MESA, Arizona — It’s no secret how loudly the clock has begun ticking on most of the players who remain from the Cubs’ World Series core.
But All-Star shortstop Javy Báez might have turned up the volume at least one level on his own Chicago clock Friday when he talked about setting a deadline for completing any extension talks team president Jed Hoyer might want to restart this spring.
“I don’t like to play with that pressure,” he said. “I’m always saying I don’t play with pressure, but it’s always there. I always try to keep it away. We’re probably going to have a deadline.”
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Chicago sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
He would not say when that deadline might be and did not seem to draw a hard line on the April 1 opener, at one point suggesting a timeline that might carry into the season.
“We’ll see. We’ll see what happens, where we are in the conversations,” he said, “but obviously I want to stay here.”
Báez, the No. 9 overall pick by the Cubs in the 2011 draft, has said repeatedly in recent years and again Friday that he wants to stay in Chicago the rest of his career and doesn’t want to play for any other team.
But unlike teammate Anthony Rizzo — another pending free agent this year — Báez said he has not had any talks this spring with Hoyer, who said a few weeks ago he expected to check in with several players on possible extensions during the spring.
MLB
Báez, the 2018 National League MVP runner-up, said talks last spring didn’t advance far enough that financial numbers were exchanged before the pandemic shut down the game in March and threw the industry’s economic landscape into turmoil.
What Hoyer gets done this spring will have a lot more to say about the direction of this team than what any of the players get done. And while Rizzo might be the likeliest to reach agreement among a Big Three pending free agents — who also include former MVP Kris Bryant — the Gold Glove shortstop with back-to-back starting All-Star assignments might be the most important.
“I think they know me well enough. They know the type of leader that I am with the other leaders,” Báez said. “They know I want to win. We already won, but we — we didn’t sleep on that, but our hunger kind of slowed down. I feel it coming back up.”
Factors in play for any Báez talks this time around include the incentive the Cubs have to retain their most marketable and exciting player (despite a down 2020 that Hoyer calls a small-sample-size one-off); a historically strong free agent class of shortstops at the end of the season that also includes, for now, Corey Seager, Francisco Lindor, Carlos Correa, Trevor Story and Marcus Semien; and this month’s $340 million contract extension signed by 22-year-old shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. of the Padres.
“Obviously, that’s great for him,” Báez said. “I don’t think nobody’s going to say no to 340. But obviously he’s still young. He’s one of the best guys out there. He was smart about it.
“I don’t compare my career with other shortstops or other players,” he added. “I know there’s a lot of them that are going to be free agents this year, but I just play my game. And I just let my game talk.
“But obviously I’m grateful for Tatis and his contract.”
Nobody’s projecting Báez as baseball’s next $300 million player, least of all the Cubs. But one byproduct of the Cubs’ nickel-and-dime approach to this winter has been a remarkable amount of payroll flexibility next winter — with only three players currently under guaranteed contracts for 2022 at a combined cost of $38.5 million.
“Obviously, I’m willing to sit with them and listen,” said Báez, who added he’s spending most of his focus on getting ready for a full season again and a big bounce-back performance. “I want to stay here. We won here. I’ve been here 10 years now and obviously they know what I can do. And the fans are another thing — and the city, everybody knows how it runs with it comes to sports, especially baseball.
“We’ll see where we end up this spring training or during the season. We’ll see.”