Where They Stand Now: NL Central

Our division-by-division look at how the MLB offseason has gone so far.

Every morning, first thing, I look at my 1976 Boog Powell baseball card. I love this card so, so much. There’s nothing particularly special about the card itself… I mean, sure, I love Boog Powell as much as the next guy, but he wasn’t a childhood hero or anything like that. He played only two seasons for Cleveland when I was 8 and 9, and even then I understood that he was closer to the end of his career than the beginning.

Boog did have a superb season in 1975—he hit .297/.377/.524 and banged 27 home runs, which was meaningful then. Twenty-seven blasts was good for 11th in baseball that year—sandwiched in between Dave Parker and Johnny Bench. He even got a down-ballot MVP vote. But that’s not the reason I love the card.

And I don’t love it because of the card itself—it’s just a side profile shot of Boog standing at first base, waiting to see if the ball will be hit to him. The shadow from his hat covers half his face.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are fun elements here. The index finger sticking through the glove (and him wearing his batting glove underneath) is definitely cool. And the little clip-art first baseman catching the ball with his foot DEFINITELY off the base is wonderful. Plus Boog’s general shape always delights.

But the reason the card makes me so happy—and I keep it on my desk to look at every day—is it is the last card I needed to collect the whole 1976 Topps set. That was my first serious year of card collecting, and my mother—who, pretty famously now has no interest in baseball—helped me collect and keep track, and raced home one day because she had found the Boog in one of those see-through plastic three-packs where you could see the three cards on the front and the three cards on the back. Boog was the first card on the left. It was so exciting. We’d been trying for so long, it felt like the card didn’t even exist.

Seeing it every day—particularly on dreary winter days like today—brings back a burst of that joy.

Milwaukee Brewers (93-69, lost to Mets in Wild-Card Round)

• Hello: Nestor Cortes

• Goodbye: Willy Adames, Devin Williams, Frankie Montas, Gary Sanchez, Hoby Milner, Joe Ross

I’m done trying to guess what will happen to the Brewers. I felt sure that last year—after they dealt Corbin Burnes because he was too expensive—that they would get surpassed by the Cubs, perhaps the Cardinals, even the Reds seemed in the mix. It didn’t work out that way at all, the Brewers had the easiest time of any division champion, they won the Central by 10 games and were in first place every single day after April 29.

This year, they’re dumping salary again. Adames, who easily led the team in homers and RBIs, signed with the Giants (you know those 112 RBIs totally impressed new GM Buster Posey). Devin Williams, who has been one of the game’s most dominant closers but who also got rocked for the second consecutive postseason, was dealt to the Yankees.

The Brewers have basically unloaded all of their big-money players except Christian Yelich, who’s signed through 2028, and Rhys Hoskins, who I feel quite certain still plays for the Phillies no matter what everybody says. Hoskins has one more year left on his deal.

And… I would guess the Brewers are still the favorites until somebody beats them. The Brewers seem to know stuff about pitching that nobody else knows—even without Burnes they led the division in ERA. They were, by outs above average, the second-best team in the league behind only the Diamondbacks. And they have all these good youngish players—Brice Turang, Joey Ortiz, Sal Frelick—to build around their franchise star, 21-year-old Jackson Chourio.

The Brewers will apparently never just lose the division, not even as they shed payroll. That is to say they will keep on winning NL Central titles until the Cubs or one of the other teams actually takes it away from them.

Chicago Cubs (83-79)

• Hello: Kyle Tucker, Carson Kelly, Matthew Boyd, Jorge López, Eli Morgan, Cody Poteet

• Goodbye: Cody Bellinger, Kyle Hendricks, Isaac Paredes, Mike Tauchman, Hayden Wesneski

Here’s a fascinating question for you: Who will have a better year in 2025—Kyle Tucker or Juan Soto? You would think the answer would be pretty simple, since Soto just signed the biggest deal in American sports history, and Tucker, with just one year left before he becomes a free agent, was traded for a couple of useful players and a promising prospect. Soto is 21 months younger than Tucker and is quite often compared to Ted Williams. Tucker is coming off an injury-plagued season and is rarely talked about at all.

