Cubs roster move: Seiya Suzuki placed on restricted list

Cubs outfielder Seiya Suzuki was placed on the paternity list last Saturday. The rules for the paternity list state that a player can miss at least one, but no more than three games before being reinstated.

Suzuki missed games Saturday, Sunday and Monday, so there were two choices before Tuesday’s game:

• Put Suzuki on the injured list — he did suffer a minor injury last week, or
• Put him on the restricted list.

The Cubs chose the latter, and oddly, with no announcement by press release or otherwise, just quietly making the move. Thanks to BCB reader BeerCub for pointing this out on the Cubs website transactions list.

There are reports that Suzuki went back to Japan to attend to the birth of his child. If so, it seems likely he’ll stay there and his 2022 season is over.

If that’s true, for the season, Suzuki batted .263/.336/.433 (98-for-372) with 22 doubles and 13 home runs in 106 games. He missed five weeks earlier in the season with a finger injury suffered sliding into second base in Cincinnati in late May.

Suzuki got off to a hot start, then the league adjusted to him. In his most recent 25 games since August 21, though, he started to get hot again: .337/.406/.535 (29-for-86) with five doubles, four home runs and nine walks. This is the sort of hitting we might have expected from him, though perhaps not quite as high a batting average. Presuming Suzuki has now settled in to being in MLB, I expect him to have a much better 2023 season. Overall his 2022 was worth 1.7 bWAR, perhaps a 3 bWAR season if he’d been healthy and productive.

I look for bigger and better things from him next year, and, all together now: “As always, we await developments.”