Sources: Cubs "Pushing Hard for Controllable Starter" Before Deadline, as Market Opens Up

The Chicago Cubs view a relief upgrade as a must in the final few hours before the trade deadline, but because of a last-minute shift in the market, they're redoubling their efforts to grab a starting pitcher under club or contractual control through at least 2027, according to multiple league sources.

After trading for Kevin Gausman Sunday night, the front office believed the most likely path forward through the trade deadline was to bolster their bullpen while they await the return of closer Daniel Palencia. They'll still try to do that before the deadline comes in a few hours. In their conversations with the Angels, they found interim GM John Mozeliak intractable in his demand for catching prospect Owen Ayers, whom the Cubs don't want to surrended to land Reid Detmers. To get a controllable starter, they needed leverage.

This morning, they found some.

Though the Mariners have largely taken Emerson Hancock off the market after trading Luis Castillo to the White Sox, they're still listening on George Kirby, a source said. The Cubs have long liked Kirby, who throws strikes and shows an ability to move the ball in multiple directions characteristic of the Mariners' pitching development system products. However, the fit between Chicago and Seattle on a Kirby deal is a bit tricky. The bigger development came elsewhere in the AL West.

After a rough fortnight in which they've fallen out of the leadership of the division, the Texas Rangers informed teams this morning that they're shifting into sell mode. That means being open to a wide swath of possible moves, including trading de facto closer Jacob Latz (in whom the Cubs had already expressed interest) and any of their three highly-paid starting pitchers under contract or team control through 2027: Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi, and MacKenzie Gore.

None of those three pitchers qualify as controllable in the same sense as it can be said of, for instance, Detmers or Kirby. They each offer just one more season of team control, over which looms at least some risk of games being lost due to the forthcoming lockout and labor battle. Indeed, some sources suggest that teams including the Angels, Rangers and Blue Jays have been more eager to sell than they might have otherwise been, with an eye toward the possibility that there will be less of a season next year in which to realize value from players under control only through that year. (For the record, I'm skeptical of this psoture, on multiple levels.)

Still, the Cubs like the idea of picking up any hurler who can shield them from having to replace all of Shota Imanaga, Matthew Boyd, the already-departed Jameson Taillon, Gausman and possibly Colin Rea this winter. They also know they won't have Cade Horton until at least next June, and that the futures of Justin Steele and Ben Brown have to be punctuated by question marks, rather than exclamation points. Though they were happy to get Gausman for a price that kept their powder dry, they entered Monday hoping to find a way to secure help that stretches beyond the end of this year's World Series.

Eovaldi, Gore and deGrom offer that. Eovaldi and deGrom are under contract at high prices for next season, and deGrom's contract is complicated but could extend past next year in a bad way. Gore will be arbitration-eligible for the final time this winter, so he'll be expensive, too. However, all three have mid-rotation pedigrees and front-line upside, even at the advanced ages of Eovaldi and deGrom. The Cubs like Eovaldi best in that group and are very unlikely to end up with deGrom, but they're excited to have this array of options.

All these choices could lead back to Detmers, but give the Cubs the leverage they need to land him at a price they find more palatable. They're willing and ready to pay more for Detmers than for the Rangers trio. Like Kirby, Detmers is under team control through 2028. In a pinch, though, the team could move on to an alternative rotation addition who still helps them beyond 2026, in order to preserve the depth they feel they're starting to amass in the minor leagues.

UPDATE: Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports that the Ranges approached deGrom about waiving his no-trade clause, but he refused. That makes a relatively small difference for the Cubs, who (as I said) were never as keen on deGrom as on the other options in the Texas rotation, but it's worth noting.

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