{"id":494833,"date":"2026-02-23T20:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/494833\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T20:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:53:10","slug":"cubs-to-sign-michael-conforto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/494833\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubs To Sign Michael Conforto"},"content":{"rendered":"

1:00pm: Conforto will make $2MM if his contract is selected, per Fabian Ardaya and Patrick Mooney of The Athletic<\/a>. There are also unspecified performance bonuses in the deal.<\/p>\n

8:30am: Conforto is signing a minor league deal with an invite to big league camp, per ESPN\u2019s Jesse Rogers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

6:55am: The Cubs are signing outfielder Michael Conforto<\/a>, according to a report from Jon Heyman of the New York Post<\/a>. The terms of the deal are not yet known. The Cubs have a full 40-man roster and will need to make a corresponding 40-man move if Conforto is being added on a major league deal, but that can be easily accomplished by transferring right-hander Shelby Miller<\/a> to the 60-day injured list. Conforto is represented by the Boras Corporation.<\/p>\n

Conforto, 33 next month, is a veteran of ten MLB seasons at this point. A former top ten pick in the draft and top 100 prospect, Conforto was an All-Star in 2017 and hit .259\/.358\/.484 (128 wRC+) through his first six seasons in the majors. Things took a turn for the veteran from there, however. His 2021 season was only pedestrian (104 wRC+), and his 2022 campaign was lost to shoulder surgery. Since returning, he\u2019s stayed at that roughly league average level overall. He\u2019s hit .225\/.316\/.390 with a 98 wRC+ across three seasons with the Giants and Dodgers, but last year in L.A. was the worst season of his career to this point.<\/p>\n

In 138 games for the Dodgers, Conforto hit just .199\/.3o5\/.333 with a wRC+ of 83. He was well below replacement level according to both Fangraphs and Baseball Reference in terms of WAR, he posted the weakest power production (.138 ISO) of his career, and his strikeout rate jumped to 24.9% for the first time since 2018. It was a brutal season overall, and things got bad enough that Conforto wound up being left off L.A.\u2019s playoff rosters entirely during the World Series run. After returning to free agency this offseason, Conforto found minimal interest across the league until the calendar had already flipped to 2026. As Spring Training drew near, teams like the White Sox<\/a> and Astros<\/a> expressed interest in Conforto\u2019s services, but the Cubs had not been connected to him before today\u2019s news.<\/p>\n

On the Cubs, Conforto seems more or less blocked without an injury. Ian Happ<\/a> and Seiya Suzuki<\/a> are sure to be tapped to handle the outfield corners, and even if Conforto is still capable of handling center field (a position he hasn\u2019t played since 2019) superstar Pete Crow-Armstrong<\/a> is sure to get regular reps at the position. Conforto\u2019s best hope of making the roster would be as the team\u2019s primary DH who could rotate through the outfield corners to get Happ and Suzuki off their feet. He\u2019ll face stiff competition from top prospect Moises Ballesteros<\/a> for that top DH job, however. Ballesteros hit an excellent .298\/.394\/.474 in his first taste of big league action last year, and while that came in just 57 trips to the plate it was still a strong enough showing to warrant a larger look this year.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly not impossible that Conforto could rediscover the combination of power and discipline that made him an effective big league hitter, and if he does so he could challenge Ballesteros for the DH job. That could be particularly appealing for the Cubs if they want to continue developing Ballesteros as a catcher, given that the team\u2019s starting tandem of Carson Kelly<\/a> and Miguel Amaya<\/a> leaves little room for Ballesteros to get a look behind the plate in the majors at this point. Failing that, he\u2019ll compete this spring for a bench job against the likes of Dylan Carlson<\/a> and Chas McCormick<\/a>. Conforto has the most success at the big league level of that trio, but also would likely be the most stretched defensively as a center fielder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1:00pm: Conforto will make $2MM if his contract is selected, per Fabian Ardaya and Patrick Mooney of The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,10169,462,82],"class_list":["post-494833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-michael-conforto","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}