NEWSLETTER
Hey, an Alexander Canario home run, anyone? Let’s start there.
He can still get into one.
Alexander Canario, 24, missed the final two months of the Triple-A season following a hamstring injury, so it’s good to see him back in action at full-go, making up for lost time. Through 12 games in the Dominican Winter League, Canario is hitting .276/.405/.448 with more walks than strikeouts.
With Patrick Wisdom and Mike Tauchman now gone from the Cubs’ big league roster, Canario is going to have a wide open shot to win the 4th-ish outfielder/right-handed-power bench bat job for the Cubs in Spring Training. That’s all the more true if the Cubs don’t want to carry either of Kevin Alcántara or Owen Caissie as bench players in the big leagues, and if Christian Franklin gets popped in the Rule 5 Draft.
In fact, in an ideal world, Canario would win a bench job at the big league level, not only because of his potential upside, but also because he is out of minor league options. So, if he doesn’t make the big league team – or isn’t traded sooner – he would then have to hit waivers at the end of the spring, where he would almost certainly be claimed by a team willing to give him regular starts to see if he takes the next steps forward. I suppose those are the two opportunities ahead of him: a bench job with the Cubs, or maybe getting moved to another organization where he could start everyday and try to prove himself in the big leagues.
The big-armed outfielder can play passably all three spots, which will help his bench case, and he showed the last two years that he doesn’t seem to have lost his offensive ability after the ankle and shoulder injuries. Now, Canario has also returned successfully from the hamstring injury.
The questions for him going forward are probably less about health, and more what the biggest questions have always been about: is there simply too much swing-and-miss in his game for him to succeed over a large sample in the big leagues? Canario’s zone contact rate at Triple-A and in MLB range from 70 to 75% in 2024, which would be far below the very lowest qualifier in MLB. It is in a range where it becomes almost impossible to put up league-average numbers overall. Can he improve that enough to stick, even if he’s getting only sporadic appearances? And short of improving it, can he be the rare guy who strikes out nearly 40% of the time and still produces, a la – ironically enough – Patrick Wisdom? Or if Canario does improve the whiffs, will it cost him too much contact quality?
The whole situation – and profile – is similar to Nelson Velazquez the year before, with the biggest difference being that there is currently a bench job available to be won by Canario, while there really wasn’t for Velazquez a year and a half ago when he was dealt. Velazquez, after initially seeing success with the Royals, went on to hit just .200/.274/.366/76 wRC+ this past season. He dramatically improved his zone contact rate (and strikeout rate), but his contact quality fell off a cliff in the process.
Will the Cubs try to move Canario out in a similar deal? Will Canario try to improve contact at the expense of high-quality contact? So on and so forth. The questions kind of ask themselves.
For today, I was just happy to see Alexander Canario having success in the DR, and to think on the possibility of him as a bench option for the Cubs in 2025. It’s possible the Cubs won’t see him that way regardless – with Cody Bellinger back, they already have four outfielders on the big league roster no matter what, and if there were a longer-term injury, maybe they prefer Alcántara or Caissie anyway – but it would be nice if he entered the spring with the chance. Or, alternatively, if he looked like a reasonably valuable trade piece to some other organization where he could have a starting shot.
