Cubs payroll decisions haven’t paid off in run production
Let's take a deeper dive into MLB salaries. The Cubs have been struggling, but spending money isn't really their problem.
According to Spotrac.com, the Cubs rank eighth in MLB payroll at $226.8 million. But to borrow some modern slang, there's a whole lot of mid in their lineup — not terrible, but far from great hitters.
For an illustration, let's take every team's four highest-paid position players, and leave out the small number of guys who have been out with injuries all year. The Cubs have the fifth highest-paid nucleus in MLB with Cody Bellinger ($27.5 million), Dansby Swanson (26.0), Ian Happ ($21.0) and Seiya Suzuki ($21.0).
This next part is a little tricky with all the deferred money the Dodgers are giving Shohei Ohtani. But the payroll leaders in this category are the Yankees (Judge, Stanton, Soto, Rizzo), Dodgers (Ohtani, Betts, Freeman, Hernandez) and Phillies (Harper, Turner, Realmuto, Schwarber), with the Mets (Lindor, Marte, Alonso, Nimmo) barely ahead of the Cubs.
Now take the combined OPS of those four highest-paid hitters and the Cubs are worst of the five. The Dodgers lead with 3.648, followed by the Yankees at 3.547, Phillies at 3.364, Mets at 3.073 and finally the Cubs with 2.957. And that's just the ranking of the teams with the highest-paid position core. The Astros, Braves, Red Sox and Brewers are all getting production out of their four highest-paid hitters for less than the Cubs are spending.
So it's not so much the Cubs didn't spend. They just gave it to the wrong guys. Or the wrong guys have all hit slumps at the same time.
A lot of teams are spending more money on pitching than the Cubs, since some of their better starters are early in their careers. The obvious difference-maker is the young player still under team control who is also one of the best OPS guys.
The Orioles (Gunnar Henderson), Guardians (Steven Kwan), Brewers (Joey Ortiz) and Royals (Witt) all have younger, less expensive players who would lead the Cubs in OPS.
Maybe some of the Cubs' star prospects will be doing the same in a few years, but for now they're kind of stuck waiting for guys to get hot at the plate.
Wolkow heats up:
Downers Grove North grad George Wolkow, a seventh-round pick of the White Sox last year, made his Single-A debut on June 4, so all of this is an incredibly small sample size, but his improvement has been notable.
In his first 11 games with the Kannapolis Cannonballs, Wolkow hit .133. In the past seven games this week, he went 10-for-24 (.417), adding 100 points to his batting average. …
Left-handed pitcher Noah Schultz, the Sox' No. 1 draft pick in 2022 out of Oswego East, has now made 5 starts in Double-A. His ERA is 1.83, which is obviously very good. But his strikeout-to-walk ratio is a ridiculous 23-to-1 over 20 innings.
Bullpen surprise:
The Cubs drafted right-hander Hunter Bigge in the 12th round out of Harvard in 2019. His minor-league numbers were unremarkable, until this year. In eight appearances at Triple-A Iowa, he's yet to allow a hit in 8⅓ innings and is hitting 98 mph with his fastball. Now 26, Bigge would be an interesting choice to make his big-league debut since the Cubs are in perpetual need of bullpen help. …
Now with eight games under his belt in Triple-A, Cubs catching prospect Moises Ballesteros is hitting .394 with a home run and 4 doubles.
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