Season preview: At least they're lined up correctly

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It’s season preview week here at Pointless Exercise. Yesterday, we looked at the Cubs pitching and today it’s the offense’s turn. There also will be a very crowded podcast coming and my unlikely to come true predictions on Thursday.

While the Cubs worked on their pitching to a likely insufficient degree, did Jed go out and get enough hitting?

Nah. Probably not. But hey, we can dream. At the very least the offense will benefit from the guys actually batting in a sensible order for once.

Cody Bellinger - Most of the winter was taken up by us fans yelling at the Cubs for not bringing Cody back. It seemed like a no-brainer. They helped him salvage his career with his best offensive output since he was the MVP of the National League in 2019. He’s also just a really fucking good baseball player. He’s a Gold Glove winner in center (and he actually earned it, unlike their left fielder who has more Gold Gloves than Cody does—think about that) and is Gold Glove caliber at first base. He’s also an excellent base runner. He’s a lefthanded Kris Bryant (complete with the injury history). No wonder we fell in love with him so fast. But all of our worries were put to bed in March when the Cubs and Cody agreed on a one, two or maybe three year deal for $80 million. He can opt out after this season or make $30 million next season (if he’s really good this year he’ll probably opt out, but if he’s just pretty good it would probably be smart for him to stay another season), and if things go sideways he can stay and make $20 million in 2026.

But we don’t need to worry about any of that until October. For now, he’s back where he belongs. Maybe his uptick in production was the result of betting lucky with soft contact and an unsustainably high BABIP with two strikes (.386). Or, maybe that’s a result of him cutting down his swing with two strikes to cut his strikeout dramatically. I guess both things can be true. Whatever, we know Cody was injured during his awful seasons in 2021 and 2022 and was healthy last year. He was bad when hurt and good when healthy. That seems like a thing.

The best thing about Cody is that he allows the Cubs to take advantage if either Petecrow Armstrong or Matt Shaw burst onto the scene, as he go to first and bump Michael Busch to DH if Petecrow is ready to rip, or stay in center with Shaw kicking Christopher Morel to DH. And frankly, the Cubs are probably going to need one of those two things to happen (at least) if they aspire to anything beyond winning the middling NL Central.