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.
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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.
With Kyle Hendricks and Jorge López 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.
Clearly, several of the players listed above could be important parts of the 2025 Cubs. Others, not so much.
I’d 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’d think the Cubs would also drop Trey Wingenter, another arb-eligible player.
That would leave room for the other six players to be returned to the 40-man.
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’s 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.
They’ll 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.
That’s how I see things over the next few weeks for Cubs roster moves. As always, we await developments.
