Three big pieces of news today:
1. Pitchers and catchers report for the Cubs.
2. The word is that Kris Bryant is not getting traded before the season starts (unless something big changes).
3. FanGraphs released their playoff odds.
Setting aside the slimmest-of-slim possibility that the GameStop saga weakened Steve Cohen’s finances enough to make him red-light pursuit of Bryant (I know they’ve said this isn’t the case but I want this to be the case), the biggest takeaway from the Bryant update is that there’s a chance. There’s a chance he’ll stick around. There’s a chance this team will work out. There’s a chance.
There also, of course, are other chances. There’s a chance he’ll get hot but the Cubs will skid, and he’ll be dealt away in July. There’s a chance he won’t bounce back, and the Cubs will be stuck with a situation—to their eyes—like that they went through with Schwarber this offseason.
But there’s a chance Kris Bryant’s an all-MLB talent again, and there’s a chance he helps lead this team into contention.
Now.
About contention.
For the first time since 2015, the Cubs are not NL Central favorites. They haven’t dominated the NL Central over that stretch, but they’ve dominated the FanGraphs projections, with division championship probabilities thrice over 80% (’16, ’17, ’18) going into the year, and at least a plurality-style favoriteship every season (a better likelihood than any other team, even if they weren’t favored over the field). With no other franchise in the Central really bolstering its MLB squad (sorry, Arenado isn’t that good), the implication and reality is that this is the worst Cubs roster we’ve seen since…well, 2014, realistically, though I don’t have access to FanGraphs’s 2015 numbers and so can’t check (also, I’d guess the Cardinals were a lot better heading into ’15 than they are now). There is, as current rosters are assembled, about a one-in-five chance the Cubs win the division, and somewhere between a one-in-five and a one-in-four chance they make the playoffs. Given that the Cubs are perhaps marginally more likely to be sellers than buyers, those chances may be slightly high.
Will the rosters change? Possibly. Some free agents are unsigned. Some trades could yet be made. But given the general impotence of the NL Central offseason, this is probably where we’re at entering opening day. Get hot and the division might be yours. Go cold and start pulling out the rolodex to sell off parts. This is where we are, for the next six weeks. We’ll see what comes from there.
