The following players who were on the Opening Day roster for the Cubs in 2014 will not be on the Opening Night roster in 2015:
Emilio Bonifacio, Luis Valbuena, Jose Veras, Wesley Wright, John Baker, Carlos Villanueva, Nate Schierholtz, Ryan Kalish, James Russell, Justin Ruggiano, Darwin Barney, Jeff Samardzija
That's 12, almost half. In addition to those 12, the following players from the 2014 Opening Day roster might not be on the roster April 5 at Wrigley, depending on potential trades and spring performance:
Travis Wood, Welington Castillo, Ryan Sweeney, Brian Schlitter, Junior Lake
So it's possible that the Cubs could have as many as 17 different players to open this season as they did for last season. That's a tremendous amount of turnover for any team, and it's all been done in a very positive way, in my view. Add to that the new manager and several new coaches, and you can see the Cubs of 2015 are a very, very different team than the one that took the field March 31, 2014 at Pittsburgh.
So I'm taking this rather slow afternoon to ask the question in the poll below. Vote and leave your further thoughts in the comments.