Next week, the Chicago Cubs will play the Los Angeles Dodgers in Tokyo, along with two exhibition games against Japanese ball clubs. The Cubs are bringing 31 players to Tokyo; all 31 can play in the exhibition game, but only 26 can be active for the Dodgers games as they are considered regular-season games.
With two weeks left in Spring Training, who the Cubs bring to Tokyo, as well as how they play them, will give us insight into the current decisions that manager Craig Counsell has made.
Third Base
Matt Shaw is going to Tokyo and is expected to start at third base. In 16 at-bats in Spring Training, Shaw has five hits, four runs, and an impressive 4 RBIs. He is hitting .313, but with only one double, his slugging is at .375, giving him a solid .796 OPS.
His MLB debut won't be easy as he'll start off hitting against LA's Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki.
Starting Rotation
Tokyo won't give us much insight into starting pitching because the series is only two games. We know that Justin Steele and Shota Imanaga will be starting (both got shelled in their last Spring Training outing), but we still won't know who will fill the last two rotation spots.
Matt Boyd, Jordan Wicks, Ben Brown, and Colin Rea are traveling to Tokyo and will be available out of the bullpen.
In his last outing, Boyd gave up four runs in 3.2 innings. Brown gave up three runs in 3.2. Meanwhile, Rea pitched 3 scoreless innings, and Wicks pitched a very impressive four scoreless. Nobody is really running away with this competition.
Counsell could continue the starting pitcher competition in the exhibition games, but that could cancel their availability to come out of the bullpen in the Dodgers series.
Offense
With Nico Hoerner not traveling to Tokyo, Jon Berti will most likely man second base. Berti has had a pretty decent Spring Training. With seven hits in 21 plate appearances, he sports a .825 OPS.
Most likely, the outfield will look like Ian Happ (LF), Pete Crow-Armstrong (CF), and Kyle Tucker (RF). Seiya Suzuki will start in DH but will probably get some innings in right field to appease the hometown crowd.
As a team, the Cubs are leading the MLB in batting average, second in slugging, and first in OPS. Those are pretty good stats despite the fact that some of the main starters like Dansby Swanson (.656 OPS) and Kyle Tucker (.407 OPS) are struggling.
Closer
It will be interesting to see how Counsell uses the bullpen in the Tokyo series. Will he leverage his main bullpen arms, or will he take advantage of the fact that he only needs two starters and use players like Jameson Taillon out of the bullpen?
If he uses the regular bullpen players, it will give us some insight into the pecking order as he sees it. The entire bullpen has received some work during Spring Training, and some of the returning bullpen members, including Nate Pearson, Julian Merryweather, and Tyson Miller, will be traveling to Tokyo. New faces going to Tokyo include Ryan Brasier, Caleb Thielbar, Eli Morgan, and Brad Keller.
Daniel Palencia, who was up and down between Triple-A and the MLB last year, will also make the trip. Palencia has a 5.06 ERA in 5.1 innings of work so far this spring.
Like the starters, who he uses in the exhibition game, could signal that they are farther down the depth chart than other players.
Presumably, Counsell will save Porter Hodge to close one game and Ryan Pressly the other. However, if there is no save opportunity in the first game, we'll see who pitches the eighth and who pitches in the ninth in the second game.