With the Chicago Cubs beginning their season on March 18 in Japan, they have to make roster decisions before every other team in Major League Baseball outside of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

They already know Nico Hoerner won’t be with the team for their two-game overseas series because of the offseason surgery he underwent, and there’s a chance their star prospect Matt Shaw will be left at home, too.

The Cubs have also begun making cuts to their Major League to start trimming things down to the group who will be on the roster for Opening Day, and according to Brett Taylor of Bleacher Nation, they sent five players to their minor league camp on Saturday.

All five were pitchers; Caleb Kilian, Cody Poteet, Jack Neely, Gavin Hollowell and Riley Martin.

None of these cuts are too surprising since Martin hasn’t entered his option years yet and the other four are all on the 40-man roster with options remaining. However, it is notable that Poteet, the player who was the return piece in the Cody Bellinger trade, won’t break camp with the team.

The fourth-round pick of the 2015 draft took a while to make his MLB debut, getting into seven games during the 2021 season as a starter. He was converted to a reliever the following campaign, making 12 appearances before undergoing Tommy John surgery.

That kept him out for the entire 2023 campaign.

He returned in 2024 with the New York Yankees, showing well with a 2.22 ERA and 188 ERA+ across his five outings, four of them starts.

The 30-year-old will now begin the 2025 campaign in the minors for Chicago, and Taylor believes it will be in the Triple-A rotation where he’ll sit as starting depth in case of injury.

The same goes for Kilian, with Taylor writing, “the Cubs have shown no real inclination to move him to the bullpen” despite him running out of options.

Neely is one of the team’s best relief pitching prospects, someone who could factor into the mix later in the year or even next season and beyond based on some of the departing production that’s expected to happen next winter.

He and Hollowell will continue to be developed on the farm, getting occasional call ups as needed before being sent down unless they prove they should stick in the bullpen for an extended amount of time.

More cuts will be made in the coming days and weeks as the Cubs start putting together their active roster ahead of Opening Day.