The next Chicago Cubs' superstar may already be on their roster

One of the popular topics among Chicago Cubs fans is the team's lack of a "star" position player. The exact statistical threshold of a star player is arbitrary, with no set-in-stone exact benchmark. One has to put in context of said player's position and how the other top players in the league are performing, among other things. There is at least a general idea of what is considered a star player.

Seiya Suzuki, who in 2024 was the team leader (among players with 400+ plate appearances) in average (.283), OBP (.366), slugging (.482), OPS (.848), and wRC+ (138) was quietly among the top 25 in those offensive categories in baseball.

This begs the question, how close is he to being considered a "star" type player? And what would need to happen for him to have further consideration of being one, based on the arbitrary thresholds in baseball?

To compare Suzuki to the rest of the league, his wRC+ was 16th in baseball right above Francisco Lindor and Freddie Freeman, and just under Jurickson Profar and Corey Seager. Suzuki's slug was 22nd, just above Riley Greene and Freeman and under Kyle Schwarber and Mookie Betts. He was 19th in average (which does not hold the weight it once did) and 14th in OBP which was just above Schwarber and a tick below Steven Kwan. Suzuki's OPS was 18th, sandwiched between Schwarber and Lindor.

The slashline, OPS, and wRC+ were all in that 22nd or above range among some of the game's big names. Where Suzuki does not crack the top 30 are his 21 home runs, 73 RBI, and 3.6 fWAR. Suzuki did miss a handful of games (playing 132) and RBI can be slightly skewed by the effectiveness of guys getting on base ahead of them, but those numbers are still looked at. Especially homers. Seager played in only 123 games and still cracked 30 bombs last year. As for the fWAR, the defensive woes did not help that number. It's not bad at all, but not among the very best in baseball. At this point, the value of Suzuki is purely in the bat and personality as a teammate, which seems to be very good.

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Putting all of this together, it seems fair to say Suzuki is just floating on the outside looking into the arbitrary "star" threshold. The top-10 wRC+ producers in 2024 were at 150+, with all of them hitting 30+ homers, slugging over .500, boasting at least a 5.0 fWAR, and all but one with an OPS above .900. Now, one could argue that is the "Super Star" threshold, where Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Bobby Witt Jr, Yordan Alvarez, and Vlad Guerrero Jr lie, with the next tier grouping being considered just "stars" where Suzuki floats within that area.

Suzuki would probably get a bit more recognition if the home run total was roughly 10 higher (around 30), the slugging was at least .20 points higher in the .500+ range and the OPS was closer to the .880 to .900 range. All this keeping in mind some of the general thresholds. For good measure too, around the 100 RBI mark for the traditional folks. His near-140 wRC+ is right there with some good company, as is the average and OBP. Suzuki is just missing a bit more slug. Otherwise, he is not terribly far off from some of these numbers, knowing Judge, Ohtani, Soto, etc. are on a level above all else.

But make no mistake, this is a very good and underrated ballplayer the Cubs have. It is also easy to think if he did not have oblique issues he would have been closer to these numbers.