Big Swing: Cubs sign Alex Bregman to five year contract

Saturday nights have been good to Chicago sports fans lately. Especially so this weekend. As the Bears were initiating what has become their patented fourth quarter comeback, news broke that the Cubs had signed veteran third baseman Alex Bregman.

According to multiple reports, the Cubs inked Bregman using a strategy they had avoided thus far: Deferred money. Of the reported $175 million Bregman will earn over the next five years, $70 million of it is deferred. That is expected to push the Cubs’ present-day commitment to under $35 million a year for Bregman, which will also keep them below the first tier of the luxury tax threshold. That is significant because it leaves room for the Cubs to add further this offseason or to take on money via trade in July, should they choose to go over the luxury tax.

With Bregman, the Cubs sit very close to the first tier, according to Spotrac, but the deferred money and other deals as the offseason goes on would change that. The fact that they went with deferred money in this contract should be encouraging to fans because it could mean a shift in payroll philosophy from the top of the organization. Where teams like the Dodgers — and now Blue Jays — have found success by deferring money, many others, like the Cubs, have been slow to get on board. It’s also a refreshing change of pace that the Cubs outbid the Red Sox for Bregman, who reportedly also offered five years but did not go as high in value as the Cubs.

According to ESPN’s Jesse Rogers, the deal also includes a full no-trade clause. That could be for a few reasons; perhaps Bregman wants stability in the latter years of his career, or perhaps he wants to be invested in the long term future of the Cubs, who seem poised to have a 2026 season that will be at least as good as last year.

Coming just days after the Cubs traded with the Marlins for starting pitcher Edward Cabrera, Bregman is the offensive depth ying to Cabrera’s pitching depth yang. Bregman, 31, is a career 43.1 bWAR player with a lifetime OPS+ of 132. He’s averaged about 30 doubles a season for the past four years and should give the Cubs somewhere around 20 home runs if he keeps to his recent season averages. On the whole, Bregman gets on base a lot and doesn’t strike out often, so he should provide the kind of offensive consistency that will balance out the ebbs and flows of some of the other hitters in the Cubs lineup.

Bregman is also a solid defender at third base; he won a Gold Glove in 2024, and he has led the league in putouts three times. The question, of course, is what having Bregman will mean for Matt Shaw. The latter put up a respectable rookie season in 2025, but the fact that the Cubs signed Bregman could mean that either Shaw moves positions or is a part of a trade down the road. Bregman could serve as a designated hitter — and with Kyle Tucker gone, usual designated hitter Seiya Suzuki might play a lot more right field — but his defense is too reliable to let go to waste.

One of the most likely spots Shaw would move to is second base, which would happen in the event of a trade involving Nico Hoerner. His name was already frequently mentioned in trade rumors before the Bregman signing, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the future plans in the Cubs’ infield don’t involve Hoerner. Trading him would not go over well with the Cubs fanbase, but presumably Hoerner is more appealing than Shaw in a trade, and that would likely mean the return the Cubs would get in this hypothetical scenario would be greater.

But those are questions that there is time to answer. The Cubs don’t report for spring training for another month, and the weeks of work in Arizona will help manager Craig Counsell determine how he wants to handle the Bregman/Shaw question. At worst, it’s what former Cubs manager Joe Maddon used to call a good problem to have: Finding enough at-bats for multiple quality players in the same positions.

The two moves the Cubs made this week, trading for Cabrera and now signing Bregman, are both going to make the Cubs a lot better in 2026 than they were projected to be just a few weeks ago. They are coming off of one of the best seasons the organization has had in close to a decade, and the onus was on the front office to find ways to keep improving even as they let Tucker go in free agency. On paper, at least, team president Jed Hoyer and his crew have succeeded in making the kinds of deals that will make the Cubs better this year than they were in ’25.