Today was the Chicago Cubs’ second round of cuts from big league camp, with a host of prospects and minor leaguers officially sent out from big league Spring Training and over to the minor league side.
Here’s the full slate (you can basically ignore the terminology – optioned is for the guys who are on the 40-man roster, but the news is the same for all):
Cubs moves:
• No. 1 prospect Brennen Davis reassigned to Minor League camp, along with Leeper, Menez, St. John, Strumpf, Weber, Machado (all NRIs)
• Abbott, Deichmann optioned to AAA
• Espinoza, Marquez optioned to AA— Jordan Bastian (@MLBastian) March 25, 2022
No big surprises or even major news yet, as none of those players was expected to seriously compete for an Opening Day roster spot at the big league level. The closest might be reliever Ben Leeper, but given how crowded the pitching group is, there just wasn’t a shot that a prospect who isn’t on the 40-man yet was going to make it. Eventually this season? Yeah, I could see Leeper coming up to the big league team.
Generally, you can ignore the minor league levels to which a player was sent at this stage – it doesn’t always translate to the level where he’ll open his regular season – but I think it’s probably at least a little notable that Brailyn Marquez is going to train with the Double-A group. Good bet that he opens his season (whenever that comes, probably not for a while yet) at Double-A Tennessee rather than Triple-A Iowa.
These players can all still appear in big league Spring Training games, by the way, it’s just that now they would basically be “borrowed” from minor league camp for the day. In other words, this doesn’t mean we’ve seen the last of Brennen Davis in big league Spring Training games just yet.