After months of waiting, the Chicago Cubs finally got their man, bringing Cody Bellinger back to the North Side after his bounce-back season in 2023. While some of his underlying metrics suggest that the former NL MVP got a bit lucky en route to putting up an .881 OPS last season, he still had more upside than anyone else on the market, and the Cubs were always going to have a tough time replacing his production elsewhere.
But now that Bellinger is officially a Cub once again, just how does this Chicago lineup stack up? Have the inconsistencies that plagued last year’s team been fixed, or is there more work to be done? Let’s take a look at where things stand, and where Jed Hoyer and Co. might still have holes that need to be addressed.
Cubs projected lineup after Cody Bellinger trade
Aaron Boone has yet to offer a concrete idea of how he envisions the team lining up come Opening Day. But given what we do know — namely, that Yankees brass feels comfortable with Aaron Judge as their primary center fielder — and the players currently on board, here’s how things might look:
1. Ian Happ, LF
2. Nico Hoerner, 2B
3. Dansby Swanson, SS
4. Cody Bellinger, CF
5. Seiya Suzuki, RF
6. Christopher Morel, 3B
7. Michael Busch, 1B
8. Yan Gomes, C
9. Pete Crow-Armstrong, CF
There are some other options available to new manager Craig Counsell — Mike Tauchman in center over Crow-Armstrong, who struggled at the plate as a rookie; Nick Madrigal or Patrick Wisdom at third over Morel — but we’ll stick with this for now. Bellinger figures to move off center on a full-time basis after last year’s knee injury, while the team seems intent on giving Morel and Busch every chance to claim the two corner spots with a strong spring training.
You can really see how much the Cubs needed Bellinger, and how impressive it is that Hoyer was able to wait Scott Boras out and land the 28-year-old without shelling out something like $200 million over the next seven years. Chicago has plenty of talented hitters, but they were in desperate need of the sort of big bopper that only Bellinger profiles to be of all the available options. If Suzuki can finally put together a full, healthy season, Morel makes some tweaks to his approach at the plate and Busch hits like his prospect ranking suggests, this lineup can make an awful lot of noise in 2024.