So why even ask this question? Look, Soto will walk a lot more. He walked more than anyone in baseball. As such, his on-base percentage will be considerably higher—his career .421 OBP (the highest among active players) is almost 70 points higher than Tucker’s. He will likely hit more home runs too. The last two years, Soto hit 35 and 41 homers. Tucker has never hit more than 30 homers.

But Tucker has his advantages, too. He’s a much better outfielder than Soto. He’s a much better base runner. And last year, in a half-season, he hit .289/.408/.585 with 23 home runs and 11 steals without getting caught. Double those numbers, and yeah, you’re in Juan Soto’s neighborhood.

The Cubs were supposedly one of the teams that made a serious bid for Soto. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know that they walked away with a whole lot more than a consolation prize in Tucker. ESPN’s Jesse Rogers reports that the Cubs are likely to let Tucker walk after this season for various financial reasons. They might want to reconsider that.

St. Louis Cardinals (83-79)

• Hello: Chaim Bloom

• Goodbye: Paul Goldschmidt

The Cardinals, for the first time in memory, are in full-fledged rebuilding mode. I mean, they’ve sort of been in rebuilding mode since their disastrous 2023 season, but now they’re admitting it. Goldy is gone. Everybody seems to think they’re definitely trading Nolan Arenado. This is a team piling up tomorrows.

Bloom—who will become the team president after this season—built up a bunch of tomorrows for the Boston Red Sox. And, like most tomorrow builders, he was shoved out before tomorrow actually came. You would think the Cardinals will be shrewder than that. This is an organization built entirely around stability, sometimes to their detriment.

Yes, things seem to have gotten a bit moldy. The once reliable development machine has not delivered any pitching—last year, the Cardinals got 113 of their starts from pitchers 34 and older. As future Hall of Famers Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado declined before our very eyes, so did the Cardinals’ offense. It was hard to watch most of the time.

And yet, they somehow squeezed out an 83-79 record by winning a bunch of one-run games, and 22-year-old shortstop Masyn Winn—with his absurd bazooka of an arm—pumped some life into this aging franchise. Don’t be surprised if they’re just a bit better than they should be. That’s the Cardinals way.

Cincinnati Reds (77-85)

• Hello: Brady Singer, Jose Trevino, Terry Francona

• Goodbye: Jonathan India, Justin Wilson

Any and all Reds talk starts with Elly De La Cruz, obviously, and he had a bananas season—leading the league in steals (67), caught stealing (16) and strikeouts (218). Elly and Bobby Witt Jr. were the only 30-10-25 players in baseball (30 doubles, 10 triples, 25 homers). Every single day, this guy gives you something to cheer about or something to groan about or both, sometimes on the same play.

As for the rest of the offense, yeah, it wasn’t great or fun. Losing Matt McLain before the season even started absolutely stunk, and nobody else really took off. Well, that’s not entirely right. Spencer Steer was interesting—he hit only .225 but he banged 20 homers, stole 25 bases, and led the team with 92 Poseys. But that was about it. De La Cruz and catcher Tyler Stephenson are the only players left who had an above-average OPS+ in 2024.

The Reds apparently decided that pitching is their real issue, though, and they traded their top OBP man, Jonathan India, to Kansas City for starter Brady Singer. That’s all we really have to work with as we try to figure out how the Reds plan on challenging for the division title. The Reds do have some room for growth; they were terrible in one-run games last year (15-28), and if they can turn that around, get a full year out of McLain and rally around future Hall of Fame manager Terry Francona, there’s some hope.

Greene was your unlikely bWAR leader. (Jason Mowry/Getty Images)

Before we go, we do have to talk about how bizarre it is that Hunter Greene led the National League in bWAR. When you look through the years, you’ll find some strange anomalies among bWAR leaders, but I don’t think any of them are quite as weird as Greene’s season. I mean, he was definitely good. But him beating out Chris Sale, Zack Wheeler and Paul Skenes (among others) in WAR is so ridiculous that you just can’t help but think they need to scrap the bWAR system and start over.

