Even after a disastrous 2025 season, Conforto’s plate discipline and underlying power metrics suggest there’s still a productive MLB bat here — and the Cubs are betting on it at minimal risk.
Early Monday morning, the Chicago Cubs agreed to terms with veteran outfielder Michael Conforto on a minor league contract.
The deal includes an invitation to big league camp and will pay Conforto $2 million if he makes Chicago’s Opening Day roster and has his contract selected.
Most baseball fans will probably chuckle at the thought of a team giving Conforto another shot — and maybe rightfully so after the numbers he posted in 2025 with the Los Angeles Dodgers. But I actually think this is a perfect deal for the Cubs. It’s a fantastic buy-low opportunity on an outfielder with solid underlying metrics and a relatively high offensive floor. And because it’s a minor league deal, it doesn’t require the Cubs to make a corresponding move on the 40-man roster.
As I alluded to, Conforto’s 2025 season was a disaster — by far the worst of his career. He appeared in 138 games for the Dodgers and hit .199 with 12 home runs and a .637 OPS. All year long, Los Angeles searched for ways to replace him in the lineup. By the postseason, they had. Conforto did not appear in a single playoff game as the Dodgers went on to win back-to-back World Series titles.
Numbers like that are hard to overlook, and they’re a far cry from what Conforto once was. We can’t pretend he’s still the 33-home-run hitter from 2019 or the 24-year-old who posted a .939 OPS with the New York Mets and earned an NL All-Star selection in 2017. That was nearly a decade ago.
But even as recently as 2024 with the San Francisco Giants, Conforto hit 20 home runs and posted a 115 OPS+. He was still a comfortably above-average MLB bat, even as his defense has gradually declined with age.
That’s why it’s important to look at the underlying metrics and understand why Conforto — even after a rough 2025 — remains an intriguing minor league signing.
It starts with his pitch recognition. Even during that disastrous season, Conforto posted a chase rate in the 82nd percentile among qualified MLB hitters. His walk rate ranked in the 84th percentile. He walked enough to maintain a .305 on-base percentage despite hitting just .199. To put that in perspective, he reached base at a higher clip than Dansby Swanson and Pete Crow-Armstrong in 2025. That’s a pretty respectable floor for the worst year of your career.
On top of that plate discipline, Conforto still has natural power. He didn’t make enough contact to fully tap into it in 2025, but his bat speed ranked in the 77th percentile among hitters — and was in the 82nd percentile the year before. This isn’t a hitter who needs everything perfectly aligned with his launch angle and barrel rate to do damage. If he can simply make more contact — even raising his batting average from .199 to something closer to the .230 he posted in 2024 — you could be looking at a player who gets on base at a .350 clip with 20-plus home runs.
That’s absolutely worth a minor league flier.
And it’s an even cleaner fit for the Cubs, who are still looking for a bench outfielder to separate himself and claim a spot on the Opening Day roster.
Kevin Alcántara and Justin Dean are both on the 40-man roster, but each has minor league options remaining. Conforto now joins Dylan Carlson and Chas McCormick in what should be a legitimate competition for the final bench spot.
If things break right and Conforto returns to something resembling his 2024 form, he also gives the Cubs another layer of protection. If Moisés Ballesteros doesn’t hit the ground running and experiences growing pains at DH, Conforto could slide into right field, allowing Seiya Suzuki to shift back into the designated hitter role.
This wasn’t a move that had been heavily rumored, and it certainly wasn’t on my radar. But it feels like a smart, calculated buy-low acquisition by Jed Hoyer. And by the end of spring training, we should have a pretty clear answer on which version of Michael Conforto the Cubs are getting — and whether he’s worth keeping around.