Chicago Cubs: Eight weeks until Spring Training and still crickets

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Despite all the talk about performance over potential, this year’s Chicago Cubs were not built to win. Now, there are two stark paths to move forward.

Once again, Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer haven’t been cooking on the Hot Stove. Most of the trade talk to-date has been just that – talk. The Cubs have signed some low-cost pitching and made a few fairly insignificant roster additions, but nothing major has transpired. This leads me to a troubling question: do the months between the Winter Meetings and Spring Training herald a reload or a rebuild?

Last winter, the bench became weaker with the trade of Tommy La Stella and the acquisition of Daniel Descalso. We knew on day one of Spring Training the Cubs needed a closer. We knew the starting pitching was getting long in the tooth.

Finally, we knew that the front office was counting on guys like Albert Almora (.236/.271/.381), Ian Happ (.264/.333/.564) and the now recently non-tendered Addison Russell (.237/.308/.391) to perform like first-round draft picks. They did not.

Add to that list David Bote (.257/.362/.422) and the aforementioned Daniel Descalso and it all added up to a team that was too thin on talent, too short in the lineup and too old on the mound to compete.

(Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images) /

Chicago Cubs: The decision starts with payroll

The decision to reload or rebuild starts where it always starts, payroll. But before you can understand the Cubs’ current standing in this regard, you need to have at least a basic understanding about the luxury tax in Major League Baseball

There are three tiers of said luxury tax. The first, set at $206 million, the second at $226 million and the third and highest at $246 million. Teams pay a 20 percent tax on the amount spent from $206 to $226 million and 32 percent from $226 to $246 million.

Still with me?

If money is literally no concern to your organization and you exceed that final $246 million threshold, you pay a staggering 62.5 percent tax on anything you spend above that amount and it costs you 10 spots in the draft. Suffice to say, there are a lot of reasons teams don’t want to blow past that number.

Back to the Cubs. According to Spotrac, Chicago is still slightly above the first luxury tax threshold. The team exceeded the second tier in 2019, incurring a first-time tax penalty of $7.6 million. Will they exceed any of these marks in 2020? It’s hard to say.

It’s a tricky answer I’ll leave for you to read about from our friends at Bleacher Nation, but the answer appears to be ‘no’. Without much flexibility in the budget, could the Cubs just sell it all off, tear down and rebuild?

Chicago Cubs: The argument for rebuild

A payroll that ranked as the second-highest in all of baseball at over $220 million is laden with high-cost contracts. No, this isn’t the 2011 Cubs with Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano, either.

This is the 2019 Cubs with Jason Heyward, Jon Lester, Yu Darvish and Cole Hamels, four players who accounted for over 40 percent of the team’s total payroll last year. Not to mention, the team’s core is only going to get more expensive from here as they work their way through their arbitration years.

The pitching, aside from Kyle Hendricks, is aging, and the bullpen is in need of reinforcement. Anthony Rizzo has $14.5 million team options for 2020 and 2021 and will be a free agent in 2022 at age 32. Willson Contreras, Kris Bryant, Javier Baez and Kyle Schwarber are all in arbitration and all reach free agency in 2022-23 as well.

It stands to reason that the Cubs won’t be able to extend all of these guys. The window of contention is closing. Could It make sense to trade off these pieces to restock the farm system, currently rated near the very bottom in the game?

It means turning back the clock to 2012 and suffering through two or three 100-loss seasons. Mortgaging the present to build for the future. However, Theo Epstein excels at this process. No one is better at it than he is. But does he want to end his tenure in Chicago on such a note?

We could see the Cubs vying for a ring again as soon as 2023, maybe sooner if the draft picks and previous trades produce well. The competitive window would be open for another five or six years potentially throughout the end of the new decade.

Finally, there will be a new CBA by 2022 and going into rebuild mode now might make sense if MLB and the MLBPA push for rules to prevent this very tactic. There has been discussion in that direction since the Cubs and Astros did it (quite successfully) in 2012 and now that the Orioles and Tigers, among others, are embarking on their own rebuilds.

