This can't be it, right?

In less than two weeks the Cubs will report to spring training. That doesn't give them much time to finish building their roster. But hey, when has Jed ever left his manager with a bunch of holes?

You know what? Don't answer that.

The Cubs have made some big move. I was going to write moves, but it's really just Kyle Tucker, isn't it? He's really good. It's almost like Jed Hoyer made that trade and said, "Well, that ought to do it." And then went out looking for knickers to wear to Cubs Convention.

A less confident GM, or president of baseball nonsense or whatever the fuck his title is, might have felt compelled to keep adding impact talent to his roster. But nah, not our boy Jed. He has the kind of confidence that you just can't teach. Well, you could teach it, but no organization would accredit you.

So, 13 days away from pitchers and catchers reporting, I guess it's up to us to look at the current roster and help Jed figure out if there's anything else he might need.

There's no time to waste, let's get to it.

Catchers - Miguel Amaya, Carson Kelly, Reese McGuire (m)
You might think the m stands for minor league deal, but no, it stands for masterbater. Well, at least we know he likes to practice framing balls.

Every team needs two good catchers. The Cubs are only two short of that.

Infielders - Michael Busch, Nico Hoerner, Dansby Swanson, Matt Shaw, Gage Workman, Vidal Brujan, Jon Berti
Oh boy. As much as we'd love to just assume that Shaw will be good, he's a Cubs prospect so we can't do that. That leaves what, three proven big leaguers? Two of them are coming off surgeries, and the other is a power hitting first baseman so good at his job that he hit 15 homers in his final 402 at bats last year. But hey, at least there's quality depth with Workman, a Rule 5 giant shortstop who spent three years at double-A where he struck out 442 times and had 495 total bases. Brujan has a career OPS+ of 49 in parts of four big league seasons (100 is league average), and Berti led the National League in stolen bases in 2022 with 41 and scored 47 runs on the season. Obviously those steals really paid off.

Honestly, what the hell is going on here? The Cubs have a manager who wants to use his bench during games to get matchup advantages and this bench is so bad that it's somehow worse than last year's bench, which was horrible. Jed acquired three infielders for that bench and none are any damned good at all. They are so bad that the bench would actually be improved by not having anyone on it.

Outfielders - Ian Happ, Petecrow Armstrong, Kyle Tucker, Seiya Suzuki, Alexander Canario, Kevin Alcantara
Hey, finally something to work with. Tucker's a legit star, something the Cubs haven't had since Kris Bryant took that header over first base seven years ago. Seiya is going to DH mostly and given how catches fly balls like he's trying to beat them into submission with his glove that's a good spot for him. Petecrow is valuable even if he doesn't hit (and given how he played in every month other than August last year, he might just prove that again), and then there's Happ. As for the fifth outfielder, you'd think the Cubs would start to work in one of their young prospects like Canario or Alcantara, or maybe even Owen Caissie, especially since we know that they don't really plan to keep Tucker after this year. But you just know they're going to go out and bring in some old, white waste of at bats like Robbie Grossman. But hey, Tucker and Seiya!