Seiya Suzuki is rightfully the headline grabber, but the Cubs stayed in the news on Thursday by agreeing to terms with infielder Jonathan Villar on a one-year deal worth $6 million. Villar spent the 2021 season with the Mets, hitting .249/.322/.416 in 142 games for 2.1 WAR and playing second base, third base, and shortstop for the injury-riddled franchise. That 2021 season represented a colossal comeback from his poor showing in 2020, when his power disappeared and he finished with a lackluster .232/.301/.292 line.

Versatility is one of those things that’s hard to put a precise figure on, but having a player such as Villar on your roster is basically like giving yourself a 27- or 28-man roster. He won’t remind anyone of Ozzie Smith at short, but that’s hardly the point with a player with his skillset. Whatever infielder you lose to a pulled hammy or a sprained elbow, Villar represents a 20/20-capable player who can man the position. He’s played much less often in the outfield, but there’s no particular reason to think he’d be a problem out there; he’s certainly fast enough to play even center field, and he stole 40 bases as recently as 2019. Being versatile isn’t one of the parameters that ZiPS looks for when making comps, but it still warms my heart to see Tony Phillips, the Platonic ideal of a super-sub, showing up high in Villar’s comp list at 15th. If he is 80% of Phillips, the retooling Cubs ought to be overjoyed with how their $6 million was spent. Read the rest of this entry »

When we released our Top 100 Prospects list last month, one of the questions we heard most frequently was, “Where is Seiya Suzuki?” It was the subject of considerable internal debate, but the larger discussion revolved around whether or not the Japanese superstar even belonged on a prospect list.

While in terms of service time and rookie eligibility, Suzuki is technically a prospect, it just doesn’t feel right to rank him amongst unfinished products. He is not a player who requires development, or one where we’re talking about the gap between who he is now and what he can become. At 27, Suzuki is a player in his prime, with an impressive track record of performance at Japan’s highest level since his teens. This is not a prospect; this is an established talent who just hasn’t played in Major League Baseball yet.

That’s about to change. After a flurry of inaccurate Twitter reporting on Tuesday, Suzuki ended all speculation about his future on Wednesday morning by signing with the Cubs on a five-year, $85 million deal (when combined with his posting fee, Chicago will spend nearly $100 million for his services), where he’ll step right into the middle of the lineup as the everyday right fielder.

Suzuki’s performances in Japan have been nothing short of outstanding, with an OPS north of 1.000 in each of the last four seasons, including a career high of 1.073 with Hiroshima in 2021, when he hit .317/.443/.639 in 132 games with 38 home runs. Still, statistical projections for him can be challenging, as is the case with any player who has never been in the big leagues; there are skills, tools and traits that may lead to success elsewhere yet not translate at the game’s highest level. Still, Dan Szymborski gave it his best shot and in the end nearly hit a bullseye with a contract projection of five years and $83 million.

Scouts are just as optimistic as Dan as to Suzuki’s ability to produce in the big leagues. He’s a well-rounded player, but the beginning of any discussion about his potential begins with what he can do with a bat in his hands, and luckily for the Cubs and their fans, there’s a lot to like. He features the much desired combination of excellent swing decisions with a very good contact rate and rarely chases outside the zone, which you can reasonably expect will continue with the Cubs; breaking balls in Japan, while rarely matching the velocity he will see in the majors, do move just as much, if not more. Read the rest of this entry »

The itinerant gunslinger is a time-worn trope in Westerns, but baseball experienced a resurgence of its own version of it over the weekend. Andrelton Simmons and José Iglesias, two older free agents with sterling defensive reputations, are each headed to a new team. Simmons signed with the Cubs, a one-year, $4 million deal with incentives that could push his total payout higher. Meanwhile, Iglesias signed a one-year, $5 million deal with the Rockies. Rather than cover them both separately, let’s go through the deals together so that I can force some metaphors on you and compare two delightfully shrewd defensive wizards.

The glove-only shortstop isn’t what it used to be, particularly if you hit like Simmons did in 2021. He stumbled to a .223/.283/.274 batting line, and while his defense was predictably excellent, that’s simply not enough to lock down an everyday starting role. The Twins weren’t good last year, and even then, Simmons started to lose playing time as the season wore on. The Cubs will be his third team in the past three years, and he’s solidly into the short-term-stints-on-okay-teams phase of his career.

For his part, Iglesias must think Simmons is downright sedentary. The Rockies will be his sixth team in five seasons; he’s bounced around on one-year deals since 2019, and even got traded in-season last year. He wasn’t an offensive black hole to the extent that Simmons was in 2021, but he’s hardly Carlos Correa with the bat in his hands; he’s compiled a 93 wRC+ in his last four seasons. His defense doesn’t grade out as well as Simmons’ does, though; depending on who you listen to, he was somewhere between acceptable and quite bad defensively last year after being solid throughout his career. Read the rest of this entry »

Job Title: Software Engineer, Baseball Systems

DEPARTMENT: Baseball Operations: Research & Development – Baseball Systems
REPORTS TO: Architect, Baseball Systems

