Tomorrow, Monday, Nov. 4 at 4 p.m. CT, MLB teams are required to activate all players on the 60-day injured list and restore them to the 40-man roster.<\/p>\n
The Cubs have eight players on the 60-day: Yency Almonte, Adbert Alzolay, Colten Brewer, Ben Brown, Brennen Davis, Luke Little, Nick Madrigal and Julian Merryweather.<\/p>\n
With Kyle Hendricks and Jorge L\u00f3pez currently free agents, Drew Smyly gone via a buyout, and Caleb Knight outrighted to Triple-A Iowa (Knight is a catcher, signed just before the 2024 season ended), the Cubs currently have 36 players on the 40-man roster.<\/p>\n
Clearly, several of the players listed above could be important parts of the 2025 Cubs. Others, not so much.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d think this will be goodbye to Brewer and Madrigal, both of whom are arbitration-eligible. Jimmy Herget, also picked up late in the season and on the 40-man, is also arb-eligible and a likely guy to be moved off the 40-man. I\u2019d think the Cubs would also drop Trey Wingenter, another arb-eligible player.<\/p>\n
That would leave room for the other six players to be returned to the 40-man.<\/p>\n
Of the players listed above, Almonte, Alzolay and Merryweather are also arb-eligible and could be useful pieces in 2025. The other Cubs who are arbitration-eligible for 2025 are Christian Bethancourt, Isaac Paredes, Nate Pearson, Justin Steele, Mike Tauchman, Keegan Thompson and Patrick Wisdom. It\u2019s possible Bethancourt, Thompson and Wisdom could be non-tendered, but the deadline for that is Friday, Nov. 22, so the Cubs still have a couple of weeks to decide what to do about those players.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll also need to leave some open 40-man spots for any players they want to protect from the Rule 5 Draft. The deadline for adding such players is Tuesday, Nov. 19.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how I see things over the next few weeks for Cubs roster moves. As always, we await developments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Who will stay and who will go?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"yoast_head":"\n