Jason Ross

I'd imagine Shaw >> Cabrera at this point in terms of trade value.

Scouting defense is, what I've learned, a fools' game. Javier Baez was supposed to be a bad fielder, and he's a great fielder. Christopher Morel was supposed to be a good fielder and he's a bad fielder. I'll say this about the Cubs and third base defense; they have it down to a science. Nick Madrigal and Matt Shaw have both turned in +defensive seasons for the team when people questioned their ability to play the position. Murakami or Okamoto; if they sign here, I think it's safe that the Cubs, at least internally, feel like they can do it.

Don't disagree. There is a reason why K% and contact rates are some of the biggest green flag indicators for prospects; they have strong rates of being successful at the highest level. I do think there's something in teaching approach, changing mechanics and the like that can change that - though don't disagree it's not easy. A lot of it is how well a player can adapt and how well your staff is at identifying it. Like I said; based on the information we have. Murakami would be a pass for me. But I also know I'm not in-tune enough with the possible fixes to speak to them and how likely they are to get to the root. I'd be cautiously optimistic if the Cubs got him; they're a team who's certainly prioritized contact rate the last half-decade, so either they would have completely changed their internal philosophy or they see a way to compensate for the whiffs in a fashion and feel comfortable enough doling out a $90m deal (for a team who doesn't really gamble very much with money).

I have a lot of reservations on Murakami as is. However, I would assume that if the Cubs were the team who signed him, there would be some mechanical and biomechanical things they thing they can do to help him lower the whiff. Realistically, he's probably more than capable of being a useful MLB hitter with 30%+ K% due to his elite batted-ball data. So I'd probably defer to the Cubs judgement there. They've had some luck with messing with the mechanics of a handful of young hitters and have even seen a reduction in K% (at the Triple-A level) with Owen Caissie to a real significant manner. How much of that is Cubs and how much of that is "Caissie has 1,000 PA's" is up to your measurement.

Careful. If you say that the Mariners might trade a SP three times, you know who might return...

Yeah, it feels a bit like "Trading Shaw" is a legitimate outcome over the next few days. I'm a little excited by the process...who is it? It feels like Gore for Shaw could work on paper, but Gore's stock is down and Shaw has 6 years of control. Is there a name we don't know available? Seems like a fun outcome potentially.

Just some fun with numbers, you could conceivably get 2 SP's and Okmoto if you get wild. Imai ($24m) + King ($21m) + Okmoto ($16m) gets you to ~$61m. If you can find a home for Taillon where you save $14m of the $17m AAV) that gets you just under $50. I don't think it's likely, but you can start to get me very excited with that outcome.

It is starting to be interesting to see how connected to 3b the Cubs are. Specifically 3b. Bregman, Suarez, and Murakami. There does appear a bit of a trend. I won't speculate why, but it is interesting.

I'd be probably cool with that outcome - I'm a little more bearish than bullish on Okamoto (batted ball data just okay, requires super pull heavy output) but the Cubs hit on NPB players well and if they like him, well, I like him. I've come around on King as well.

I'd have a hard time with the Cubs going the Stanek route here. The Cubs just don't have a super-trust worthy bullpen right now, and Stanek hasn't been good for years. The one exception would be if the Cubs essentially put all of their money into two signings and made the offense and rotation so much better that you could forgive them going with Stanek as the only other important addition.

Former Cub, Michael Soroka signs with Arizona on 1-year,.

It doesn't "open up" other options, though. By using 3 players to supplement 2 positions you actively close options. There are only 26-roster spots. Your plan got the Cubs an extra 1/2 of a win, at an inflated price, and spent three roster spots to do so. It's just a bad plan. But hey, I guess the Cubs spent less money in LF, so point proven, right? Happ is actively providing surplus value. You don't need to spend $300m to understand how that's a good thing. His contract is floating value, not underwater. If it were below surplus value you'd have a point. Since it doesn't, you're just objectively wrong. Surplus value means it is a good way to spend money. You've spent less money to get more value.

Michael King, though, is the Cubs' type. He's a SP with upside (I.E, see 2023-2024) who has all of their pitch indicators they like, who won't require a 6+ year deal. They signed Jameson Taillon four years and $68m in 2022. If we use an inflation calculator, that's $75m in today's money. King isn't looking at much more. I don't think you have to be overly optimistic to think that Michael King is very doable. That's the Cubs' M.O.

More on Ford.

Jarrett has a tendency to come out a bit strong on things for my likes always, but this probably highlights the community in Ford's value: https://bsky.app/profile/seidler.bsky.social/post/3m7dxrrauw22e

I do wonder if this is an "MLB teams don't like Harry Ford as much as prospect rankings" do, because Seattle had to add another player in to Ford to get Ferrar. In Ferrar's defense, he was worth 1.4 fWAR last year, so he's pretty good but yeah, doesn't feel like Harry Ford had the value many suspected he did?

