It was something I knew was true this week. Heck, we’ve been talking about it since even before the arrival of free agency. But it was something that got a whole additional layer of context when the Rule 5 Draft arrived yesterday.
You see, every year, just ahead of the Rule 5 Draft, someone fires off an info update on where every organization’s 40-man roster stands, since you do not get a slot in the Rule 5 Draft if your 40-man roster doesn’t have at least one open spot.
When that happened this year, something I’d been hammering for weeks came all the more into focus: the Chicago Cubs have an obscene volume of open spots on their 40-man roster right now! For as much as I’ve written some variation of “NINE(!) open spots,” you don’t always have context for how much of an outlier that is. I knew just from doing this for a long time that it was a lot, but maybe lots of teams are actually in that vicinity, and I’m just so close to the Cubs that I couldn’t see it?
So, anyway, like I said, when the annual 40-man check tweet came from Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper, I was ready to gawk:
“Team roster countsCOL 37CHW 35WSN 37MIN 39PIT 39LAA 35BAL 40ATH 39ATL 40TBR 40STL 39MIA 39ARI 40TEX 34SFG 39KCR 38CIN 39NYM 39DET 39HOU 39CLE 38BOS 39SEA 38SDP 36CHC 31LAD 38TOR 37NYY 35PHI 34MIL 39″
There were 13 selections, which go right on those 40-man rosters, so you can bump half the league up a number, too.
So look at that again. The Cubs, at 31, are an EXTREME outlier. The Phillies added someone in the draft, so the Rangers are the only club even within THREE PLAYERS of the Cubs.
On the one hand, it’s not necessarily a good thing to have so few players in your organization that have reached a point in their careers, and an ability level, where you have to place them on your 40-man roster. This is absolutely a reminder how things have quietly (but quickly) gotten a little dire down on the farm*.
On the other hand, at least the Cubs have EXTREME flexibility right now to (1) make any and all waiver claims they think are interesting, (2) make trades for fringe-but-optionable younger players who get squeezed out elsewhere, (3) entice guys who likely have to settle for minor league deals by either giving them a split deal or pointing to how much room there is to compete, and (4) sign actual legit big league free agents with wild abandon, knowing you won’t have to risk losing anyone else off your 40-man to do it.
That is to say, if you could take the talent volume question out of the equation (lol), it is inarguably better to have more 40-man spots open this time of year than fewer. In the world of borderline cases, where the Cubs’ front office loves to play, they can truly do anything they want. There’s value in that.
But, again, being this extreme of an outlier is also a reminder that there’s so much work left to do this offseason. Yeah, you can back-fill a little bit internally during the season with guys who weren’t on the 40-man roster and then get added, but not this much. You have to have some bulk. Some depth. Some movable bodies and opportunities for breakouts.
*(By the way, none of this even contemplates the fact that there are also still a few guys on the Cubs’ 40-man roster who are probably bubble cases that could/would wind up DFA’d in a tighter winter.)
Hence then, the article about a stark reminder of the relative emptiness of the cubs 40 man roster or flexibility if you prefer was published today ( ) and is available on Bleacher Nation ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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