Ranking the Likelihood of All 12 Qualifying Offer Free Agents Signing with Cubs

[Matthew Trueblood]

No, they're not all tied for last place.

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

Early this offseason, there are nothing but pessimistic sounds coming out of Cubs media, in terms of how much they might spend in free agency to make material progress and leave behind the unhappy medium space in which they've lived for the last two-plus years. At the GM Meetings at the beginning of November, Jed Hoyer stopped short of ruling out a pursuit of Juan Soto or Corbin Burnes, but he might as well have done so. A mere six weeks ago, everyone was doing simple salary math and coming up with huge numbers of available money. Now, suddenly, there's concern that the team might not make any significant splash in free agency.

Swinging on these grapevines is natural, but the truth of the team's hot stove season probably lies somewhere between the extremes. However much they might prefer to emphasize trade options and flexibility and upgrades at the margins, the Cubs do have money to spend, and Hoyer does know that he needs to make the playoffs next year. Moves lie ahead. It's just a matter of which ones fit Hoyer's temperament and philosophy—not to mention, alas, his budget.

Tuesday was the deadline for players who received qualifying offers to make their decisions about them, and of the 13 guys whose teams issued those offers, 12 declined them. Those players remain free agents, but will now cost draft picks for whichever team signs them. Those costs are small, of course, compared to the financial outlays signing most of them would require. Still, they are extra costs, and the Cubs made the ones they would face stiffer by going over the competitive-balance tax threshold this season. Will that make the team unwilling to even vie for these top talents? It certainly figures to put a damper on their pursuits, but no, it needn't necessarily run them off.

So, let's take these 12 stars one by one, ranking them from the most likely to be a Cubs target all the way down to (sigh) Soto, who's just not going to be a Cub.

1. Max Fried, LHP
Understandably, many fans have generalized the pessimism explicitly reported by beat writers about the team signing Soto or Burnes to apply it to all of the top-of-market targets, including Fried. I think that's premature. Fried's skill set suits the Cubs' predilections to a tee, in everything from fastball shape to handedness and pitch mix. When Hoyer makes a big expenditure, it's always for someone who perfectly fits the things he's already decided to emphasize, and this would match that pattern. I also don't think Fried will have as robust a market as hurlers like Burnes and Blake Snell, both because of his patchy injury history and (more importantly, probably) because the same things that make his pitch profile so attractive to the Cubs (cut more than rising action on the fastball, curveball well ahead of slider, and so on) make him incrementally less so to some of the other richest teams in the league; they look for different things. I think Fried is unlikely to reach $180 million in guarantees, and anywhere below that line, the Cubs will have some level of interest.

2. Christian Walker, 1B
At any given moment, Hoyer has two or three standing offers out to free agents who are demanding long-term deals. The catch is, his offers usually aren't long-term in nature. He would happily do a deal like the Cody Bellinger one from last winter (whatever you think of that, specifically or in general) every offseason. This year, Walker is as good a candidate to end up signing that kind of deal as anyone on the market. While he's not as sexy as the best hitters available, he plays superb defense at first base and has legitimately plus power, without swinging at everything or striking out at a miserable rate. Sign Walker, and some of the far-fetched talk about trading Michael Busch or moving him back up the defensive spectrum to second base gets more plausible. Patrick Wisdom is probably not long for the organization, and they need to replace him with a much better version of him: that kind of right-handed power, but better plate discipline and contact rates. Walker would check that box.

3. Anthony Santander, OF/DH
If it's not Walker, it might be Santander who gets caught out when the music stops this winter. He's aiming very high with his asking price, but the ground truth here is that he's a low-OBP slugger without much defensive value. That low OBP is the result of a very conscious and justifiable tradeoff to access elite power, and his switch-hitting would give any lineup a bit more balance, but the fact remains: he's a very good hitter, but not one on par with Soto or even Teoscar Hernández. If he ends up needing to sign a short-term deal (perhaps one structured much like Bellinger's), the Cubs could be in the mix.

4. Luis Severino, RHP
He'll turn 31 over the winter, but it feels like Severino's just really hitting his stride. Yes, his success in 2024 feels a bit like smoke and mirrors, when you look at his strikeout, walk, and home run rates. Watch him work, though, and it's not at all hard to see how he outstrips those peripheral stats. He's extremely fastball-forward (probably too much so), which limits his punchouts, but because he can bully hitters with heat that reaches the upper 90s with four- or two-seam action, that's fine.

He found a sweeper this year and became capable of using all four quadrants of the zone. He's matured as a pitcher, without losing the stuff. Yet, because (again) most of the other rich teams throughout the league value missing bats above all, he's not going to strike it megarich this winter. If the team is trying for Fried but doesn't end up matching with him, Severino could be the much cheaper fallback plan.

