Although it isn’t a terribly uncommon occurrence for a lot of clubs at the start of Spring Training, visa-related delays for a player or two tend to be a matter of days, not a matter of weeks.
Unfortunately for the Chicago Cubs and their hoped-for almost-everyday DH Moises Ballesteros, his immigration delay from Venezuela is still ongoing, and he’s having to find an alternate route to getting back to the United States:
Craig Counsell said that Moises Ballesteros should be in Cub camp by Saturday or Sunday. He is making his way through Columbia with frustrating visa issues.
— Bruce Levine (@MLBBruceLevine) February 19, 2026The Cubs are hopeful Moisés Ballesteros (visa issues) will arrive to camp this weekend. They are expecting to get some clarity today on a specific date. Less certainty on a time frame for Christian Bethancourt’s visa situation to be resolved.
— Meghan Montemurro (@mmontemurro.bsky.social) 2026-02-19T21:37:37.117ZObviously we all know how challenging the immigration environment is, but it is nevertheless deeply frustrating to see someone who has lived and worked in the United States for multiple years now having such trouble at a critical time in his career. I know nothing of the particulars there, other than the Cubs saying that both they and Ballesteros have been doing everything they can. So who knows what has driven the holdup, and caused him to have to literally go to another country to try to get to the U.S.
Meanwhile, the big question is, even if Moises Ballesteros does arrive this weekend, what will the impact be on his readiness for the season ahead?
Well, if that timeline holds, Craig Counsell is still thinking positively.
“We’re optimistic right now that he’s going to be here shortly,” Counsell said, per Cubs.com. “If that should happen, I think we’re in a good place. He’s going to be behind in terms of when you see him in a game, but with kind of the normal Spring Training schedule, I feel confident in the number of games we’re looking at here.”
In other words, if Ballesteros arrives soon, he’ll ramp up to game action over a period of time, but even if that took a week or two, he’d still have multiple weeks of Cactus League games available in which to get up to speed against in-game pitching. Historically, position players need only a week or two of game action to feel about as good as they need to in order to enter the season.
All that said, as we’ve discussed, this spring wasn’t solely about getting Ballesteros’s bat ready for the season. The ideal was to also have him ready to serve as a third catcher on the roster, if and when needed, WHILE ALSO continuing to develop back there for 2027+. Now, some critical time to work with the pitching infrastructure, the pitching staff, and the other catchers has now been lost – that’s especially the case because, the longer the delay lasts, the more his focus upon arrival will have to be dedicated to hitting and advanced scouting against pitchers. So that part already sucks.
Nothing we or the Cubs or Ballesteros can do about that now. We just have to hope he arrives this weekend, is in really good shape, and starts taking live batting practice sometime next week.
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