4 Cubs players who should be ditched by the All-Star Break

At 26-44 heading into a weekend matchup against the Cardinals in St. Louis, it’s safe to say the 2022 season has already gone off the rails for the Chicago Cubs.

The pitching rotation has been an injury-riddled disaster, the team’s key offseason position player addition, Seiya Suzuki, hasn’t played in a game since May 26 because of a finger injury and the daily lineup construction has tested the sanity of us all. If all that weren’t enough, the trade deadline is just about five weeks away when, if all goes as expected, the quality of the big league team will only get worse.

Here are four guys the Cubs need to dump, one way or another, in the weeks to come – none have anything to offer to the team long-term and haven’t earned a spot on the roster with their play.

4 Cubs players who should be ditched: #4 – Jonathan Villar

When Chicago decided to go with Jonathan Villar and Andrelton Simmons at shortstop instead of going out and signing one of the marquee shortstops in free agency last winter, it wasn’t exactly ideal, but I don’t know if anyone could have predicted things would go quite this poorly.

Villar, for his part, has been a complete and utter disaster, no matter how you look at his performance. At the dish, he’s batted just .222/.271/.327 – more than 30 percent below league average, even in a year where offenses have been slow to get rolling. If that weren’t bad enough, his glove work alone is enough to warrant cutting ties with him.

Using Outs Above Average (OAA), Villar ranks in the bottom one percent of the league defensively and he’s been worth -7 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS). He isn’t running well, either, something that used to be a staple of his game. So he isn’t hitting, fielding or running – why exactly are the Cubs burning a roster spot for this guy? This is a no-brainer. It’s time to move on.