5. Nick Pivetta, RHP
This is where the inflection point lies, for me. Depending on how they direct their priorities and on the development of the market, I could see the Cubs ending up with any of the four players above. I think they'll target Fried and be willing to pivot to Severino, unless the right opportunity to trade for a starting pitcher emerges. In that case, I think they'll shift their spending plan toward whichever of Walker and Santander gets frozen out by the market. Pivetta is where the fits get a bit shakier, and the odds get longer fast. I think his price tag would have to take a very unhappy tumble for the Cubs to get very interested. Pivetta misses a ton of bats, and his great vulnerability in 2024 was home runs. If Wrigley should happen to play extremely pitcher-friendly again next year, it's possible Pivetta would blossom into a Cy Young candidate there. The risk seems far too huge, though. His stuff is impressive, but he throws a lot of meatballs. To beat the dead horse, other big-market teams will salivate over the strikeout rate and the pitch mix, and it's unlikely Pivetta's price comes down as much as the Cubs would want it to.

6. Willy Adames, SS/3B/2B
Plainly, giving out anohter Dansby Swanson-sized deal while very much still in the middle of the Swanson deal itself would be tricky. This would almost certainly require the team to trade Nico Hoerner, and Adames would have to be willing to play second base. I slot him in here above the other All-Star left sider willing to slide to second, though, because Adames and Craig Counsell had a genuinely terrific relationship in Milwaukee. Adames has the same leadership capacity as Swanson, but it's a more pliable, intense, and joyful approach, too. His base of offensive skills is much more stable and likely to sustain itself than Swanson's, too. This fit would be wonderful, if only the Ricketts family were willing to spend money like the Mets, Yankees, Dodgers, and Phillies all are.

7. Alex Bregman, 3B/2B
It's not quite as tidy a fit, just because Bregman has more of the same skills the Cubs already have: great, great strike-zone control, but dubious power. He's also asking for an amount of money that the Cubs frankly won't go near, so his market would have to fall far short of his and Scott Boras's expectations to even open a discussion. I think there's some chance of that, but not enough to place him any higher on this list—and if that does happen, other teams would get awfully interested, too.

8. Sean Manaea, LHP
Slightly oversold, Manaea's midseason arm slot change and conscious mimicry of Chris Sale is nonetheless fascinating. He's a good pitcher, and a Chicago-area native. However, because of the narrative around his late surge and his postseason performances, it feels less likely that Manaea's market fails to develop, the same way Severino's or Pivetta's might. As good as he is, the Cubs aren't going to pay top dollar or shell out another Jameson Taillon-shaped deal for Manaea. They'd get more intrigued if he ends up getting just two years, or if the annual average value sags as he stretches to three or four, but I don't think either thing will come to pass.

9. Pete Alonso, 1B
As much as Alonso has loved slugging at Wrigley over the years, and as much as what the team needs most starkly is right-handed home-run power, the rest of the facts and details and timing of his free agency just don't fit. Alonso and Boras will be trying for a huge payday, and the Cubs are not going to be where they find it. As with Bellinger last year and Walker or Santander this year, Hoyer will swoop in if a short-term deal becomes a legitimate possibility, but that feels unlikely in this case. The fact that Alonso is a poor defender is a key mark against him here, too, especially given how good Busch got at the position as 2024 went along.

10. Teoscar Hernández, LF/RF
Simply put, Hernández is going to get paid this winter. I've seen projections that he'll sign for roughly what Ian Happ got (three years, $61 million) when he signed his extension with the Cubs, but I think he's more likely to get five years than to have to settle for three. Hernández is a great makeup guy and a genuine slugger, but after Bellinger opted in, this became essentially impossible to make work for the Cubs. Only a truly shocking trade could bring this back into the realm of possibility.

11. Corbin Burnes, RHP
Not happening. He's going to get $200 million, and the first $200-million deal in Cubs history is not going to go to a pitcher turning 30—unless it's issued by some unaffiliated successor to Hoyer.

12. Juan Soto, LF/RF
Really, really not happening. He's going to get three times the guaranteed money the Cubs have ever given anyone. They should absolutely be in the mix for him. They absolutely are not anywhere near being in the mix for him.

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In total, I think there's something like a 40 percent chance that the Cubs sign a free agent with a qualifying offer attached to them. That might be much higher than most fans have come to believe, but it really is possible. It should be more than possible, but it is possible, and understanding which players are and aren't part of the set of realistic options is valuable for that reason.

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[Bertz]

They're not all tied for last place, but I do think there's at least a 7-8 way tie for last place.

- Fried feels reasonably likely, full stop

- Santander got specifically name checked by Sharma in like August as a guy the Cubs really liked.  I think Bellinger coming back closes the door here but it's not a slam dunk.  Sharma does not venture into roomer mongering lightly 

- Nick Pivetta feels like he might have enough upside to warrant it?  He seems like a guy you could get for $50M and convince yourself you can coach up to being worth $100M+

- Walker and Severino feel very unlikely, but I wouldn't necessarily say they're impossible.  Your reasoning for each is sound

[Illiterate Scholar]

Has the official list of teams that went over the CBT threshold in 2024 been released to the public yet? I'm guessing the teams know by now but just curious. 

Edited November 21, 2024 by Illiterate Scholar

[Bertz]

32 minutes ago, Illiterate Scholar said:

Has the official list of teams that went over the CBT threshold in 2024 been released to the public yet? I'm guessing the teams know by now but just curious. 

From what I can find the official numbers came out a month later than this last year

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/12/eight-teams-combine-for-record-209-8mm-in-luxury-tax-bills.html

Though I agree teams likely find out before (I'd hope well before) the public.