Chicago Cubs Trade Candidate: Isaac Paredes

Because he's just shy of three years of MLB service times, Isaac Paredes is already hitting arbitration this winter. The slugging third baseman is projected to earn $3.2 million via the system in 2024, according to MLB Trade Rumors. That figure, alone, shouldn't scare the Rays off, and it won't. As a part of a large group of arbitration-eligible players and in a winter in which they want to cut back their payroll, though, Paredes and the Rays are already growing apart.

The Cubs originally signed Paredes out of his native México in 2015, and traded him to the Tigers in 2017, as part of the deal that brought them Alex Avila and Justin Wilson. Later, the Tigers ill-advisedly dealt him to Tampa Bay, in exchange for Austin Meadows. Now, Paredes is coming off two season with the Rays in which he's hit 51 home runs and 40 doubles and drawn 102 walks, in just over 950 total plate appearances. Somehow, he's still only turning 25 in February.

The power and patience are legitimate, even if he doesn't come by it conventionally. Paredes isn't a guy who hits the ball unusually hard, or who hits it hard unusually often. Instead, he does something that can be just as valuable: seek his pitch and put it in the air to the pull field.

Paredes has a good eye at the plate. He has historically run low chase rates, and he makes contact at an above-average clip both within and outside the strike zone. That's the foundation of a productive offensive profile, but its utility depends on the ability to hit the ball hard. The Rays acquired Paredes right on the eve of Opening Day in 2022, so they didn't get a chance to immediately implement a change in his approach. Here's the frequency with which he swung at pitches in various locations that season:

You can't be especially effective with that passive an approach to the outer third of the plate, unless you have truly lethal power when you do swing. Paredes managed 20 home runs in 2022, but his overall batting line of .205/.304/.435 was underwhelming. His value was tied to playing a passable third base and providing power from the bottom half of the batting order.

Together, the player and the team made a significant change in 2023. Here's where he swung in various zones this year:

He actually chased a good bit more in 2023, and his strikeout rate crept up a tiny bit, but everything else got better. After 44.1 percent of his career strikeouts through 2022 were called punchouts, only 13.5 percent of his 2023 ones were. Using those great contact skills and a dedication to lifting the ball, he managed to find many more singles on "bad balls", which weren't really so bad for him. Here's every batted ball he hit with a launch angle between 10 and 40 degrees in 2022:

And here's the transformation he made in 2023, with this more aggressive approach:

In reacting to these rumors, Michael Cerami of Bleacher Nation made the reasonable observation that Paredes not hitting the ball hard is a bit of a red flag, given how power-reliant his profile is. However, considering all the above, I think the fairest conclusion is that he's an average-plus hitter who probably got slightly lucky on batted balls last year, but who decidedly got unlucky on them in 2022.

He's under team control for four more seasons, albeit at arbitration-set salaries the whole way. Because contact is such a driver of his offensive skillset, he's likely to age poorly after his mid-20s, so don't think of him as a new cornerstone for a decade to come. As a trade candidate right now, though, he's exciting. He'd thrive at Wrigley Field, just as he did in Tampa, as long as the Cubs are smart enough to stick with the approach changes he made this season.

What do you think of Paredes as a solution to the Cubs' uncertain third-base situation? Drop a comment and discuss how much you'd be willing to trade for him.