Real signs of decline have taken him from "Top-of-the-rotation" guy to more along the lines of "would start a playoff game, but you should really have one or two pitchers who are clearly better than him" status. He has had no pitch of his grade out above 100 on FanGraphs Stuff+ for two years running, his K% dropped 4% last year, his barrel rate is over 9.5 two of the last three years, hitters are pulling him more, his velocity on the fastball has been more up and down (he got it back up most of the way last year but it stayed down for longer at the start of the year than normal). Even on the back half of last year when he was better, his strikeout rate went down further, down to 20.3% or another 1% as he went more contact heavy. The Cubs already are the 21st best team in the league in strikeouts. And as much as I wish the Chicago Cubs were going to be the team who would buy more than one thing this offseason, they probably only have money for one $20-25m purchase. If it's Zac Gallen, a pitcher who's fastball has declined the most of any of his pitches, that's probably a problem for a team who threw more fastballs than almost anyone last year. He's a pretty good pitcher who isn't the right pitcher for the Cubs (on paper - I'll give the Cubs a bit of a benefit of the doubt if they do it, because they probably understand the internal plan better than I). You can make the same general argument for why Ranger Suarez isn't the right pitcher or the Cubs either. They need to be shooting a bit higher - even someone like Michael King (who does much of what the Cubs like) at the same AAV is probably a much better fit.

It's pretty bereft of anything. "Targeting as an option" leaves a lot to your imagination. Beyond that line there is not a slice of anything other than breaking down his numbers and that a deal could be around the Kukuchi-Manea types as a starting point. But that's it'.

Not my source! Credit goes to someone else in the Cubs-sphere. I just got a game of telephone going on that suggests the Cubs aren't as interested as Nightengale is suggesting. It just leads back to someone who has a source and I just don't think it's that public.

Haha it's really not like that. I think calling this a source is incredibly loose and I don't want anyone here thinking I'm anything more than the resident dork who talks way too much about seam shifted wake. Its more of a game of telephone than anything. But I would trust this person a lot. I'm not sure if they've posted it somewhere more public which is the only reason I'm being slightly coy about it.

That much I have no information on sadly. But yeah, I do hope it's someone else they're interest in.

It isn't. In fact, people I trust (and to be clear again, no personal sources but this person does have them) are convinced they aren't signing him at all. I feel confident this is thoroughly debunked.

