NEWSLETTER
I feel like, after the Rhys Hoskins signing with the Brewers, there were some folks who weren’t aware just how clear the Cubs had made it that Michael Busch was acquired to be given real, serious, and long runway to be THE first baseman to open the season. Maybe I did a poor job of spotlighting those comments from the Cubs, because it all happened around the Convention and the Shota Imanaga signing, and it may have been lost in the shuffle.
So I want to share those comments here and now, because it underscores why the Cubs were no longer in on Hoskins after the Busch trade (via Marquee):
“Our expectation is he’s on the Opening Day roster,” Carter Hawkins said. “I think there’s obviously opportunity at first base — that’s kinda the easy plug-and-play. He’s got really good reviews defensively over there from our scouts that have seen him, from talking to the Dodgers, from obviously seeing him over there.”
“(Busch) is certainly going to play,” Jed Hoyer said. “How the rest of the offseason plays out, we’ll see. But yeah, that’s been the mindset — that I think first base is the most natural spot for him.”
Yes, there was some additional talk about his versatility, and I don’t know that anyone is committing to anything super long-term. But when both Hawkins and Hoyer are immediately focusing on first base for Busch right after the trade, it’s crystal clear to me that there is a plan in place: barring moves that absolutely preclude it, or some demonstration that he simply can’t do it, Michael Busch is the Cubs’ first baseman to open the season.
And, to ward off comments about how this is just like last year at the position, let me just say that, no, it’s not really the same at all. For one thing, the Cubs didn’t go into 2023 assuming Matt Mervis was going to be THE first baseman on day one, instead signing Eric Hosmer and Trey Mancini to hold down the fort. For another thing, as Sahadev Sharma wrote today, Mervis and Busch are simply not comparable prospects:
If one were to look only at the slash lines from Triple A for each player, this could be a reasonable conclusion. But when it comes to talking to scouts, these two don’t seem very comparable ….
Both struggled in their brief MLB debuts. Scouts were eager to see what Mervis could do at the highest level because the belief was that his abilities may not fully translate. There were concerns that he’d struggle with the elite velocity and breaking balls he’d see. It can’t be assumed that he’ll never succeed, but those concerns looked to be justified in his 99 plate appearances.
On the other hand, scouts seem much more assured that Busch will hit in the big leagues. There’s always a chance that he’ll end up just a slightly above-average (or worse) bat, which isn’t enough to thrive at first. But there are far fewer Busch skeptics than there are for Mervis when it comes to talent evaluators around baseball.
The biggest statistical difference between the two on offense comes in the form of their plate discipline. At Triple A, Mervis swung out of the zone much more often than Busch and when he did, he swung and missed more often as well. Busch had a higher in-zone contact rate as well, leading to a total contact rate in 2023 at Triple A of 81.5 percent compared to Mervis’ rate of 70.1 percent.”
There’s a lot more in the piece from Sharma, but you get the gist. Mervis was (and still is!) a “maybe it could happen” guy. Busch is a “this is supposed to happen” guy.
The Cubs may wind up wrong on this front, and maybe Busch, despite all the scouting reports to the contrary, never hits in the big leagues. I won’t tell you that he definitely will, though I will reiterate that there are very good reasons why the Dodgers let him go and why he’s on the older side for an unestablished prospect. For today, all I’m saying is that the Cubs made a decision with that trade: Busch was going to be the lefty-hitting first baseman they preferred, and Hoskins was no longer a prime free agent target.
(Hoskins could have DH’d, of course, but then you start to get into the whole Christopher Morel question, and if the Cubs are going to park another right-handed bat at DH, it’d probably be Morel before Hoskins. And since it still doesn’t seem like Morel will get a real long-term chance at third base, there was no sure-fire spot for Hoskins.)
