Article: Cubs Shohei Ohtani Rumors Bubble Over into Confusion, and More Rumors Abound

[Matthew Trueblood]

Everybody calm down! Now. There. Let's all take a deep breath, here. It's been a bit of a day. Time to reset things a bit.

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

In the blizzard, the absolute onslaught of things that have been said and slung about the Cubs' pursuit of Shohei Ohtani as that pursuit has gained steam in the last week, there's something that ought to have been said just a bit more persistently: the Cubs aren't likely to sign Shohei Ohtani. I'm not breaking news with this. As of this writing, the team isn't out on Ohtani or officially moving on to other business. I'm just reinforcing what, perhaps, we all ought to have reinforced more, sooner: The Cubs were never actually likely to sign Ohtani. 

Even if there weren't an overwhelming favorite to win the bidding, in the long-lurking Dodgers, winning a bidding war like this one (not that there has ever been a bidding war quite like this one) could never be a sound bet. There are too many variables, and some of those variables are billion-dollar franchises who want to beat you, and some of the variables won't even tell you their dog's name. No, you could never rationally believe that a given team (least of all the Cubs) is in a majority position to land Ohtani.

So, let's say the Cubs are slowly fading from the bidding. Or let's not; choose your preferred truth. In either case, what we should do is talk about how insane everything went on Tuesday afternoon and evening, and then discuss what the Cubs will do next if and when Ohtani signs elsewhere.

After a couple of bad reports from Bob Nightengale on Tuesday, chaos rained down on Cubs Twitter, and several adjacent Twitters. (Never, ever listen to or credit Bob Nightengale. It's not that hard!) Nightengale's report suggested that the Cubs were all but eliminated from the Ohtani sweepstakes, and that it was because they balked at the price tag involved after it exceeded $500 million over 10 years. That would have been worthy of outrage, but it's pretty clear it wasn't true.

Between that report and another one from Nightengale about the availability of Christopher Morel in Tyler Glasnow trade talks, Jed Hoyer got rather heated when he encountered Nightengale just ahead of Hoyer's evening press availability. This is the kind of circus that first put the Winter Meetings on the map, decades ago, but every now and then, we need a good reminder that neither we fans nor the (smarter-dressed, better-educated) people behind the curtains and the suite doors have really changed. Nightengale screwed up, twice. Fans reacted like rabid squirrels. Hoyer reacted roughly like the very drunken, red-ass ex-players who used to fill his job, despite what we can safely assume was a sober mind and a nice pair of chinos obscuring the color of his posterior.

Once the dust settled, though, the truth that emerged from the haze turned out not to be dreadfully far from what Nightengale said. Patrick Mooney and Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic published a late story talking about how the Cubs will pivot, since their hopes of reeling in the market's biggest fish are dwindling. It's possible for Nightengale to have been wrong, and to have bungled the story in a hurried effort to tell it, without his being far from the reality of the situation at all. The Cubs do seem to be, slowly, bowing out of the Ohtani frenzy, and while it's not because they blanched at spending $500 million, it can't be entirely separated from the money that has been offered to him.

As Mooney and Sharma were quick to point out, moving on from Ohtani (last time I'll so qualify this: if they really are moving on) doesn't mean plunging everything into Yoshinobu Yamamoto. On the contrary, and in keeping with the tone of national reporting for the last week and a half, they affirmed that Yamamoto is probably New York-bound, and that the unstoppable inflation of his market has taken him out of the range where the Cubs are likely to have interest.

The big question left, after all that, is: Uh-oh. What now? (Yes, the uh-oh is part of the question.)

It seems as though the first answer to that question is Glasnow. The Cubs really do seem infatuated with him. The rumors connecting them to the Rays on Glasnow deals haven't abated for over two weeks, and the fit is a pretty intriguing one--even if Glasnow isn't the type of starter in whom the Cubs usually prefer to invest. Morel, we can now safely say, is not part of those conversations. If a deal comes to fruition, it will center on the Cubs' bevy of young pitchers.

Glasnow, alone, doesn't move the needle much. Even those who have been very excited at the prospect of landing him for the last month (or for much longer) will admit that he was always part of a multi-move maneuver, in their heads. The Cubs need to bolster their lineup, add another solid arm for the rotation (especially if they trade a viable one to acquire Glasnow), and beef up their bullpen. That's been true all along, and isn't dependent on their interest in Ohtani. Without Ohtani (or Yamamoto, or Juan Soto--who seems most likely to end up with the Yankees) as the crown jewel of the winter, though, it becomes more daunting. It feels like a very heavy lift, and the thing is, it's been that kind of lift this whole time, but Ohtanimania has been distracting many people from that fact.

We got rumors connecting the Cubs to Rhys Hoskins yesterday. That one makes a world of sense. We got speculation about them having interest in Matt Chapman, contingent upon Ohtani going elsewhere, which makes a moderate amount of sense. Hoskins's power and the Cubs' need at first base make them perfect potential partners. Chapman's asking price is going to be so much higher as to make the fit much more complicated, but he's a right-handed power hitter at a position of need for the team, too, and he adds phenomenal defense to the stew. 

At the end of the night, a handful of relievers had signed on a trickle of short-term deals elsewhere in the league. Each was below any threshold at which you can plausibly get mad at a team for not jumping in and snagging a player instead, even if you love them. The Cubs'major relief targets remain on the open market. So does possible trade target Emmanuel Clase. In addition to Glasnow, Shane Bieber, Logan Gilbert, Framber Valdez, and others remain on their incumbent teams, with varying degrees of expectation that they'll be traded.

My favorite free-agent target of the moment, and really of the last month, is Shota Imanaga, the less expensive (admittedly, older, less well-rounded, and riskier) alternative to Yamamoto for high-dollar import shoppers. Mooney and Sharma mentioned the Cubs taking a more active interest in him, as they turn away from Ohtani and Yamamoto. Other good free agents also remain, though, including the likes of Jordan Montgomery.

Because the Cubs are far from being alone in having had their offseason held hostage for the last month by Ohtani's bizarre approach to this process, they also haven't seen any avenues they were especially interested in exploring be closed to them yet. The next week will be critical, but nothing is lost, yet. Today, any dreams of the team signing the biggest stars on the market should be a bit dimmed, but then, they never should have been held quite as brightly as many were holding them. Here, in reality, there are plenty of non-glowing but acceptable options available.

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[painhertz]

It's that time when we rumours about the Cubs being involved with everyone.  All based on the agent leaking to a writer that "The Cubs called about <insert name here>" when it more likely was someone checking to see if the phone number still worked.