Here are the raw numbers for those top four guys:

Greene: 9-5, 2.75 ERA, 150 IP, 169 K, 57 BB, 19 HBP, 12 HR, 1.018 WHIP

Sale: 18-3, 2.38 ERA, 177.2 IP, 225 K, 39 BB, 8 HBP, 9 HR, 1.013 WHIP

Wheeler: 16-7, 2.57 ERA, 200 IP, 224 K, 52 BB, 8 HBP, 20 HR, 0.955 WHIP

Skenes: 11-3, 1.96 ERA, 133 IP, 170 K, 32 BB, 6 HBP, 10 HR, 0.947 WHIP

There is no way—absolutely no way—that Hunter Greene was the best of those four pitchers. No possible way. FanGraphs, which figures out WAR in an entirely different way based only on strikeouts, walks and homers, has Green ranked 10th in the league, which sure seems to make more sense.

Greene finished tops in bWAR because of this very silly loophole that they still have not fixed over there. As you might know, Baseball-Reference uses its own adjustment to account for the quality of defense behind the pitcher. The Reds’ defense was judged to be poor, and I think that was a fair judgment—as such Greene got a big boost based on the idea that he had to make up for his defense’s deficiencies. Totally logical.

What isn’t logical is that Baseball-Reference bases this adjustment on the team’s OVERALL defense and not specifically how they play behind the pitcher in question. So, yes, the Reds’ defense might have been subpar in general, but how did they play behind Greene? I can’t say for certain, but it sure looks like they were actually GREAT behind Greene—I base this on the simple fact that Greene gave up the lowest average on balls in play in all of baseball.

So getting actual great defense and also getting credit for imaginary bad defense is why Hunter Greene absurdly led the National League in bWAR. I’ll ask the good folks at Baseball-Reference again to please consider fixing this.

Pittsburgh Pirates (76-86)

• Hello: Spencer Horwitz, Enmanuel Valdéz

• Goodbye: Aroldis Chapman, Luis L. Ortiz, Bryan De La Cruz

With Paul Skenes and Jared Jones, the Pirates have a couple 23-year-old righties who are among the hardest throwers and most exciting pitchers in all of baseball. And Bubba Chandler looks ready to come up, and he’s expected to be a Rookie of the Year candidate.

There was a time when that meant, “Oh, boy, the Pirates are going to be great in the years ahead.” But as our pals Joe Sheehan and Molly Knight write, that means something else entirely in 2025. These days it means that the Tommy John Surgery Watch Clock has started ticking.

Sheehan writes—and I agree with him—that this should light a fire under the Pirates and make them realize that they need to get better RIGHT NOW to take advantage of their moment. I hope that Skenes and Jones stay healthy forever, we all hope that, but reality is reality. When the Cubs had a young Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, when the Mets had a young Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard, when the Nationals had a young Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann, they might have thought that the best years were ahead. But the best years were RIGHT THEN, and you better grab your chance.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that the Pirates feel that urgency at all. There were a few exciting days after Paul Skenes was called up, something to build on. But other than a few rumors about dealing some pitching for bat help—Jones’ name has come up, I guess—the Pirates have been typically quiet.

Before we go, a question: Is it Oneil Cruz’s destiny to be the guy who is NOT Elly De La Cruz? They’re both gigantic shortstops from the Dominican Republic, they both have cannons for arms, they both are fast, they both hit with immense power, they’ve played in about the same number of big-league games, and they both are career .250 hitters with about the same number of homers and lots and lots of strikeouts.

Somehow, though, Elly is a bright star and Oneil is just kind of running in place. I think it comes down to simply HOW they play the game. Elly is ferociously aggressive at every turn. I mentioned above, he led the league with 67 stolen bases and he was caught a league-leading 16 times. Oneil, meanwhile, stole 22 bases but he was caught just once.

Elly was the most adventurous baserunner in the game, trying to advance on 53% of his opportunities. Oneil was closer to the middle of the pack.

Elly plays shortstop like a man possessed; he goes after balls in the hole like the Terminator pursuing Sarah Connor; Elly was 15 outs above average defensively, with 12 of those coming on balls hit to his right. Oneil, meanwhile, seemed frozen at times at short, which led to the team moving him to centerfield in August.

Oneil Cruz still has star potential. But Elly is already a star.