CHICAGO — The Cubs may have an offensive hole to fill this offseason if slugger Kyle Tucker does not return in 2026.
Could Cody Bellinger – a familiar face – be an option to help fill the void?
“I think everybody learns that if you know a player who’s 28, 29 [years old] and you know he’s had an .880 OPS in your city, and he performs well there, it’s a real advantage, because there’s a surety to you bringing someone there that you know has already performed at an elite level,” Bellinger’s agent Scott Boras told Bruce Levine in a one-on-one interview on Marquee Sports Network at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas for the annual GM Meetings. “That is an advantage that most free agent relationships does not have.”
Bellinger signed a one-year deal ahead of the 2023 season, posting an .881 OPS with 26 home runs, 97 RBI and a 4.8 bWAR season, garnering down-ballot MVP votes. He hit the free agent market but didn’t acquire the long-term deal he sought, signing a three-year $80 million deal to return to Chicago that featured opt-outs after each season. The 2019 NL MVP had a solid, but not spectacular 2024 campaign, posting a 2.2 bWAR season with 18 home runs and a .751 OPS.
The Cubs dealt Bellinger to the Yankees after they had traded for Tucker and the outfielder/first baseman hit 29 home runs with an .813 OPS and a 5.1 bWAR season in the Bronx.
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But the Cubs might not see Bellinger, or other big bopper free agents like him, as urgencies this winter.
“I think the largest focus will be on pitching,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday. “I think that’s obvious — look at our depth chart. We’re in pretty good position on the position player side — on the pitching side, we’re thinner.
“I think that’s going to be our focus.”
The Cubs essentially ran out of pitching by the end of the 2025 campaign, a year where they returned to the playoffs for the first time in a full season since 2018. Justin Steele had season-ending elbow surgery in April. Cade Horton, the runner-up in the NL Rookie of the Year, was hurt in his final start before the playoffs and didn’t pitch in October. Michael Soroka, their main trade deadline acquisition to supplement their rotation, was hurt two innings into his Cubs tenure and was a multi-inning reliever by the postseason.
They need arms and after they sign some, they’ll need more.
Bellinger could make sense if his market doesn’t percolate like it did after 2023, but with Seiya Suzuki poised to take over in right field, Michael Busch an anchor at first, that leaves only an opening at the DH spot and even there, the Cubs may be more inclined to give youngster Moisés Ballesteros a look instead of committing dollars in free agency to Bellinger, even if there is interest from the player in returning to the Friendly Confines.
“And from the player’s perspective, he knows how to look at a particular city in a particular way, and his decisions are more defined,” Boras said. “And knowing how positive the experience was for Cody in Chicago, I would say that certainly all things have gone well.”
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