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, ten players are on OPTIONAL ASSIGNMENT to minors, two players are on the 15-DAY IL, and two players are on the 10-DAY IL

Last updated 4-17-2024
 
* 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
Keegan Thompson
Hayden Wesneski 
* 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: 10 
Kevin Alcantara, OF 
Michael Arias, P 
Pete Crow-Armstrong, OF 
Jose Cuas, P 
Brennen Davis, OF 
Porter Hodge, P 
* Luke Little, P 
* Matt Mervis, 1B 
Daniel Palencia, P 
Luis Vazquez, INF 

10-DAY IL: 2 
Seiya Suzuki, OF
Patrick Wisdom, INF 

15-DAY IL: 2
* Justin Steele, P  
Jameson Taillon, P 

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




Minor League Rosters
Rule 5 Draft 
Minor League Free-Agents

Cubs Appear Ripe for "Miracle" Season (in 1984)

Submitted by Rob G. on
No, this isn't a bold Ryan Dempster-like statement about the Cubs 2008 chances. We're going to hop into the DeLorean we have sitting around here at the sprawling TCR headquarters and visit my all-time favorite Cubs team - the 1984 ballcub.

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who can point to the 1984 Cubs as the reason why they're still Cubs fans today. As a young nine-year old living in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago, I had not yet quite sworn my life-debt to either Chicago team. If anything I was leaning towards the White Sox as they had just come off of a successful 1983 season and Dad G. fancied himself more a White Sox fan over the Cubs. Plus me and my brother scored like 8 White Sox helmets on a giveaway day the year before and that was kind of cool.

Then 1984 hit and the Cubs-love swept through Chicago. The mix of the "Daily Double", WGN, Harry Caray and being able to catch the end of most Cubs homes games right when I got home for school was enough to sway me to the Northsiders.

But, this piece isn't about my reasons for being a Cubs fan, rather about one man's bold prediction.

I recently finished a rather impressive historical account on the Cubs by Glenn Stout, aptly titled "The Cubs: The Complete Story of Chicago Cubs Baseball". Of course, as I approached the section on the 1984 Cubs, my ears perked up a bit as they are my all-time favorite Cubs team. In his research, Stout came across a rather intriguing article posted on April 1st of that year. Reading through it, you'd think it was an April Fool's Day joke.


If anybody offers you 100-plus odds against the Cubs' winning the National League East in 1984, take it.

Say what? The Cubs finished 5th in the six team NL East the year before, 19 games back of the division winning Phillies with a 71-91 record and, you know, they're the Cubs.

The author continues:
A substantial portion of the 19-game difference between the Cubs and the top of the division is not a real difference in talent. It might be called an illusion. It might be called a difference in the ability to play one-run baseball. But whatever it is, it isn't a difference in the ability to score runs or the ability to prevent the opposition from scoring runs.
That sounds dangerously like sabermetrics, doesn't it? But Billy Beane was still cutting his teeth in the Mets organization as a player at that point and hadn't invented it yet (like the Moneyball pundits seem to think).
This is an unusually large disparity - eight games - between projected performance and actual performance, and such disparities do not hold up from year to year.

I believe it's called the Pythagorean Theorem and it still holds true today and will hold true tomorrow, in 15 years, in 100 years and maybe even 200, if global warming doesn't get to us first.

So who this mysterious Carnac? Bernie Lincicome? Jerome Holtzman? One last clue...

The Cubs certainly don't have the potential to be a great team, a dominant team over time. But that's not really germane; miracle teams are never great teams. They're teams that have a moment, teams that slip through a window of dominance.

Alright, that wasn't much, was it? Let's see if this helps:

The Cubs have a specific, correctable weakness, action on which can have a huge impact on their record. I speak of their ability on artificial turf. The Cubs last year were 58-56 on grass fields, but were the worst team in baseball [13-35] on artifical turn by a wide margin.

The reasons for this are not hard to understand. They have a power-hitting offense, and Larry Bowa and Ron Cey don't move so much as sort of melt toward the ball. Their staff is composed heavily of ground-ball pitchers - they had more ground balls hit off them than any other staff in the majors- and ground-ball pitchers get killed on artificial turf.

Well if you haven't guessed yet, there weren't a lot of sabermetrically-inclined authors back in 1984 and the article was actually an excerpt from the "Bill James Baseball Abstract/1984", naturally written by the true father of sabermetrics, Bill James. Thanks to Transmission for finding the actual Trib article for me, which you can view the full text by following this link.

PS - The Cubs were 2 games behind their Pythagorean record last year if it makes anyone feel better about 2008. They won 85, but "should" have won 87.

