When Will the Cubs Roar Again?

Just as the Joey Gallo trade ended an era of Rangers baseball, the Cubs’ flurry of moves at this year’s trade deadline closed the door on Chicago’s championship core. While Kyle Hendricks, Willson Contreras, and Jason Heyward still remain from the 2016 team, the trades of Javier Báez, Kris Bryant, and Anthony Rizzo send things out with an exclamation point rather than the Texas comma. Five games below .500 and with a much weakened roster, we now project Chicago to finish 74-88; the last time the franchise finished with a worse record was 2014.

In a very real way, the 2010s Cubs did accomplish one very important feat: they won a championship. While I don’t subscribe to the notion that a great run for a team must involve a title, I also have not yet been placed in the role of some brutal autarch who determines how the history books are written. The Cubs won the World Series, and the Rangers did not, and both teams will be remembered differently as a result.

Still, the way it ended leaves a curious dissatisfaction about the Cubs. The dizzying heights of 2016 faded quickly, and the subsequent single NLCS appearance and pair of wild card losses were not the stuff of legend. The sudden turning-off of the cash spigot didn’t help, either; after spending $217 million in free agency after the 2017 season, Chicago has spent a total of $21 million in the offseasons since, or roughly half what the Rays have paid out in that span. (The mid-June 2019 signing of Craig Kimbrel to a three-year, $43 million contract is one of the lone splurges.) In the end, the farm system and those low-key signings couldn’t make up for the attrition elsewhere, and the Cubs’ domination of the NL Central was a brief affair.

Before last winter, team president Jed Hoyer talked about the Cubs going into a retooling phase rather than a full teardown, which left me skeptical. But Chicago still has some advantages that suggest a return to playoff relevance might not be that far away.

Despite recent trades, the cupboard hasn’t been emptied to the same degree as the mid-2010s Orioles or late-2000s Astros. This roster should and will win fewer games, but it’s not a 100-loss team in terms of talent. To get a baseline expectation of where the 2022 Cubs lie, I ran the ZiPS projections for their lineup based on who they have in-house.

That’s about a 71-win team on average, and while that’s not good by any stretch of the imagination, it’s not a hopeless situation. Remember, this assumes that nobody unsigned will returned and the Cubs will do nothing. And when I say nothing and nobody, I mean it literally: no one-year bargain deals, no minor league invitations, nothing. The average team will be in the mid-70s in this regard.

Repeating this exercise for the rest of baseball, the Cubs really don’t look quite as awful as it feels right now.

The Pirates look good on this measure simply because they’re not losing much in free agency, and the Cardinals have to replace half a pitching rotation or so. Think of this as projecting the 2022 standings if every team had an “average” offseason; when Pittsburgh add less 2022 performance than practically every team in baseball, you’ll see the actual projections sink, likely into the high-60s.

The thing about the Cubs is there’s no indication that they’re suddenly going to start spending like the Pirates. Contreras and Happ are the two key contributors who are arbitration-eligible, and even assuming they combine to make $20 million in 2022, most of the rest of the roster without guaranteed deals is on pre-salary arbitration contracts. The trio of arbitration-eligible relievers (Ryan, Holder, Brothers) isn’t going to be expensive, either. Depending on your assumptions, with player benefits, that 71-win team above has a luxury tax number of somewhere around $90 million.

The Cubs have given little indication that they’re going to scrape against the luxury tax ceiling anytime soon, but they ought to spend more than that figure. I would expect them to add an outfielder, a first baseman, and at least two starting pitchers in free agency, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them add $50 million or so and end up with a luxury tax number around $140–$150 million. It’s unlikely that they’re going to pay $7.5 million for each of those wins either; there are definite signs that outside of bullpens, nobody pays that amount for the first expected win on a contract.

So, what’s my projection of a projection? I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see the Cubs enter 2022 as an 81-win team. The division helps them in this regard; the Brewers are a good team but not likely as good as their 2021 record, and there’s little indication that anybody else has an interest in going on a spending spree. The Cardinals are probably the closest, but like the Phillies last season, they have to make up their free-agent losses before improving on this year’s squad. Entering the season as a .500 team in the NL Central leaves you in the divisional race.

Will the 2022 Cubs be good? Probably not. But they may be better than you think and actually playing meaningful games a year from now.