Cubs MLB Roster

Cubs Organizational Depth Chart
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

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.

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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

[ ]

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

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    Javier Assad started the Lo-A game (Myrtle Beach versus Stockton) on the Cubs backfields on Wednesday as his final Spring Training tune-up. He was supposed to throw five innings / 75 pitches. However, I was at the minor league road games at Fitch so I didn't see Assad pitch. 

  • crunch (view)

    cards put j.young on waivers.

    they really tried to make it happen this spring, but he put up a crazy bad slash of .081/.244/.108 in 45PA.

  • Childersb3 (view)

    Seconded!!!

  • crunch (view)

    another awesome spring of pitching reports.  thanks a lot, appreciated.

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    Here are the Cubs pitchers reports from Tuesday afternoon's Cardinals - Cubs game art Sloan Park in Mesa:

    SHOTA IMANAGA
    FB: 90-92 
    CUT: 87-89 
    SL: 82-83 
    SPLIT: 81-84
    CV: 73-74 
    COMMENT: Worked three innings plus two batters in the fourth... allowed four runs (three earned) on eight hits (six singles and two doubles) walked one, and struck out six (four swinging), with a 1/2 GO/AO... he threw 73 pitches (52 strikes - 10 swing & miss - 19 foul balls)... surrendered one run in the top of the 1st on a one-out double off Cody Bellinger's glove in deep straight-away CF followed one out later by two consecutive two-out bloop singles, allowed two runs (one earned) in the 2nd after retiring the first two hitters (first batter had a nine-pitch AB with four consecutive two-strike foul balls before being retired 3 -U) on a two-out infield single (weak throw on the run by Nico Hoerner), a hard-contact line drive RBI double down the RF line, and an E-1 (missed catch) by Imanaga on what should been an inning-ending 3-1 GO, gave up another run in the 3rd on a two-out walk on a 3-2 pitch and an RBI double to LF, and two consecutive singles leading off the top of the 4th before being relieved (runners were ultimately left stranded)... threw 18 pitches in the 1st inning (14 strikes - two swing & miss, one on FB and the other on a SL - four foul balls), 24 pitches in the 2nd inning (17 strikes - three swing & miss, one on FB, two SPLIT - six foul balls), 19 pitches in the 3rd inning (13 strikes - seven swing & miss, three on SL, two on SPLIT, one on FB - three foul balls), and 12 pitches without retiring a batter in the top of the 4th (8 strikes - no swing & miss - four foul balls)... Imanaga throws a lot of pitches per inning, but it's not because he doesn't throw strikes...  if anything, he throws too many strikes (he threw 70% strikes on Tuesday)... while he gets a ton of swing & miss (and strikeouts), he also induces a lot of foul balls because he doesn't try to make hitters chase his pitches by throwing them out of the strike zone... rather, he uses his very diverse pitch mix to get swing & miss (and lots of foul balls as well)... he also is a fly ball pitcher who will give up more than his share of HR during the course of the season...   
     
    JOE NAHAS
    FB: 90-92 
    SL: 83-85 
    CV: 80-81 
    COMMENT: Was called up from the Hi-A South Bend group at Minor League Camp for the day... relieved Imanaga with runners at first and second and no outs in the top of the 4th, and after an E-2 catcher's interference committed by Miguel Amaya loaded he bases, Nahas struck out the side (one swinging & two looking)... threw 16 pitches (11 strikes - two swinging)...   

    YENCY ALMONTE
    FB: 89-92 
    CH: 86 
    SL: 79 
    COMMENT: Threw an eight-pitch 5th (five strikes - no swing & miss), with a 5-3 GO for the first out and an inning-ending 4-6-3 DP after a one-out single... command was a bit off but he worked through it...   

    FRANKIE SCALZO JR
    FB: 94-95
    CH: 88 
    SL: 83
    COMMENT: Was called up from the AA Tennessee group at Minor League Camp for the day and worked the 6th inning... got the first outs easily (a P-5 and a 4-3 GO) on just three pitches, before allowing three consecutive two-out hard-contact hits (a double and two singles), with the third hit on pitch # 9 resulting in a runner being thrown out at the plate by RF Christian Franklin for the third out of the inning... 

    MICHAEL ARIAS
    FB: 94-96
    CH: 87-89
    SL: 82-83
    COMMENT: Was called up from the AA Tennessee group at Minor League Camp for the day and allowed a hard-contact double on the third pitch of the 7th inning (a 96 MPH FB), and the runner came around to score on a 4-3 GO and a WP... gave up two other loud contact outs (an L-7 and an F-9)... threw 18 pitches (only 10 strikes - only one swing & miss)... stuff is electric but still very raw and he continues to have difficulty commanding it, and while he has the repertoire of a SP, he throws too many pitches-per-inning to be a SP and not enough strikes to be a closer... he is most definitely still a work-in-progress...   

    ZAC LEIGH: 
    FB: 93-94 
    CH: 89 
    SL: 81-83 
    CV: 78
    COMMENT: Was called up from the AA Tennessee group at Minor League Camp for the day and tossed a 1-2-3 8th (4-3 GO, K-swinging on a sweeper, K-looking on another sweeper)... threw 14 pitches (11 strikes - one swing & miss - eight foul balls)... kept pumping pitches into the strike zone but had difficulty putting hitters away (ergo a ton of foul balls)... FB velo is nowhere near the 96-98 MPH it was a couple of years ago when he was a Top 30 prospect, but his secondaries are better...   

    JOSE ROMERO:  
    FB: 93-95
    SL: 82-84
    COMMENT: Was called up from the Hi-A South Bend group at Minor League Camp for the day and worked the 9th (14 pitches - only six strikes- no swing & miss) and allowed a solo HR after two near-HR fly outs to the warning track, before getting a 3-1 GO to end the inning... it was like batting practice when he wasn't throwing pitches out of the strike zone...

  • crunch (view)

    pablo sandoval played 3rd and got a couple ABs (strikeout, single!) in the OAK@SF "exhibition"

    mlb officially authenticated the ball of the single he hit.  nice.

    he's in surprisingly good shape considering his poor body condition in his last playing seasons.  he's not lean, but he looks healthier.  good for him.

  • crunch (view)

    dbacks are signing j.montgomery to a 1/25m with a vesting 20m player option.

    i dunno when the ink officially dries, but i believe if he signs once the season begins he can't be offered a QO...and i'm not sure if that thing with SD/LAD in korea was the season beginning, either.

  • crunch (view)

    sut says imanaga getting the home opener at wrigley (game 4 of the season).

  • crunch (view)

    cubs rolling out the who's who of "who the hell is this guy?" in the last spring game.

  • videographer (view)

    AZ Phil, speaking of Jordan Wicks having better command when he tires a bit, I remember reading about Dennis Lamp 40 years ago and his sinker that was better after 3 or 4 innings when he would tire a bit and get more sink with a little less speed on the pitch.  The key for Lamp was getting to the 4th inning.