dunston Law Dawson Webster Wilkerson

Submitted by John Beasley on Thu, 10/29/2009 - 10:31 am

The bad contract thing is not a bad idea. But I would modify it a little. All teams get involved and are slotted by previous year's payroll from smallest to largest. The first team (Florida) could either pass a contract on to the next team or pass. Then that next team either passes that contract, a different contract or passes again, and so on until the Yankees get stuck with another bad deal.

Submitted by VirginiaPhil on Thu, 10/29/2009 - 10:19 am

I'm less and less convinced that the Cubs will be able to move Bradley, even for a bad contract. With a Wells or a Burrell, you know what you're getting. They're not volatile, like our guy. Nobody wants to get tethered to a guy for two years whom they may have to release or suspend on any given day. So I think Bradley will be a Cub for one more year, at least. Careful what you wish for, Neal. With Joshua gone and Jaramillo on board, there is already a welcoming committee. Lou won't like it, of course, but at this point I suspect that Lou can take a hike as far as Hendry is concerned. As far as GMs returning Hendry's calls about Bradley, it's not surprising that they're interested in talking to him at times like these, when he's painted himself into a corner. "Give us Castro or Vitters, and we'll take Bradley off your hands and pay most of his salary." Then they can just throw Bradley in the trash whenever they feel like it.

[ ]

Submitted by crunch on Fri, 10/30/2009 - 10:29 pm

there's an extremely unfair assumption that batting/pitching leaders are clubhouse leaders. griffey jr. was never one in SEA and he wasn't one in CIN. that clubhouse turned into pure venom over the years culminating in dave miley having his ass handed to him and manhandled by guys like adam dunn who had about as much respect for him and his role on the club as rkelly does for a 14 year old girl. that said, some people aren't clubhouse leaders even though their numbers and history lead clubs to wins. dero's function for the cubs last season with the media and doing things like taking nearly all the media pressure off DLee by feeding reporters a story and 1/2 every time he opened his mouth might have been just as important as what he did with a bat...well, not that important, but dero-the-media-go-to-guy wasn't replaced by anyone in that lockerroom.

Submitted by Cubster on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 10:41 am

http://m.torontosun.com/11588066.1 Toronto Sun on Vernon Wells for Bradley, early but deal has legs. Also a mention in Rotoworld: "It's early on, but we think this one has some legs," said one Cubs official. "But they aren't the only team we are talking with." The Cubs' idea is to split the difference on Wells' $107 million over six years and Bradley's $21 million the next two years, with each team absorbing $43 million. It would take a lot of work to make a deal happen, but it may be the only way Toronto can wiggle out of the Wells contract.

Recent comments

  • Dolorous Jon Lester (view)

    Indeed they do TJW!

    For the record I’m not in favor of solely building a team through paying big to free agents. But I’m also of the mind that when you develop really good players, get them signed to extensions that buy out a couple years of free agency, including with team options. And supplement the home grown players with free agent splashes or using excess prospects to trade for stars under team control for a few years. Sort of what Atlanta does, basically. Everyone talks about the dodgers but I feel that Atlanta is the peak organization at the current moment.

    That said, the constant roster churn is very Rays- ish. What they do is incredible, but it’s extremely hard to do which is why they’re the only ones frequently successful that employ that strategy. I definitely do not want to see a large market team like ours follow that model closely. But I don’t think free agent frenzies is always the answer. It’s really only the Dodgers that play in that realm. I could see an argument for the Mets too. The Yankees don’t really operate like that anymore since the elder Steinbrenner passed. Though I would say the reigning champions built a good deal of that team through free agent spending.

  • Childersb3 (view)

    The issue is the Cubs are 11-7 and have been on the road for 12 of those 18.  We should be at least 13-5, maybe 14-4. Jed isn't feeling any pressure to play anyone he doesn't see fit.
    But Canario on the bench, Morel not at 3B for Madrigal and Wisdom in RF wasn't what I thought would happen in this series.
    I was hoping for Morel at 3B, Canario in RF, Wisdom at DH and Madrigal as a pinch hitter or late replacement.
    Maybe Madrigal starts 1 game against the three LHSP for Miami.
    I'm thinking Canario goes back to Iowa on Sunday night for Mastrobuoni after the Miami LHers are gone.
    Canario needs ABs in Iowa and not bench time in MLB.
    With Seiya out for a while Wisdom is safe unless his SOs are just overwhelmingly bad.

