Jed Hoyer, the Cubs president of baseball operations, spoke to reporters including ESPN’s Jesse RogersForwarding of this outfielder Jason Heyward will not be with the club in 2023. That would be the last year of Heyward’s contract but it seems the club will be heading in a different direction. Heyward is currently on the injury list with a knee injury that Hoyer says is unlikely to return this year, per Maddie Lee of the Chicago Sun-Times. That means Heyward may have already appeared as a Cub in his last game. Hoyer says Heyward will eventually be fired but will remain at the clubhouse for the remainder of the year while he is on the IL due to his respected clubhouse presence Patrick Mooney of The Athletic. Hoyer says he and Heyward discussed the situation “at length.” per Rogers, with the Cubs wanting to give younger players more time but Heyward wants to keep playing. By releasing him for the offseason, he can return to free agency and start looking for his next team this winter.
It’s a notable but hardly shocking development given how Heyward has progressed over the contract period. After five seasons with Atlanta and one in St. Louis, the Cubs signed Heyward to an eight-year, $184 million contract in December 2015. At this point, the Cubs had just emerged from a rebuild, made it through the postseason for the first time since 2008, and were still trying to overcome their 1908 World Series drought. The club had signed a year earlier Jon Lester as a signal for a return to competition and the Heyward deal was one of many in the 2015-2016 season that reinforced the club’s serious intentions.
In the first year of the deal, Heyward still offered excellent defense as he had always done, but his offensive performance took a nosedive. He scored .230/.306/.325 for a wRC+ of 72, or a performance that was 28% below the league average, having had a wRC+ of between 109 and 121 for the past three seasons. His glove work still allowed him to post 1.0 wins over backup a year, per FanGraphs, but it certainly wasn’t what the Cubs had in mind when laying out that massive contract. Nonetheless, the Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years, which certainly helped wash away the bitter aftertaste for a while.
Heyward improved slightly over the coming years but still struggled to return to the form he had shown before moving to Chicago. From 2017 to 2019 he hit 0.260/0.335/0.406 for a wRC+ of 96. In the abridged 2020 campaign he seemed to come around the corner, hitting 0.265/0.392/0.456 for a wRC+ of 129 and achieving a 1.6 fWAR in only 50 games. However, last year he fell back to earth, hitting a paltry 0.214/0.280/0.347 for a wRC+ of just 68.
Despite these ups and downs on the plate, his defense has always kept him a productive player. Even with last year’s mediocre performance on the record, it was still worth 0.1 fWAR on the year. Here in 2022, however, things have slipped further, with Heyward hitting a measly 0.204/0.278/0.277 for a wRC+ of just 59, causing him to slip below replacement levels for the first time.
During the life of his contract, the Cubs closed their competitive window and entered another phase of rebuilding Chris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez and other faces of their championship team sent elsewhere. With the roster now mostly dedicated to younger players, they appear to be dedicating their playing time to these guys, with Heyward being pushed out. Hoyer mentioned Nelson Velazquez and Christopher Morel as two such players who could fill part of Heyward’s role, per Meghan Montemurro from the Chicago Tribune.
Heyward’s contract runs until 2023 and his salary for this campaign is $22 million. Given his performance over the past few years, he certainly won’t be claimed if he’s put on a waiver. He is then free to sign with any team, with that club only having to pay the league minimum, with that amount being deducted from what the Cubs pay.
While that day certainly seemed inevitable for some time, it’s likely still emotional for many Cub fans. While there are sections of the fanbase that have grown impatient and have been vocalizing this for some time, Heyward was still an integral part of one of the most important periods, if not the most important, of Cubs baseball history. While he failed to live up to some of the highest expectations, he was nonetheless a productive part of a team that broke a centuries-old title drought and made the play-offs in four of his first five years at the club. Though Heyward could still end up with another team next season, he will likely forever be associated with his time as part of a legendary Cubs Baseball run.