Location:Chicago, IL

Description:
The Chicago Cubs Baseball Systems Department is seeking to fill a Baseball Systems Software Engineer position. This role will focus on the development and maintenance of the Chicago Cubs baseball information system data warehouse, including creating web interfaces and web tools for the user interface; assisting in mobile application development; building automated ETL processes which feed it; maintaining back-end databases; and troubleshooting data source issues as needed. This role will collaborate with software engineers and data analysts in their use of the Cubs’ data warehouse and coordinate plans for database growth, while also reviewing and recommending new technologies for use by Baseball Operations department. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Analyst, Research and Development

Department: R&D
Reports To: Director, Research & Development

Role
The Chicago Cubs are seeking analysts to join the Research and Development group in Baseball Operations. Analysts will contribute to core research furthering the general knowledge-base of the Chicago Cubs while specializing in one of five core areas:

• Amateur Scouting
• Biomechanics/Performance Science
• International Scouting
• MLB Advance Scouting
• Pitching Development

The analyst will work closely with the entirety of the R&D department to develop statistical models that evaluate players and development opportunities, process and interpret data, and disseminate analytic insights to their associated departments. We will consider applications with various levels of experience. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Chicago Cubs.

Batters

Losing Javier Báez, Anthony Rizzo, and Kris Bryant hurt the offense, but the drop-off may not be all that significant. The first two weren’t amazing offensively, simply solid. And even amid some of the surprising breakouts from their Quadruple-A players, the Cubs got little out of second base and right field; Joc Pederson may have had some 2021 heroics, but they happened in Joctober, not Jocpril or Jocly. Read the rest of this entry »

Caleb Kilian made giant strides in 2021. Unranked as a San Francisco prospect at season’s start, the 24-year-old right-hander now profiles as one of the most promising arms in the Chicago Cubs system. The NL Central club acquired Kilian, along with outfielder Alexander Canario, in exchange for free-agent-to-be Kris Bryant at the July trade deadline.

The degree to which Kilian stepped up this year is apparent in his numbers. Pitching almost exclusively at the Double-A level, the 2019 eighth-round pick out of Texas Tech University put up a 2.42 ERA while allowing just 75 hits and 13 walks in 101 1/3 innings. Augmenting his signature plus command with increased velocity and an improved pitch mix, he punched out 112 batters.

Kilian’s repertoire revolves around a sinker and a cutter, the latter of which he began developing in the rookie-level Arizona League.

“It was early, almost right when I got there,” explained Kilian, who had pitched in a pair of College World Series with the Red Raiders. “When I got to pro ball, my slider was kind of just a worse curveball, so the Giants recommended a cutter. That way, I’d basically be throwing what felt like a fastball — same arm speed, just a different grip. I supinate with the ball anyway, so by turning it in my hand, it kind of just comes out naturally with cut.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago Cubs. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

The Sugar Glum Fairy had one last holiday treat for us before the lockout rudely intervened, with the Cubs signing starting pitcher Marcus Stroman to a three-year contract. After opting out of the 2020 season while recovering from a calf injury, he resumed his career without missing a beat, starting 33 games for the Mets with a 3.02 ERA and 3.49 FIP, good for 3.4 WAR.

Over three years, the total guarantee for the deal is $71 million, with $25 million coming in both 2022 and ’23 and a $21 million base salary for ’24. For each 160-inning season in ’22 and ’23, $2 million is added to the ’24 salary, making it a tidy $75 million. Stroman also has the ability to opt out of the final year of his contract, becoming a free agent after 2023. Let’s jump straight into the projection.

Nothing looks particularly odd about the projection or the contract. At the salary assumption I’m going with this winter ($7.3 million for a win with 3% yearly growth), ZiPS would suggest a $70 million deal over three years; over five, it suggests $109 million, putting Stroman’s valuation very close to both that of Robbie Ray and Kevin Gausman. Stroman, though, was not subject to a qualifying offer due to accepting New York’s qualifying offer for the 2021 season (Gausman was in an identical position, but Ray cost the Mariners a draft pick). I’m mildly surprised that he didn’t land a longer deal, but whether the fact that he didn’t was due to inability to get one or simply a desire to get another crack at free agency in the not-too-distant future in a normal winter is unknown to me. If I ran a team or the MLBPA foolishly accepted a bizarre proposal from owners that resulted in my computer setting all salaries, I’d be happy to give him five years at $109 million. (Note to any negotiators: the Szymborski cartel’s service fee is 0.05% of base salary)
Read the rest of this entry »

Within the span of a few hours on Tuesday, the last two free-agent catchers projected to produce over 1 WAR next season came off the market. The Cubs landed Yan Gomes, as reported by Craig Mish of SportsGrid, for two years and $13 million with a $6 million option for a third year and some games played incentives worth up to $1 million per year. The Pirates, on the other hand, quickly filled a hole of their own making after trading Jacob Stallings to the Marlins on Monday afternoon by landing Roberto Pérez, the former Guardians catcher, as reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan. The deal was later specified to be worth $5 million over one year by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Jason Mackey.

As discussed by Devan Fink a couple of weeks ago, the catcher market this offseason is particularly dire, and the signing of Pérez and Gomes means that there are essentially no more starting caliber options left at the position. Let’s take a closer look at each player and how they fit with their new team before seeing what further implication these moves might have around the league. Read the rest of this entry »