Ok, let’s start this by saying the PECOTA projections have them winning the third most games in baseball in 2025. The sportsbooks have the Cubs as the odds-on favorite to win the NL central, this is most likely going to be a good team that’s playing postseason baseball come October. So why does every Cubs fan feel the way that I do? Why is no one excited? Let’s dive in.

Offensively they’re going to have a lot of guys who can hit. Kyle Tucker is star in this league, even though the cubs will cry poor when it comes time to re-sign him next year. Seiya Suzuki has been one of the best hitters in baseball in the last year and a half. Dansby Swanson, Nico Hoerner, and Ian Happ have all been productive hitters over their careers. Pete Crow-Armstrong, Matt Shaw, and Michael Busch all were/are top 50 prospects and should be able to consistently hit at the big-league level. And Miguel Amaya is still on the team, trying his best for sure. The bench is strong too: Justin Turner, Carson Kelly, Jon Berti, Alexander Canario and Gage Workman will be fine – can’t really expect too much depth unless you root for the Dodgers.

Defensively they’ll be great. Tucker, PCA and Swanson are all elite fielders – add in Hoerner and Happ who have won gold gloves and it really is a strong overall defensive unit. Craig Counsel has always preached and relied on fundamentals; you must assume the young guys here will be coached no differently. They had a really rough April defensively last year, I don’t expect that at all this year. I hope we see some improvement from Amaya behind the plate, he can’t have a caught stealing % under 20 like last year.

Starting pitching is something I haven’t seen before with the Cubs. They lack high end starting firepower, but they have 5 solid mid-rotation guys (some with TOR upside) and a ton of starting pitching depth. Justin Steele and Shot Imanaga have shown that they can be great, we need to see more innings out of each of them this year and need to avoid the sub six inning starts that each were plagued with last year (21 combined starts where neither made it to the 7th inning). Jameson Taillon has been a good starter for the last decade, if he can repeat his 2024 results most Cubs fans would be thrilled. Mathew Boyd and Colin Rae have both had varying degrees of success in the big leagues, both are fine in the back of the rotation roles they are currently in. Depth wise, it’s the most excited we’ve ever been. Ben Brown showed flashes of excellence last year before injury, Cade Horton has been the top prospect in the system since he was drafted, Jordan Wicks has been inconsistent but has the pedigree and the stuff to succeed as a big-league starter, and Javier Assad somehow gets outs without ever missing a bat.

The Bullpen is always impossible to predict. Credit to the Cubs for bringing in Ryan Pressly, at least closer won’t be an obvious hole going into the season like past years. After that there will be about 10 guys they’ll cycle through in the first two months before the trade deadline. Tyson Miller (shoutout to my Cubs pitching prospect blog in 2018) and Porter Hodge will set up. The rest are going to be an amalgamation of swing relivers and other guys with options. We’ll see what the bullpen look like in July.

So we’re looking at a well hitting, good defensive, well-pitched, well managed team. I guess that’s why they’re projected to win a lot of games. The issue I have, is there isn’t a single blue-chip player on this roster outside of Kyle Tucker. “We break even every year” from Tom Ricketts is alarmingly tone depth. The only team in baseball that must make their financials public, the Braves, made almost nine figures last year. Tom Ricketts is either lying to everyone or doesn’t know how to operate a P&L sheet despite being worth billions of dollars. Malice or incompetence? Not sure what’s worse. Cubs fans watched the greatest era of Cubs baseball be stripped down to be run like a struggling company recently acquired by private equity. We traded, in brutal fashion, every player this generation of Cubs fans grew attached to. How’d the teenagers they traded for work out? PCA looks to be solid, other than that we’re looking at Owen Caissie (who’s ceiling is Joey Gallo) for: Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, Willson Contreras, Javier Baez, Craig Kimbrell and Yu Darvish. We dealt/let go each of those players in their primes, and we ended up with PCA and Owen Caissie as the only guys who might have a future with the Cubs.

I hope they don’t disappoint us again. We won in 2016, great! Since then, they’ve won three playoff games. I struggled to see through rose-colored glasses in 2023 and 2024, and this team really doesn’t seem too much different from those teams. I hope I’m wrong, they’re going to get my $20/month at the ole Marquee network either way. At least our central division rivals are all dead, maybe we can bum slay our way to 90 wins.