Dansby Swanson is a Cub, and he’s a Cub for the next seven years. There’s a lot to get into on this, and there are tons and tons of other things going on (we aren’t going to get to college basketball today, apologies, friends), but due to a shortage of time, we’re going to talk about two angles today: First, where does this leave the Cubs overall? Second, what does this mean about Nick Madrigal?
The Cubs roster still stinks. It is still a bad roster. FanGraphs’s Depth Charts system has this roster twelve or thirteen wins behind that of the Cardinals on paper, and there’s a lot of offseason left, but the offseason works both ways. The Cardinals will get better too. Not necessarily by the same amount, but everyone’s going to keep signing players. We’re far too early to think anyone’s done.
Projections aren’t everything, and you would hope that these franchises with billions of dollars of valuations would be better at projecting players than hobbyists-turned-baseball writers, but FanGraphs’s systems have great track records. Phenomenal track records. There will be noise, there will be randomness, and players will overperform and underperform, but from what we’ve seen of the Cubs’ offseason so far and from what we can see about what’s going to happen from here (they’re probably signing Drew Smyly, they’re after a bunch of backup catchers, there are no clear impact free agents left on the board), this is going to be, at best, an 80-win roster on paper, leaving 85 wins as the potential upside in a league where Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, and Atlanta are all expected to be formidable and St. Louis, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee are all expected to be competitive. The Cubs are in the third pack of the NL, down with the Marlins and Diamondbacks, where you could maybe see a playoff berth working out, but you have to be whimsically optimistic to conjure the image.
How could the Cubs get to contention? How are they trying to get to contention? The Swanson signing gives us an indication.
Depth Charts labels Swanson as a 3.3-WAR player within his expected role on the Cubs. This is slightly better than the 2.8-WAR projection for Ian Happ, a step better than the 2.2-WAR projection for Christopher Morel, and a couple steps better than the 1.8 and 1.6-WAR projections for Cody Bellinger, Matt Mervis, and Yan Gomes. It’s a hair behind Nico Hoerner’s 3.4-WAR projection (which has taken a hit under the new assumption that he’ll play second base, where he’s less valuable because his defense doesn’t do as much and second basemen tend to be better hitters than shortstops on the principle that tolerable defense at shortstop is a harder threshold to meet), and it’s a hair behind the 3.4-WAR projection for Seiya Suzuki. Swanson, alongside Suzuki and Hoerner, is in the 3-to-4-WAR window.
This may be underselling Swanson, and many think it is. The guy was worth 6.4 fWAR last year, fWAR being FanGraphs’s own preferred formula, and his xwOBA nearly exactly matched his wOBA, implying that even though his BABIP was high, he wasn’t benefitting from too much luck. He was an even better hitter in the shortened 2020 season. 3.4 WAR? That’s where he was at as a league-average bat in 2021.
We could dig through Swanson’s projection all day (the defensive elements are interesting as well, the whole thing is interesting, he’s an interesting player), but the point of this is: He’s not Carlos Correa or Xander Bogaerts or Trea Turner. “Superstar” is a bad term, because it has more to do with fame and how compelling a player is than their pure value, but were it purely about value, Swanson would not be considered a superstar. Like Hoerner and Suzuki and Happ, the expectation on him is to be a good player, but not a superstar.
That Swanson, alongside Hoerner and Suzuki, is going to be around when the Cubs’ contention window is expected to open indicates that this no-superstars idea is probably the Cubs’ approach: No superstar-level talents by price tag. As many good players as possible, either by price tag or through development. Short-term deals in the meantime, preserving competition and upside but keeping flexibility wide open and affording Jed Hoyer and his team the option to fill in whatever gaps end up being there when this very diversified portfolio of prospects starts materializing into big-league players.
