Cubs are a month from spring training and have done nothing to improve

The Cubs are taking inaction to a new level this winter, doing nothing to improve.

We’re about a month out from players reporting to camp in Arizona. That’s exciting in and of itself, but right now, the Cubs don’t have a starting left fielder, have a glaring hole at second base, lack a backup catcher and only has three legitimate starting pitchers on the roster.

The entire offseason has been about shedding payroll: lots and lots of payroll. As Bleacher Nation so adeptly put it earlier this winter, it’s been ‘subtraction by subtraction.’ They’ve lost Yu Darvish, Kyle Schwarber, Jon Lester, Albert Almora, Victor Caratini, Jason Kipnis, Jose Quintana and Tyler Chatwood – among others.

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Now, I know new president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer is beginning to leave his own mark on the franchise. He’s trying to free up funds and turn his focus toward the future, restocking a farm system that played a critical role in delivering the team’s first World Series championship in over a century.

But that was five years ago. Since then, the Cubs kept running it back with pretty much the same group, year after year. Since 2018, Chicago has made the postseason twice, going 0-3 overall, missing out on October baseball altogether back in 2019 – which cost Joe Maddon his job and led to the handing of the reins to David Ross.

So I get it. The time has come. The organization needs change – and has needed it for awhile now. But that hardly means the Cubs can sit on their hands and not make any real additions to the roster as they work on re-stocking the system.

The market has been slow-moving for a myriad of reasons, namely owners not wanting to spend coming off a fan-less 2020 campaign where teams’ revenues were decimated. Chicago, though, has shed north of $70 million in payroll – giving them more than enough room to at least bring in some replacement-level guys to round out the roster.

Look, I hope the coming weeks bring some movement on the market. The simple truth, though, is this. The roster, as it currently stands, is not a finished product. The only question now is how close to a finished product will we have when the team reports to Mesa next month?