Tags
1984 Cubs
Cubs history
Sabermetrics

Comments

Submitted by CA-Phil on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 03:18 pm

So there it is, the gauntlet has been laid down. Rob G. says Cubs win it all in 2008! I'm a little older Rob as you might recall from the famous TCR West Coast Meetings of 05?? so '69 was my first big collapse err year but '84 was special too -- I personally witnessed Game 1 of the NLCS -- Cubs 13 Padres 0 from the bleachers as HRs by Sandberg, Sarge and Sutcliffe, yes Sutcliffe came whizzing by, Trout's mastery in game 2 (I don't recall if he was truly masterful but I do know it was 4-2 Cubs so he couldn't have been awful) and then...well it might have been worse than a Bartmanian collapse. Somebody should post an article on which was the bigger heartbreak 69 vs 84 vs 03...

Submitted by Sweet Lou on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 03:43 pm

I love the 1984 team. Every year on June 23 I celebrate the "Ryno Game" from that year. It is still the greatest game I have ever seen. Of course, the 1984 playoffs were among the worst moments for a Cubs fan.

Submitted by Tito on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 03:56 pm

Interesting question, but I have to go with 2003 being worse. In '84, I was in college in May and then from September through the playoffs, so I missed my share of games. It was such a novel thought that they were in the playoffs. Of course, the Garvey HR and the Durham error linger. But being older and having experienced more bad baseball and more heartbreak PLUS going to three NLCS games (1, 6, 7) and watch them blow leads in all three....much worse for me personally.

Submitted by billybucks on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 03:18 pm

Still think the 1989 team was a load of fun. Good young hitters in Grace, Sandberg, Walton and Dwight Smith, classic vets in the Hawk and Sutcliffe, and the madness of Mitch Williams and the famous Shawon-o-Meter. Plus, night baseball at Wrigley!

Submitted by Stevens on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 03:40 pm

Weird. I'm the same age as Rob G. 1984 was my first Cubs year too. I remember being frustrated at the games preempting my afternoon cartoons toward the start of the season. But by the end of the summer, I was intrigued, if not hooked. I count that year as the first I was a baseball fan. Good read on the Bill James. Any chance he has good predictions for us this year? : )

Submitted by kma717 on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 03:12 pm

I remember Howard Cosell saying on a game of the week broadcast that the Cubs didn't have a chance against the Mets that year. The Mets won that game behind Gooden and the Cubs took the next three if I remember right. I'm old so I might not. It was a fun season until the end anyway.

Submitted by Cubster on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 03:23 pm

Rob: Was the Bill James article written and taking account the trade with Philly (Campbell for Dernier and Matthews, on March 26th)? Seems unlikely. It couldn't have taken into account the Sutcliffe trade on June 13th (for Mel Hall and Joe Carter, also getting George Frazier and Ron Hassey) or the Eckersley for Buckner trade (May 25th) Those moves shaped the team and without them the 84 Cubs would have been about as good as the 1983 team. So pythagorean theorem or not the fact that James stats showed the 1983 Cubs underachieved and should have done better needed the trades to become reality. That and two front of the rotation pitchers (hard having your aces be Steve Trout and Scott Sanderson). Now those were awesome trades.

Submitted by rokfish on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 03:25 pm

i would go with 84 very disappointing always interesting how you remember where you were when it happened ah just like yesterday had just turned 21 month before went to a bar called the bedrock cafe and learned to hate steve garvey and leon durham. buddy and me were interviewed by local tv after loss my buddy said #### ... ****. i said the cubs are back to being the cubs.

Submitted by Dmac on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 03:36 pm

I'm the old fart here apparently, but as bad as the '84 team tore at my heart the '69 team was as heartbreaking as it gets. Unlike the '84 club where many players had career years, the '69 team had a perennially - talented core of position players and pitchers. Think about it -Banks, Santo, Williams, Hundley, Hands, etc. - with the exception of Banks, all were in the prime years of their careers. They choked badly but it's also true that the Mets went nuts over the last third of the season, where their #5 pitcher (whom nobody ever heard of) had something like a 3.0 ERA and less than 2 walks/game. The scars are still there, the '84 team just added a few.

Submitted by 10man on Thu, 03/27/2008 - 03:28 am

Like Rob, it was the '84 team that hooked me onto the Cubs and naturally: 1) Sandberg became my all-time favorite player 2) I learned to call everybody by nicknames like the Deer, the Red Baron, Sarge, the Bull, the Penguin, Ryno (damn this team sounds like a zoo!) 3) I honestly thought Dunston would one day harness his hall of fame potential. 4) I would forever hate Steve Garvey

Recent comments

  • Bill (view)

    A good rule of thumb is that if you trade a near-ready high ceiling prospect, you should get at least two far-away high ceiling prospects in return.  Like all rules-of-thumb, it depends upon the specific circumstances, but certainly, we weren't going to get Busch for either prospect alone.

