Today’s Binary Response piece a reaction to Jay Mariotti’s column which hit the wire Saturday night during the Bears-Packers Wild Card Game, centered on the Cubs’ signing Alex Bregman. What follows focuses less on what Mariotti said and more on the unfinished business still hanging over the Cubs this winter. Please sign up to get our Binary Response articles directly in your inbox!
The Bregman news broke right in the middle of the Bears game — at a moment when Chicago looked finished, needing a miracle to knock Green Bay out of the playoffs, only to storm back and actually win. In that sense, the timing was oddly fitting.
Because this Bregman move feels far less like a finishing touch and far more like the beginning of a long-delayed to-do list. That’s not a knock on Bregman himself. He’s a legitimate addition, a proven postseason bat, and a clear signal that the Cubs are willing to spend real money. This roster has needed that type of presence. But timing and context matter.
A year ago, when the division was arguably more open and the market offered a better mix of bats and arms, a move like this could have reshaped the Cubs’ entire trajectory. Now, it feels like the organization is finally acting like a big-market team — while still dragging around a collection of unresolved questions.
This isn’t a cheap ownership argument. It’s a sequencing problem. Last winter should have been the moment to pair a major offensive addition with real pitching investment and a clearer long-term infield plan. Instead, the Cubs slow-played the offseason, leaned heavily on internal development, and hoped that enough things breaking right would be enough. That approach usually leads to too much pressure on young players, thin depth, and a roster that looks one move short by August.
Drop Bregman into that context and you get a split reality. On one hand, the upside is obvious. He’s a veteran presence, postseason experience, on-base skill, and a longer lineup. On the other, this signing doesn’t suddenly fix the pitching depth, the offensive inconsistency, or the lack of clarity about how the infield is supposed to look over the next three to five years. It’s progress — but progress with caveats.
That’s where Nico Hoerner and Matt Shaw enter the picture, because a signing like this never happens in a vacuum. The moment you commit real money to a third baseman, the depth chart shifts whether the front office wants to admit it or not. And that’s where things get complicated.
Hoerner entering the final year of his deal is a glaring variable. He’s the type of player teams love to praise — homegrown, steady, elite defense, no drama. But baseball has a habit of turning players like that into trade chips the moment their contract status becomes inconvenient. It’s easy for a front office to convince itself that his skill set is replaceable and that his value might be higher elsewhere.
You can already see the justification if they move him — playoff teams love adding a reliable second baseman, defense travels, you’ve already added power elsewhere, and you’re turning one year of control into longer-term assets. The problem is that logic undervalues the stability, elite gold glove defense, and the fundamentals on defense that Hoerner actually provides on a daily basis which keeps the infield from unraveling when things get sloppy.
Then there’s Shaw, who increasingly feels like the answer to every question at once. Need cheap production? Shaw. Need versatility? Shaw. Need to rationalize moving an infielder? Shaw again. The super utility label sounds flattering, but it can also be a warning sign. It’s often how teams use one player to patch multiple roster cracks instead of fixing them outright.
If the Cubs are serious about winning during the Bregman window, turning Shaw into duct tape instead of developing him with a defined role is risky. Super utility players are most valuable on rosters that are already mostly solved. When your core structure is still unsettled, asking a young player to fix everything at once can backfire.
This is where the timing of the Bregman signing really comes into focus. A year ago, the Cubs could have added a bat like this and then layered in cost-controlled talent without immediately putting young players into fix-everything mode. Now the timeline is compressed, expectations are higher, and every move carries outsized consequences.
Trading Hoerner in his walk year might make transactional sense, but it also sends a message: continuity and clubhouse glue are expendable because roster math got messy. And there’s the simple baseball reality that not every young player hits the ground running. If Shaw struggles, or proves better suited to one position than everywhere, and Hoerner is gone, suddenly Bregman is carrying even more weight — both offensively and as an infield stabilizer. That’s how teams end up a couple games short and wondering why a big move didn’t move the needle.
So this isn’t really about whether Bregman is worth the contract. It’s about whether the Cubs have learned from years of almost-there seasons. Is this signing validation that the plan is working — or a reminder that they still haven’t finished the job?
Because right now, it feels like they finally shopped in the aisle they should have been in last winter, but left the store with only part of the list checked off.
If dangling Hoerner becomes the solution to patch other holes, the Cubs had better be absolutely certain about both the return and the internal replacements. If Shaw becomes a permanent play-him-everywhere piece instead of a developing everyday player, that’s another gamble layered on top of the first.
Here’s the thing, folks: The Bregman era at Wrigley has officially begun, and it could absolutely work. But it cannot be the end of the story. At the moment, the Cubs look like a team finally acting like contenders — while still behaving as if they have time to figure the rest out. They don’t.
With that… How they handle Hoerner’s final year and Shaw’s next few will say just as much about their seriousness as the check they just wrote.
If you cannot play with them, then root for them.