To be a World Series contender, you need about 52 WAR on your roster. A rough rule of thumb is that 30 of that should come from your position players, around 16 should come from your rotation, and something like six should come from the bullpen. You can get to that 30 number with seven or eight 3-to-4-WAR players and a healthy bench. In this regard, the Cubs aren’t terribly far off. They’re at 24.1 projected WAR from position players so far, and that’s with no great bat involved in the DH equation and the expectation that a backup catcher upgrade is on its way. The rotation is not close to 16 (and won’t be after the Smyly addition), but the bats are getting there, and hopefully between Justin Steele and Hayden Wesneski and others on the way and a few future free agents, the rotation will catch up by 2024 or 2025. In the meantime, though, it’s great that the bats are getting there, and this is without the most heralded of prospects poking their heads out of the developmental mire yet. Swanson, Hoerner, and Suzuki should all be in that 3-to-4-WAR window. Happ is close. Bellinger, Morel, and Mervis all have that sort of upside. And then…
Then, there’s Nick Madrigal.
Part of why the Swanson signing hardly moved the needle on the Cubs’ projections is that Swanson very directly replaced Madrigal, and Madrigal, on paper, is pretty good. He’s nearly a league-average bat. He’s above-average defensively at second base. He lacks power, and his wOBA always overperformed his xwOBA on the South Side, which is a red flag, but the guy is a good player. Back in 2021, when the Cubs acquired him, FanGraphs’s Trade Value Rankings—in large part sourced from front offices—had Madrigal as one of the fifty most valuable assets in baseball. This guy should be good. He just wasn’t last year.
Why wasn’t Madrigal good, if he should be? That’s the huge question, and the injuries are a gigantic red flag. Madrigal was not on the Trade Value Rankings this year, and he won’t be in 2023 either, barring some high surprise. But if it was only the injuries…are those effects going to last?
The Cubs should have the best idea of any of us on this, and not just because of their internal financial resources available to devote to research. They have doctors looking at Nick Madrigal’s body. That is a major information advantage. What they do with that information should, in theory, tell us a lot about what that information is. If they trade him, they’ll be selling low, or so it will seem from our vantage point. By their vantage point, it’d presumably be the opposite: They found something they thought was worthwhile. If they keep him, we can probably surmise that they still think highly enough of him to continue giving him a chance, even if playing time is much harder to come by with Swanson now on board up the middle.
I’m very against trading Nick Madrigal, personally, knowing nothing about his true physical condition. A year ago, we were asking the injury question about another high-contact, low-power, oft-injured, pandemic-affected developing middle infielder, and that guy ended up being the brightest part of 2022. Going off that, Hoerner’s also not guaranteed to pan out in the long term. The expectation is that he will, but he has the injury history, and his bat has looked bad at times in his career. Going off that but in a different direction, Hoerner might be able to play some third base, or center field, and Christopher Morel might not be able to play third base, and might have to play center field (and the repeatability question is even louder for Morel). FanGraphs says Madrigal, on paper, is only a win and a half less valuable than Hoerner and only half a win less valuable than Morel. That doesn’t take the injuries into account, but the bones of a good player are there, and the Cubs might wind up needing that specific good player.
Miscellany
Quickest thought on the college basketball slate from Saturday is that we probably should have seen Kansas’s beatdown of Indiana coming, but they’re still such an easy team to like to win this title, as is UCLA, about whom it was fair to have questions. Those are the two most proven, most well-rounded teams that are also very good on paper. Houston and Tennessee and Purdue and Arizona aren’t well-rounded. UConn and Texas aren’t particularly proven. UConn has done everything they could, and they haven’t played a bad schedule, but even if you include them, it’s hard to separate them from UCLA and KU.
We’ll catch up on more things tomorrow, including hopefully the Packers’ slim playoff hopes. The Lions winning hurt those, but there are paths. Entering tonight, the race for the last two NFC playoff slots looks as follows, per FPI:
- Giants: 91.2%
- Commanders: 35.1%
- Seahawks: 35.0%
- Lions: 28.9%
- Packers: 9.7%
Sounds like a chance to me.
**
Viewing schedule, second screen rotation in italics:
College Football
- 2:30 PM EST: Myrtle Beach Bowl: Marshall vs. UConn (ESPN)
NFL
- 8:15 PM EST: Los Angeles Rams @ Packers (ABC)
NBA (best game)
- 8:00 PM EST: Milwaukee @ New Orleans (League Pass)
NHL (best game)
- 7:00 PM EST: Florida @ Boston (ESPN+)
EFL Championship
- 3:00 PM EST: Sheffield United @ Wigan (ESPN+)
