Welcome back to the Cubs Beat newsletter. Jordan Bastian has covered baseball for MLB.com since 2005, including the Cubs since the 2019 season.

After two years working as the Cubs’ Minor League hitting coordinator, Dustin Kelly was prepping for a new role as a field coordinator in the farm system for the 2023 season. That changed last month, when president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer (pictured) let Kelly know that the organization wanted him to take over as the hitting coach on manager David Ross’ staff.

“It was somewhat unexpected,” Kelly said in a Zoom conversation this week. “It was something that [Hoyer] had talked to the rest of the staff about, and a couple of other people, and we had a couple of really good conversations. And I got a chance to talk to Rossy and some of the other staff members and it just seemed like a really, really good opportunity for me.”

Given Kelly’s recent background of working with hitters across the Cubs’ farm system and helping with the development of coaches along the way, Chicago felt he was a good fit for an MLB team that appears close to emerging from a rebuild. Younger players have started to graduate to the big leagues and more prospects familiar with Kelly are coming soon.

Kelly will become the eighth lead hitting coach for the Cubs in a 12-year span, but there will be a different approach to the group in 2023 compared to recent seasons. While Chicago has had an assistant hitting coach in place for the past decade-plus, Kelly will have a team of assistants at the MLB level.

The concept is simple: different hitters have different needs and preferences, and a group of coaches with varying skillsets and personalities can better serve an entire clubhouse. Kelly will have assistant hitting coaches in Johnny Washington, Juan Cabreja and Jim Adduci, while also leaning on first-base coach Mike Napoli. 

“It's going to be a collective group,” Kelly said. “And I think that was one of the things that we talked about early on: how do we utilize each member of our staff that's involved with the hitters, that has a presence with these hitters, and identify what they're really good at? And then, [we should] be able to bring that to the table to create a group that services our hitters.”

• Napoli had an impressive 12-year career in the Majors as an All-Star and World Series champion, and he has a perspective from the first-base box that the coaches in the third-base dugout lack.

• Washington has filled multiple roles as part of Major League, Minor League and foreign organizations and staffs over his extensive career. He was the assistant hitting coach on Ross’ staff last year.

• Cabreja has been in the Cubs’ organization for 20 years, spending the last six seasons as a staff assistant after working as a coach, coordinator and manager in the farm system.

• Adduci played parts of five MLB seasons, spent 14 years in the Minors, played overseas and has spent the last two years as an assistant director of run production for the Cubs.

“Everybody brings something to the table,” Kelly said. “I'm really excited to just collaborate and create an awesome group of people that can impact these guys. That's the fun part of this so far, is getting to know this staff and trying to extract some things like, ‘Hey, you're going to dominate this. And I'm going to give you a ton of free range to go dominate it for us.’”

The Cubs made a series of transactions over the past week to better position their 40-man roster for offseason additions. Let’s run through some of the moves:

On Tuesday, the Cubs added prospects outfielder Brennen Davis (No. 2 on Pipeline’s Top 30 Cubs prospects list, outfielder Kevin Alcantara (No. 3), pitcher Ben Brown (No. 7) and pitcher Ryan Jensen (No. 28) to their 40-man roster. This removes them from the pool of eligible players for the Rule 5 Draft on Dec. 7 at the Winter Meetings.

Also on Tuesday, the Cubs and Rays swung a small trade. Chicago acquired versatile utilityman Miles Mastrobuoni. He can play all over the infield and outfield, offers speed and has three Minor League options, which gives the Cubs some depth flexibility.

The Cubs offered free-agent catcher Willson Contreras a one-year, $19.65 million qualifying offer last week. Contreras rejected the offer on Tuesday, which guarantees Chicago will net a compensatory Draft pick if he signs with another team.

Lefty Steven Brault, righty Alec Mills, DH Franmil Reyes and lefty Brad Wieck were among a group of players who cleared waivers and were outrighted to Triple-A Iowa. Those four are notable because they were in the Cubs’ class of arbitration-eligible players. Now, they'll become Minor League free agents.

With Jason Heyward’s recent release and Willson Contreras hitting free agency, Kyle Hendricks is the last player remaining from the Cubs’ 2016 World Series team. But do you know how many players from the Cubs’ 2020 Wild Card group remain on the current 40-man roster? 

A.) Two
B.) Three
C.) Four 
D.) Five 

In light of the news this week that the Cubs granted Heyward his release -- a move that had been announced a couple of months ago -- let’s take a look back at one of his defensive gems. There are plenty to choose from over the five-time Gold Glover’s career, but we’ll turn to the 2016 World Series.

With Cleveland holding a 3-1 lead in the series, and a 1-0 lead in the third inning of Game 5, Heyward hustled toward foul territory in right to chase down a fly ball. Prepared to reach into the stands, Heyward scaled the brick wall, but the ball’s flight forced him to reach back. Heyward made a spectacular catch as the Cubs began their historic World Series comeback.

Voting is underway for the Selig Award for Philanthropic Excellence and the Cubs are one of five finalists, along with the D-backs, Reds, White Sox and Yankees.

Cubs Charities is being recognized for its Cubs Scholars program, which supports academic achievement of Chicago students and aims to help address a barrier for attaining post-secondary education. Since 2013, the program has supported 62 Chicago students with college prep, persistence initiatives and committed $1.24 million in scholarships.

Click the following links for more information on Cubs Charities and the Cubs Scholars initiative.

Earlier this week, I joined Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic and Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune on Marquee Sports Network's The Reporters. The show will be re-aired in the coming days (here is Marquee’s TV schedule). In the meantime, you can also check out this short clip of us making some bold predictions for the Cubs’ offseason.

C.) Four

There has been a high rate of turnover over the past two seasons. Adbert Alzolay, Kyle Hendricks, Nico Hoerner and Ian Happ are the only four players still on Chicago’s 40-man roster from manager David Ross’ 2020 Wild Card roster against Miami.