Chicago Cubs designate two former Toronto Blue Jays for assignment ahead of series at Rogers Centre

Berti, 35, signed with the Cubs in the offseason. He has long been a scrappy and versatile utility player in the bigs, playing almost every position on the diamond while stealing bases and often producing offense around league average.

He has hit just .210/.262/.230 in his 107 plate appearances this year. He hung around the roster as Shaw and other guys struggled. Workman was jettisoned long ago.

More recently, Shaw has started to click and the Cubs also added Willi Castro ahead of the deadline. That bumped out Bruján a couple of weeks back and now Berti loses his roster spot as well.

With the trade deadline having passed, the Cubs will have to put Berti on waivers. Given his struggles and his salary, he won't be claimed.

He has more than enough service time to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency. It's possible the Cubs skip that formality and simply release him.

At that point, any club could sign Berti and would only have to pay him the prorated portion of the $760K league minimum for any time spent on the roster.

That amount would be subtracted from what the Cubs pay. It's possible he garners interest at that point from a club looking to bolster its bench. Berti came into this year with 97 steals, a .259/.337/.366 line and 95 wRC+ while playing everywhere except catcher and first base.

Nate Pearson was really good at the end of last season, but struggled early in 2025 and was demoted. However, he's carrying a 2.22 ERA over 19 appearances in Iowa.

Although his walk numbers are high, with 15 in 24.1 innings of work, Pearson earned another chance to showcase what the organization and fans saw at the end of the 2024 campaign.

Pearson was promoted from Triple-A on Tuesday and delivered four scoreless innings over two appearances, but it wasn't enough to keep his spot on the big-league roster heading into a three-game series against Toronto.