Even if the Chicago Cubs somehow sign Shohei Ohtani to a contract worth more than half a billion dollars, their roster would still have question marks around first base, third base, center field, the rotation and the bullpen. Ohtani’s staggering performance as a perennial MVP candidate and a Cy Young Award contender also resulted in zero playoff games for the Los Angeles Angels across the last six years. What Ohtani wants has been a guessing game throughout, but choosing the Cubs would be a leap of faith.
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This is not an attempt to lower expectations and signal the Cubs are simply planning to spread their resources around this winter. The Cubs went into the secretive Ohtani talks with the idea of aggressively pursuing a once-in-a-lifetime free agent and seeing where that leads. This week’s Winter Meetings in Nashville, Tenn., will be another offseason checkpoint and an opportunity for the Cubs to show they’re serious about winning championships.
The Ohtani recruiting process doesn’t mean starting from scratch since he picked the Cubs as one of seven finalists when he first decided to leave Japan and compete in Major League Baseball. Cubs officials poured their efforts into preparing for that presentation and felt the meeting went very well, considering Ohtani was almost certainly going to pick an American League team at that time and was probably leaning toward the West Coast. There are no more built-in excuses.
Cubs president Jed Hoyer and his group in baseball operations have rebuilt the organization to the point where it makes good business sense to splurge on a superstar and keep going. Anyone who sees this team as having too many holes to fill may not realize just how impactful Ohtani could be to the lineup. Simply replacing Cody Bellinger’s 2023 production (134 wRC+) with Ohtani’s (180 wRC+) would have taken an already strong offense to another level.
Cubs offensive production 2022 vs. 2023
| POSITION | 2022 wRC+ | 2023 wRC+ |
|---|---|---|
C | 123 | 82 |
1B | 78 | 92 |
2B | 82 | 98 |
SS | 99 | 101 |
3B | 97 | 104 |
RF | 107 | 127 |
CF | 85 | 132 |
LF | 118 | 117 |
DH | 95 | 89 |
The chart shows a lineup that went from 22nd in runs scored to sixth. It wasn’t just a massive leap at one spot — there was also a huge drop-off at catcher with Willson Contreras departing for the St. Louis Cardinals — but that trusted middle-of-the-order bat certainly helped. It wasn’t a coincidence that the lineup struggled most when Bellinger’s bat was absent from the middle of May into June.
Still, the Cubs were so weak in so many areas in 2022 that marginal upgrades at various positions allowed them to take a huge step forward offensively in 2023. With Ohtani, the Cubs would be getting an even larger jump in production at DH than they did in center field last season. The drop from Bellinger to whoever replaces him would sting, but if it’s Pete Crow-Armstrong, at minimum he’d provide significant value defensively. The goal with the rest of the position player group — particularly at first base and third base — should be seeking out players with both potential upside and a solid floor.
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The Cubs have enough money coming off the books after the 2024 season that adding Ohtani shouldn’t be viewed as prohibitive to making more moves to strengthen other areas of need. If anything, it should be looked at as a reason to do more. The Angels had a poor farm system and paired that with bad moves that did not provide enough quality depth beyond Ohtani and Mike Trout. It wasn’t as if the Angels were completely inactive, but more often than not, they were just wrong.
There is a reason Hoyer emphasizes how important it is to stack one good decision upon another. Without a star in the middle of the lineup, getting those less obvious decisions right becomes all the more important. The Cubs would need to upgrade at multiple positions and hope young players step up throughout the season. Either way, it’s not the offense alone that should be a focus. Hoyer is well aware that adding to the bullpen and the rotation is essential.
If Ohtani wasn’t available right now, Cubs fans on social media would be clamoring for Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who will arguably be the biggest name on the free-agent market once Ohtani makes his decision. Yamamoto’s age (25) and pitching profile fit what Hoyer often looks for. Everything goes in cycles, and the Cubs believe they are on an upswing similar to the one they pitched to Ohtani in December 2017, coming off their 2016 World Series title and a third consecutive trip to the National League Championship Series. That window also saw the Cubs sign Yu Darvish, a kind of godfather figure among this generation of Japanese players, who still raves about his experience in Chicago.
It’s not just organizational hype to say the Cubs have some of the game’s best prospects in Crow-Armstrong, Cade Horton and Matt Shaw, plus the depth and balance in the farm system to make all kinds of trades. The Cubs are typically more transactional around the trade deadline and very rational with their dealmaking, but the expectation is they will be much more active on those fronts. The Cubs have checked in with the Cleveland Guardians, a team that’s almost always willing to move pitchers in the right deals. There are obvious targets there, both for starters and relievers, but whether those ideas pick up traction this week remains to be seen.
Hiring Craig Counsell was a reminder that the Cubs can go into stealth mode and do big things that shock the baseball world. Could you imagine the Bears hiring Bill Belichick if the New England Patriots coach becomes available after this season? Could you envision the Bulls making Bob Myers an offer he can’t refuse and challenging the former Golden State Warriors executive to build another dynasty? Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner of the Bulls and White Sox, flat-out told reporters months ago that the White Sox wouldn’t be in the Ohtani race.
Counsell, the highest-paid manager in the game, hasn’t played in a major-league game in 12-plus years. Back then, Theo Epstein was still an employee of the Boston Red Sox and the Cubs had not broken ground on their $1 billion Wrigleyville development. Counsell can’t hit a walk-off single to win a game for the Cubs next year. Managers always look smarter when they have better players.
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The Cubs announced their presence with the Counsell hire, but Hoyer won’t treat this winter as a moment when he has to act impulsively to win in 2024. It’s clear there is a desire to be aggressive, but all the work doesn’t need to be done in one offseason. Overreacting to one miss could lead to poor decision-making, especially in a free-agent market where there is a significant drop in talent beyond the very top. But landing Ohtani would be such a monumental move that the Cubs have to go all-out until they hear no for an answer.
(Photo: Rob Tringali / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
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