The Cubs outright David Bote, Franmil Reyes, Alec Mills off the 40-man roster

As you know if you have read my 2022-23 MLB offseason calendar, the deadline for teams to add prospects to the 40-man roster to protect them from the Rule 5 Draft is next Tuesday, November 15.

In advance of that, today the Cubs made several roster moves:

That keeps several players in the organization who might have been non-tendered this offseason, at least for now.

The Cubs had seven players that needed to be activated from the 60-day injured list, as noted in Gordon Wittenmyer’s tweet.

By my count, the 40-man roster had 37 players on it prior to these moves. Deleting David Bote, Franmil Reyes, Alec Mills, Brad Wieck, Steven Brault, Narciso Crook and Anderson Espinoza drops that number to 30. Adding back Kyle Hendricks, Codi Heuer, Jason Heyward, Rafael Ortega and Ethan Roberts leaves the 40-man currently at 35, although we have already been told that Heyward is going to be released. I would guess Ortega is another candidate for release or non-tender, and the latter deadline comes up a week from tomorrow, November 18.

The Cubs likely have at least five prospects they want to add at the protection deadline next Tuesday, so I would guess they’ll have other players they want to run through waivers to clear some space, because they won’t want to leave the 40-man completely full.

Players in that category include Michael Rucker, Rowan Wick, Zach McKinstry, Esteban Quiroz, Alfonso Rivas and Jared Young.

As always, we await developments.