The Cubs are keeping their good players
This might take some getting used to
The Cubs still have a ton of salary coming off their books when this season ends, but thanks to long-term extensions to Petecrow and Nico Hoerner they now have about a third of a ton less coming off their books. They have their infield locked up for several years (Alex Bregman through 2032, Nico Hoerner through 2032, and both Dansby Swanson and Michael Busch don't reach free agency until after the 2029 season), and Petecrow is locked up through 2032.
That's great. Whatever it takes to keep a team together that lost two of three games to the hapless Washington Nationals to start their season.
Of course that's not a big deal. Good teams will on occasion lose series to bad teams, that's just baseball. Especially when it's at the start or end of a season, it gets magnified. Why, these Nats have to get to 57 wins somehow.
Both the Petecrow and Nico extensions are good news for Cubs fans. Those are two very good players. Pete has the potential to be a great player. Nico is one of the best all-around players in the game. If you let either of them walk, it would cost you even more to replace them, unless you did the very Cubs-like thing of just not bothering to replace them adequately.
Pete was drafted by the Mets (after the Cubs drafted the great Ed Howard) in 2020 and thanks to Covid and a 2021 shoulder injury he played just six minor league games for them. The Cubs got him in a trade for Javy Baez and Trevor Williams, and as a result, can claim Pete's development with a straight face.
Nico was the Cubs first-round pick in 2018, a first round that has mostly produced disappointments (Joey Bart (2nd), Nick Madrigal (4th), Grayson Rodriguez (11th), Nolan Gorman (19th)). Nico went 24th and has almost double the career WAR (21.8) of anybody else in that round (Logan Gilbert has 11.8 and Brice Turang 11.9).
The Cubs are not the draft and development machine they claim to be. They almost never hit on a player outside of the first round. Nico is even an anomaly because he wasn't a top-10 pick, which are the only ones the Cubs have hit on in a while. Pete is rare in that their trades for other teams' prospects usually yield middling results. The next best example is Michael Busch, and while that was a good trade he was 27 years old by the time they identified him.
And that's why retaining Pete and Nico is a big deal.