  • Sonicwind75 (view)

    Right on schedule, just read an article in Baseball America entitled "10 MLB Prospects Outside The Top 100 Who Have Our Attention".  Zyhir Hope was one of the prospects featured. It stated that he's "one of the biggest arrow-up sleeper prospects in the lower levels right now."

     

    Not sharing to be negative about the trade, getting a top 100 prospect who is MLB ready should carry a heavy prospect cost.  But man, Dodger sure are good at identifying and developing young talent. Andrew Friedman seems to have successfully merged Ray's development with Yankees financial might to create a juggernaut of an organization.  

  • Sonicwind75 (view)

    I suspect Brown will spend some time in the bullpen due to inning restrictions.  Pitched only 93 innings last year and career high is 104 innings in 2022.  I would expect them to be cautious with a young player with his injury history.

  • Childersb3 (view)

    I wanted Almonte gone last week, but that was before Merryweather went down and Little got demoted. Almonte in his last 5 appearances has gone 4.1 IP with no ER or Runs. NO hits, 3 BBs and 8 SO. He did hit 96 with his 2S FB in AZ on Tues.
    I don't see Jed waiving him when we have injuries all over and guys with options that can be sent down.
    I probably won't like the move Jed makes, but he can't play the "let's hope no one wants his 1.7mil remaining deal and we can hide him in Iowa" card.
    That's why I think the current Bullpen stays as is and Wicks goes to Iowa.
    I don't like that, but that's the fix I see.
    We'll find out soon enough!!!

  • TarzanJoeWallis (view)

    Teheran minor league deal is done, per MLB.

  • TarzanJoeWallis (view)

    Based on Phil’s sound analysis it sounds like a no brainer for Almonte to be placed on waivers as today’s roster move. We shall see.

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    I suspect Counsell/Hottovy will use the piggy-back extensively, with Taillon and Hendricks pitching as the "pig" (and with a very short leash) and some combo of Wicks, Brown, and Wesneski (whichever two do not start) as the "backers."  

    Keep in mind that Keegan Thompson has a minor league option available, and if Yency Almonte is not outrighted by 4/26 he cannot be sent to the minors without his consent after that date. Almonte is out of minor league options, so I am talking about him getting outrighted to the minors if he is not claimed off waivers, and if he is claimed off waivers, the Cubs save the pro-rated portion of his $1.9M salary, which helps lower the Cubs 2024 AAV.

  • Dolorous Jon Lester (view)

    Totally agree. The 26 man roster very rarely consists of the 13 best position players and 13 best pitchers.

  • Dolorous Jon Lester (view)

    Based on what Jed has done in the past, I’d say the plan is to

    -give Hendricks another few starts
    -give Taillon some runway ot get his season underway

    -Mix and match in the bullpen and see what sticks

    Jed usually doesn’t do a whole lot of waiver wire plays in-season, at least early in the season. He only reallly did that after he blew up the rosters in 21 and 22 because they needed bodies (guys like Schwindel, Fargas, etc).

    I think he’s a little handcuffed by a full 40 man in that he can’t really maneuver much with giving anyone showing ability at AAA (R Thompson/ Sanders/ Edwards etc). Brewer has the most tenuous grip there, and we will see what kind of chance he gets. Other than his spot, there isn’t a ton of 40 man wiggle room.

    I’m very curious to see what happens with Brown now that Taillon returns. Bullpen? Wicks to Iowa? 

  • Childersb3 (view)

    Pro teams have to play their "big money" guys if they are healthy and not "locker room" issues.
    The Cubs wanted to deal JHey off well before they bought him out. They just didn't want to pay him to play for someone else for that long. Jed did give him 20+mil to play for LAD last yr.
    Jed might also let Kyle walk at some point this year. Similar scenario to JHey, except Jed thought Kyle was going to be good/solid in '24!!
    You'd think Smyly is in the same book as well. Same with Neris (he's a 1yr vet RP, so he's not really in this convo too much).
    That's ~35mil between those three and those three are going to get opportunities until at least late June) over younger guys even if their performance is "iffy".
    But, Jed is going to play Taillon a lot. They have to try and justify that contract and hope a veteran works out.
    So, Taillon, Imanaga, and Hendricks are locks for the rest of April and probably May.
    Assad, Brown and Wicks handle the last spots until Steele is ready.
    Now, you're question has real merit when Steele comes back. That will interesting if Brown is still good and Hendricks is still bad. But Taillon is entirely safe as long as he's healthy.

    And the bullpen moves were "money" based as well. Smyly has actually been okay. But he hasn't been clearly better than Little. Little had one bad outing. But Smyly makes 9mil. If they needed another RHRP and one of Little and Smyly had to go, it was going to Little. But that doesn't mean Smyly is one of the best 13 arms for the team. 

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