While Jed Hoyer and the Cubs hit on a few of their free agent signings this past year, the team also whiffed on several players during free agency. Eric Hosmer, Trey Mancini and now Tucker Barnhart have been designated for assignment.
The Cubs announced the move prior to Saturday’s game against the Kansas City Royals. Miles Mastrobuoni, who was sent back down to Triple-A at the end of July, has been called back up to take Barnhart’s spot on the team’s active 26-man roster.
There was some fan speculation Friday night that Patrick Wisdom was going to be the odd-man out after Mastrobuoni was a late scratch from the Iowa Cubs lineup. Yet, maybe it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that it ended up being Barnhart getting the ax.
During the month of August, Barnhart only started two games and had seven total at-bats, while getting into two more games off the bench. That came even after he had his best month in a Cubs uniform, going 7-for-21 in July. But again, as you can see, the Cubs were limiting the backup catcher’s playing time since June.
Overall with the Cubs, Barnhart posted a .541 OPS, slashing .202/.285/.257, in 109 at-bats.
This was just a bad signing from the start. There was little to no upside that Barnhart was going to provide at the plate and even his skillset behind the dish has been declining. The Cubs signed Barnhart to two-year, $6.5 million deal, which means the catcher will still be getting paid $3.25 million in 2024. You add Mancini’s money and the Cubs are going to be paying more than $10 million to two players that aren’t on their team next season.
We’ve seen the Cubs front office waste chunks of money on several veteran players throughout the years and this goes back to when Theo Epstein was in charge, too. Something’s gotta change because as successful as the organization has been at building solid bullpens through under the radar free agents, they’ve been horrible filling out the roster with veteran depth players.
So, it’s good to see the Cubs being aggressive with their bad players and not caring about the money, but also it would be nice not to have to resort to this practice several times throughout a season.
With Barnhart DFA’d, the Cubs now have two spots open on their 40-man roster.
So, rookie catcher Miguel Amaya should be getting way more playing time to end the regular season. The 24-year-old has a .751 OPS this season, with a slash line of .245/.368/.383 in 94 at-bats.
Meanwhile, Mastrobuoni had a slash line of .324/.375/.432, going 12-for-37 and stealing four bases in 13 games during the month of July before he was squeezed out of the roster.
