Seiya Suzuki’s agent expresses discontent over role with Cubs | Chicago Cubs News

DALLAS — As Jed Hoyer and the Cubs front office try and find creative ways to upgrade their team, they know the trade market could be the road that leads them to those solutions.

And moving a player like Seiya Suzuki — potentially their best hitter and a player with a no-trade clause — isn’t totally off the table.

“Jed has been very communicative about it,” Joel Wolfe, Suzuki’s agent, said on Tuesday morning at the Hilton Anatole Resort. “I talked to him about it last night. He told me what teams they’ve been talking to.

“I don’t think he wants to trade Seiya, but there may be a scenario where he feels like he has a deal that he can’t say no to.”

[MORE: Keep up to date on the latest from the Winter Meetings with our daily live blog]

Suzuki would be open to a trade because of his role. From Aug. 16 on, Suzuki made 37 starts — 36 of them came in the DH role. At that point in the year, Craig Counsell and the Cubs had pivoted from Suzuki to Cody Bellinger in right field while Pete Crow-Armstrong manned center.

Bellinger is a former Gold Glove winner in right field and Suzuki struggled in the position. He was a -3 Outs Above Average defender in right in 2024, a 2 OAA defender in 2023 and had a -4 OAA in 2022. As the Cubs looked at ways to maximize their roster, any advantage — especially defensively — would be taken.

While Suzuki had success as a DH (he hit .326 with a .933 OPS in those final 37 games), Suzuki was far from content not playing in the field.

“Seiya was a great defender in Japan, so it’s not a compliment to him being a DH,” Wolfe said. “I think that if he was being posted in Japan, and teams were presenting to him their opportunities, and they said, ‘You could come here and be our full-time DH,’ I don’t think he would have signed with that team.”

The Cubs aren’t committed to saying Suzuki is their full-time DH in 2025 and no decisions for any player have been made.

“Look, on Dec. 10, I’m not writing out lineups,” Counsell said on Monday afternoon at the Winter Meetings at the Hilton Anatole Resort. “We got into a situation where he ended up being DH’d for a while. I think that’s unlikely, but again on December 10, I don’t know.”

[READ: What Japanese pitcher Rōki Sasaki is looking for and how Cubs could fit in mix]

Wolfe, too, acknowledged a Suzuki trade isn’t a certainty, especially with his no-trade clause.

And Suzuki can still be a game-changing bat for the Cubs, the type of player their roster is searching for after consecutive 83-win, playoff-less seasons. Over the last two years, Suzuki ranks 19th among all hitters in weighted runs created plus at 133, 33 percentage points above league average. That’s better than players like José Ramírez, Francisco Lindor and Rafael Devers.  

“It’s a small universe of where Seiya would consider going,” Wolfe said. “Seiya is a very strongly opinionated guy, so I could see where that might happen, but it didn’t sound like it was necessarily likely.”