    My real issue with the lineup isn't Madrigal. I'm not a fan, but I've given up on that one.
    It's Tauchman getting a large number of ABs as the de factor DH and everyday player.
    I didn't realize that was going to be the case.
    We need a better LH DH. PCA or ONKC need to force the issue in about a month.
    But, even if they do so, Jed doesn't have to change anything if the Cubs stay a few over .500!!!

  • TarzanJoeWallis (view)

    Totally depends on the team and the player involved. If your team’s philosophy is to pay huge dollars to bet on the future performance of past stars in order to win championships then, yes, all of the factors you mentioned are important.

    If on the other hand, if the team’s primary focus is to identify and develop future stars in an effort to win a championship, and you’re a young player looking to establish yourself as a star, that’s a fit too. Otherwise your buried within your own organization.

    Your comment about bringing up Canario for the purposes of sitting him illustrates perfectly the dangers of rewarding a non-performing, highly paid player over a hungry young prospect, like Canario, who is perpetually without a roster spot except as an insurance call up, but too good to trade. Totally disincentivizing the performance of the prospect and likely diminishing it.

    Sticking it to your prospects and providing lousy baseball to your fans, the consumers and source of revenue for your sport, solely so that the next free agent gamble finds your team to be a comfortable landing spot even if he sucks? I suppose  that makes sense to some teams but it’s definitely not the way I want to see my team run.

    Once again, DJL, our differences in philosophy emerge!

  • Dolorous Jon Lester (view)

    That’s just kinda how it works though, for every team. No team plays their best guys all the time. No team is comprising of their best 26 even removing injuries.

    When baseball became a business, like REALLY a business, it became important to keep some of the vets happy, which in turn keeps agents happy and keeps the team with a good reputation among players and agents. No one wants to play for a team that has a bad reputation in the same way no one wants to work for a company that has a bad rep.

    Don’t get me wrong, I hate it too. But there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

    On that topic, I find it silly the Cubs brought up Canario to sit as much as he has. He’s going to get Velazquez’d, and it’s a shame.

  • TarzanJoeWallis (view)

    Of course, McKinstry runs circles around $25 million man Javier Baez on that Tigers team. Guess who gets more playing time?

    But I digress…

  • Sonicwind75 (view)

    Seems like Jed was trying to corner the market on mediocre infielders with last names starting with "M" in acquiring Madrigal, Mastroboney and Zach McKinstry.  

     

    At least he hasn't given any of them a Bote-esque extension.  

  • Childersb3 (view)

    AZ Phil:
    Rookie ball (ACL) starts on May 4th. Do yo think Ramon and Rosario (maybe Delgado) stay in Mesa for the month of May, then go to MB if all goes "solid"?
     

  • crunch (view)

    masterboney is a luxury on a team that has multiple, capable options for 2nd, SS, and 3rd without him around.  i don't hate the guy, but if madrigal is sticking around then masterboney is expendable.

  • TarzanJoeWallis (view)

    I THINK I agree with that decision. They committed to Wicks as a starter and, while he hasn’t been stellar I don’t think he’s been bad enough to undo that commitment.

    That said, Wesneski’s performance last night dictates he be the next righty up.

    Quite the dilemma. They have many good options, particularly in relief, but not many great ones. And complicating the situation is that the pitchers being paid the most are by and large performing the worst - or in Taillon’s case, at least to this point, not at all.

  • Childersb3 (view)

    Wesneski and Mastrobuoni to Iowa

    Taillon and Wisdom up

    Wesneski can't pitch for a couple of days after the 4 IP from last night. But Jed picked Wicks over Wesneski.

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