Cubs Week In Review: Blockbuster Move With Potentially More To Come Transforms Club

At an astonishingly reasonable price, Jed Hoyer scored one of the best players in baseball by landing Tucker, a 27-year-old outfielder and Tampa native. Kyle Tucker does virtually everything: he's a 30+ homer per year machine, swipes bases at an almost alarming clip, and provides a sorely needed defensive upgrade to an outfield that's helped blow its fair share of games. More than anything else, however, Tucker's arrival announces in a roar, not a whimper, that the Chicago Cubs are contenders.

I am pretty good at writing articles, but I don't move the needle for Chicagoland sports fans the way Jed Hoyer does. For as long as I can remember, the President of Baseball Operations for one of baseball's most historic franchises was maligned for his lack of action and a perceived reluctance to make a move like the one we just witnessed. The trade sent Isaac Paredes, reliever Hayden Wesneski, and recent top draft pick Cam Smith to Houston but kept a bevy of other promising prospects in the Cubs' deep farm system. What Hoyer did is like a restaurant patron finding out they're getting a cake prepared by a Michelin-starred chef when they weren't expecting dessert. To sweeten the deal, we learned that more delicious courses are inevitably on the way. 

Pitching should always be a priority for serious contenders, and that's what's next on the North Siders' agenda. This past week, while the club selected Gage Workman, previously of the Detroit Tigers, in the Rule 5 Draft, ripples of a trade for the Cubs to acquire another starting pitcher turned into an all-out squall. The trade talk of Cody Bellinger since he picked up his $27.5 million player option is so prevalent at times it's as if it's already happened. While I will be one to mourn his departure, he, and possibly Seiya Suzuki, can yield more than a lot in the trade market. When my next article is published, it seems to manifest in the form of lefty hurler Jesus Luzardo of the Miami Marlins. In his time with the Fish, Luzardo's oft-injured tendencies have lowered the ceiling on his mostly untapped potential. The chance the Cubbies' are willing to take on him is worth it. The story of a previously maligned player having a life renewed with a change of venue is not new. 

The story is not written yet. Though the Cubs are now comfortably situated as postseason contenders, more is yet to come. About a week ago, at the outset of the Winter Meetings, a clip went viral of skipper Craig Counsell beaming from ear to ear on what was to come in shaping a new-look version of his team. Maybe he knew what was on the horizon; maybe he still does.

Wrigley Field is known for generating indelible memories; it looks like that won't change anytime soon.