Cubs Forge Affiliate Partnership with Australia’s Canberra Cavalry

The Cubs and the Canberra Cavalry of the Australian Baseball League have formed an affiliate partnership for the 2024-25 season, the latter club announced Monday on Facebook. As part of the collaboration, two prospects and a coach from the Cubs organization will head Down Under for several weeks over the winter. The ABL slate opens on November 14 and concludes in mid-January.

No word yet on whether this is just a way for Jed Hoyer to see if he can flush a season down the toilet in the opposite direction.

In all seriousness, this is a really cool opportunity for a few members of the organization to spend some extended time in Australia while honing their skills and sharing their version of the game. Cubs prospects Cole Roederer (2022-23) and Ed Howard (23-24) have both spent time with Canberra, while former prospect Jerrick Suiter played there in the 2019-2020 season prior to being picked up by the Cubs and converted to the mound.

Located almost equidistant from Sydney and Melbourne, the capital city of Canberra is Australia’s largest inland city and eighth-largest overall. In addition to those three cities, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth also host ABL teams. If you’re not familiar with Australian geography, you might think this is sort of like a spring training setup. Not quite.

Perth is all the way on the other side of the country, roughly 2,300 miles from Canberra. Brisbane is a 12-hour and Adelaide is about the same, so flights make a lot more sense unless you really dig long road trips. As such, the teams play three or four-game series, or rounds, each week in order to make the travel more worthwhile. I wonder if part of the appeal for the Cubs is that Canberra is the only one of these cities that isn’t on the beach, making this a little more of a work trip than a pleasure excursion.

Regardless, it’s a really neat setup and it makes me want to book a flight to catch a few games. Now I just need someone to give me a lot of money to make it happen.

Update: Outfielder Jordan Nwogu and righty Matt Halbach, the Cubs’ 10th-round pick in the 2024 MLB Draft, are the two prospects joining the Cavalry. Derron Davis, who was with the Tennessee Smokies this past season as a bench coach, will join the coaching staff.