Chicago Cubs: The case for a reload

Tear down? Rebuild? Nonsense! The argument here is that the Cubs just need to add a couple of key pieces to compete in 2020 and beyond.

The Cubs must address the starting rotation. One common denominator among teams like the Astros and Dodgers is three top-of-the-rotation arms in the staff. For the Astros, that was Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole and Zack Greinke. For the Dodgers, it was Hyun-Jin Ryu, Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler.

Even the World Series champion Washington Nationals knew as much: Stephen Strasburg, Max Scherzer and Patrick Corbin anchored the rotation and brought aa championship back to D.C. in 2019.

If you consider the 2016 Cubs with Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta and Kyle Hendricks, the 2019 rotation clearly wasn’t up to snuff. The staff was too old and lacked quality depth. For the Cubs in 2020, you’re betting on Darvish and Hendricks. Lester’s fade is likely going to continue as he’s another year older and while Quintana has been a solid innings eater and takes the mound reliably every five days, he’s not a ‘go-to’ arm by any stretch.

So if we’re supplementing the pitching staff and trying to win now – let’s start here:

Sign Dallas Keuchel. Problem solved, mostly. While he would slot in just below a top-tier pitcher, he is solid enough to boost the rotation significantly. Except that estimates are that Keuchel could go for around $20 million annually. That probably means no Nicholas Castellanos or any other free agents. Oh, and “you know who” is his agent.
Trade for a Jacob deGrom or Marcus Stroman type pitcher. The challenge here is that trading for a power arm will require tapping the farm system and likely subtract from your big league core as well.
Roll the dice on Tyler Chatwood, Adbert Alzolay, Alec Mills or one of the other roster acquisitions stepping up. With the Cubs new Pitch Lab, who knows what rabbits could be pulled from what hats?

Chicago Cubs: Lengthening the lineup is essential

The Cubs simply didn’t have a long enough lineup to maintain a high level of play for the entirety of a season. This starts at the top of the order. Ever since Dexter Fowler moved on from the Windy City and joined the Cardinals, this has been a major issue.

The Schwarber/Heyward leadoff experiments were total fails, Ben Zobrist filled the role well, but in 2019 he left on May 6 and the Cubs’ winning streak ended a couple of weeks later. The road losses mounted. The season fell into disarray.

More from Cubbies Crib

Chicago must sign a one spot hitter. Nothing is more clear, more irrefutable than that. A lineup with a Zobrist-like high OBP guy lengthens the lineup by adding a contact hitter to the top of the order. The Cubs should absolutely give Shogo Akiyama a serious offer per my Cubbies Crib colleague Jim Guzior. This sets the table for Bryant, Rizzo and Baez to do some real damage.

With Contreras, Schwarber and Heyward as the five, six, and seven-spot hitters, that becomes a very dangerous lineup.

Chicago Cubs: Bullpen and bench

The bullpen starts and ends with Craig Kimbrel as the closer, with guys like Chatwood, Mills, Rowan Wick and Brad Wieck all in the mix, as well. Adbert Alzolay, Duane Underwood Jr. and Dillon Maples, among others, could get a shot in the spring. That’s not counting for any of the team’s recent signings – largely comprised of bounceback candidates.

Almora, Russell, Happ and Bote round out the bench. It would be too much to ask for the Cubs to flip Descalso in a bad contract for bad contract trade. Tony Kemp, Robel Garcia and a host of Spring Training invitees are in the mix as well.

Next. Chicago Cubs need one last hurrah from Jon Lester in 2020. dark

Two paths. Rebuild or reload. Either could work out very well; either could bomb badly. But there is no middle path. That direction is a dead-end of 82-to-85 win seasons. A waste of time and resources. Regardless of what the front office and Tom Ricketts decide to do it will be an interesting conclusion to the offseason.

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