Bleacher Bums Forum

This pretty much locks in the offense and they might tinker with bench.  How would you compare the 2025 Cubs to the 2026 Cubs?

2025 offense- Tucker gives them edge.  The Cubs have to be hoping first half PCA shows up for a majority of 26 and Moises can DH and be productive.  It isn’t bad, but it isn’t good either.

2025 defense- Again this goes to 2025.  People are getting older and Shaw was better at 3rd than Bregman.  Tucker is better in RF than Seiya.

2026 rotation- clearly more upside than 2025, but the injury risks are a lot higher.  Shota should hopefully bounce back.  Steele is TBD.  Cabrera how many innings will he pitch.  Can his fastballs be fixed.  Hopefully Horton or a Wiggins becomes an ace.

Bullpen: TBD.  It will depend on who the Cubs dumpster dive for.


My initial reaction is I like the 2025 roster better, but I could be swayed the 2026 Cubs are a slight improvement if the rotation improves.  I don’t think this team is an overwhelming favorite for the NL Central.  If they make the playoffs could this team go to a World Series?  Sure, because baseball is weird, but my guess is if the play the Dodgers they are a sweep waiting to happen.

This is a fine team.  Spending more money is great.  The Cubs should be shooting being something better and that isn’t what this team is.  It will keep Wrigley full, should have a pretty decent shot at least being a wild card team.  That will be enough for some.

I think the 2026 offensive is a bit better than you are suggesting. Yes, we lose Tucker, but for much of the 2nd half he was not productive. Bregman will give us a full season of competent ABs which is far more than we received from our 3Bs last year (especially in the 1st half of the year). I would like to think PCA will continue to improve but unfortunately I think he will be similar to Javy Baez and won’t learn to provide a more professional AB. I believe Moises will provide a lot of offense from the DH spot.

Seiya’s defense terrifies me. He can drop some routine balls. If we don’t pick up an OF I do think Seiya will lose a handful of ABs when Alcantara is forced into a game as a defensive replacement. While Bregman may not be as good as Shaw defensively, I don’t think Bregman will be a negative. He should be average or perhaps a bit above average.

Pitching…..hopefully Horton AND Wiggins can become aces. Hopefully Cabrera is healthy and can also become an ace. Hopefully Steele comes back quickly and regains his form. Hopefully Imanaga regains his form from the 1st half.  Hopefully Boyd does the same. Hopefully Taillon remains really solid. There is a lot of “hopefully” in there but I think some are realistic and we do have depth in SPs.
Cade Horton
Justin Steele (expected back prior to the All-Star break)
Matthew Boyd
Jameson Taillon
Edward Cabrera
Shota Imanaga
Colin Rea
Ben Brown
Javier Assad
Jordan Wicks
Jaxon Wiggins

Our RPs are potentially a big issue but I felt the same way coming into the past season. On paper, I like Maton, Harvey, Palencia and Thielbar. I will keep my fingers crossed for a few of the others to pan out. Maybe Hodge can bounce back. Assad, Rea and Wicks in the bullpen throwing long relief?  Brown?  He is probably better suited as a RP 

Rosenthal says the deferred money is in the $65-70M range, pushing the real value of the deal to around 5/$150-155. That's certainly more palatable.

Rosenthal says the deferred money is in the $65-70M range, pushing the real value of the deal to around 5/$150-155. That's certainly more palatable.

How does deferred money work?  If the deal is 5/$175 and $65 is deferred wouldn’t that make the deal 5/$110?  $22M per year sounds great!  $30-$35M per year doesn’t sound as positive.

To each his own. To me the question re the 2026 Cubs is how well they perform over the course of the season. Results are not determined by projections or statistical analysis of past performance.

I am pretty happy with the results of the off-season. I also happen to really like the makeup of this team but we'll just have to wait and see how things turn out on the field. Stuff happens. I hope to really enjoy the season. I expect there to be lots of opportunities for that, and probably lots of opportunities for disappointment over 162 games (and hopefully during the playoffs). But I do not intend to worry in advance about all the ways things could go badly. But that's just me.

I'm really fired up.  Jeff knows I'm on dope!  .  And I know you never know, and a million things could go wrong.  But I'm optimistic and fired up that this could be a really good, complete team.  Let's go! 

FanGraphs has the current 2026 Cubs the class of the NL Central offensively.  They are quite a bit less enthusiastic about our pitching.

Just to be clear a lot of the projections aren’t out yet.  They two that are out have the Cubs best hitter as Seiya with a wRC+ of 124.

Yankees twitter is buzzing about a Hoerner trade, though it’s not clear if there’s anything to it from our side. Supposedly for SP (Gil or Warren, which is a hard pass for me).

Honestly a bit surprised at the tone in here.

I just think for me, this is another move geared towards sneaking in the playoffs and hoping things break right.  If this was a move to get us from 92 wins to 96 or 97, I'd be a lot more supportive, but since this is likely to be our big ticket move of the offseason, this isn't going to move the needle much on an 88-90'ish win wild card type team that might win an early round postseason series but won't do much more than that.  We're basically preserving the status quo with this move at the cost of a contract that, even with the deferrals, isn't likely to age well at all.   


Maybe we'll be surprised with another big splash move, which would change how I view Bregman a little bit, but that's just not how we've been operating lately.