The Cubs appear poised to lose Kyle Tucker to free agency without a fight, and yet, the Cubs have a bigger hole to fill in their rotation than that left by their departing right fielder. Don't take my word for it, Jed Hoyer has been saying as much since November 11th at the general manager meetings in Las Vegas. More specifically than just pitching, what the Cubs truly need are strikeouts. The team has done a great job of getting the most out of what they have, finishing the season 10th in ERA (3.81) despite ranking 19th in fWAR. They have done this through a combination of an elite defense and Wrigley Field turning into a pitcher's haven. Still, their inability to strike out hitters and overpower them came back to bite them in the playoffs, as the team was clearly an arm or two short in the Milwaukee series. The fix is obvious: just add more strikeouts. In theory, this won't be a hard fix, as despite the excellent ERA, the team finished just 21st in strikeouts in 2025, so there's nowhere to really go but up. The problem is that while it's easy to identify the need to add swing-and-miss stuff to the pitching staff, almost every other organization in Major League Baseball is going to place the same importance on striking hitters out, making it an expensive endeavor. Thus far in the Jed Hoyer era, the Cubs have been far more value-focused than anything; a team consistently looking for a good deal and willing to wait out markets, rather than going and getting "their guy". This hasn't always been a bad thing; they've managed to build bullpens on a shoestring budget and have also found players like Matthew Boyd to round out their pitching, but it also means that acquiring known strikeout artists has proven to be difficult. If you were going to apply the same value-forward proposition to the 2025 free agent class, it'd be hard not to zero in on left-handed pitcher Ranger Suarez. The writers of DiamondCentric ranked the 30-year-old Suarez as our ninth-best player available, with a projected contract of five years and $110 million. While $110 million sounds rich on the surface, it's a much smaller projected number (and fewer years) than we have tied to remaining pitchers such as Framber Valdez and Tatsuya Imai (both are projected for six years and over $150 million in total dollars). The value begins to show itself when you take into account just how close Valdez and Suarez have been over the course of the last two seasons, and where we have the two projected in terms of free agent contracts: On the surface, it would seem, then, that signing Ranger Suarez to a five-year deal around a $22 million average annual value would be kind of a slam dunk, but I'm not so sure he's a good fit for what the Cubs need. In fact, he's a contract and a player I hope the Cubs stay far, far away from, despite a recent report from Mark Feinsand suggesting the Cubs are among the three most "serious" threats to sign him. It's not because I think Suarez is bad, but that going with the "value" option has been a bit of a bugaboo for the team in general, and has seemingly left them a player (or two) short in each of the last two seasons. Breaking from that mold (even just a little bit) feels like a necessary next step in climbing the MLB hierarchy. Even just beyond breaking an internal mold, I hold reservations on the pitcher himself. The first reason is that red flags are already popping up, with a backslide in velocity. As recently as 2023, the left-handed pitcher was averaging over 93mph on his fastball. Jump to last season, and he's bled two full mph off the pitch as he now sits at 91.2mph. The velocity bottomed out mid-season, around 89mph, between June and July, before jumping back up to the low-90s. Still, nothing suggests that 93mph is coming back without some serious intervention (whether medically or mechanically, I'm unsure). The decline in overall velocity hasn't been seen entirely in terms of his strikeout rates, as he has sat pretty neutral over the course of the last three seasons, with K%'s of 22%, 23.2%, and 23.2% over his last three campaigns, but the drop in velocity remains concerning. A pitcher who already does not generate much whiff and who does not add much in terms of extension is playing with fire. There will come a point at which a lowered velocity is going to catch up with a pitcher who's already hovering around league-average strikeout rates, and it doesn't feel like Suarez is too far from that as is. Not everything is terrible with Ranger Suarez, however. As noted in the chart above, he's shown an elite ability to limit contact, finishing last year in the 89th percentile or better for barrels, exit velocity, and hard hit rate. He gets a good deal of chase, too. In front of that elite defense, Suarez would probably look to be a pretty good pitcher at times! But does he really solve what the Cubs need right now? The answer is: not really, I really don't think so. The Cubs already have left-handed pitchers who use lower-velocity, deception, and movement to limit batted ball data, like Justin Steele, who will return from injury in the first-third of the 2026 season. They have another lower-velocity lefty in Shota Imanaga, and Jameson Taillon is essentially the right-handed version of a "limit-the-hitter to weak contact" type himself. Suarez's 23% rate is just a bit above league average for a starting pitcher, and his velocity is already below that of a league average starting pitcher (and even when we account just for left-handed ones). If the Cubs' biggest deficiencies in their rotation are strikeouts (21st) and they also lack some velocity (13th), then adding yet another pitcher like Ranger Suarez seems to be missing the point. Now is the time for a 92-win-Cubs team to stop worrying about surplus value in every single move. That isn't to say "ignore value entirely", but instead to suggest that a big-market team like the Chicago Cubs should occasionally get a little irrational about a guy they have to have. They've already missed on Dylan Cease, bowing out reportedly when the bidding got to $200 million, but just because they've missed on Cease shouldn't mean they need to give up on the pursuit of the almighty K. Tatsuya Imai projects to have a strong ability to strike out hitters in MLB. Other pitchers such as Michael King (27.6 K% since 2023), Joe Ryan (28.3 K% since 2023), Edward Cabrera (career 25.9 K%), and MaKenzie Gore (career 25.6 K%) remain available on the market in some fashion. There are likely other names that could become available or are available without even knowing, so these five shouldn't be the end of the discussion either. Ranger Suarez might not be a ticking time-bomb (though with the velocity decline, he might be, too), but he projects as a safer, more value-oriented signing that would improve the Cubs, but not likely in the way the team needs. The team needs to diversify a bit and become a little less reliant on great defense to make their pitchers look good; Nico Hoerner is an impending free agent in 2027, and Dansby Swanson took a bit of a step back last year - their defense isn't going to last forever. Dylan Cease on the contract he got would have looked very good at the top of the Cubs rotation with Cade Horton, but they cannot just allow that to be their one swing in terms of adding more whiff to their starting rotation group. They cannot simply rely on prospects to add what they need; Cade Horton looks like he'll help, and rookie Jaxon Wiggins may as well, but beyond those two, the cupboard is pretty barren in the system right now. So instead of using a ballpark and extracting every ounce of value, the Cubs should be looking to just "get a dude" for lack of better wording. Get a hoss, a stud, whatever you want to call him - bring in some strikeouts, even if it costs a little more. Sadly, Ranger Suarez, while a fine pitcher in his own right, falls short of that status in my mind. It isn't that he's a terrible pitcher; he's just not the right pitcher for the Cubs. What do you think of Ranger Suarez? Should the Cubs pursue the left-handed pitcher? Or are there other options for the Cubs that you'd rather have? Let us know in the comment section below! View full article

He's not. The Cubs are not signing him. I don't know what I'm supped to know here, but the Cubs aren't signing Gallen from what I've heard (just to be clear I don't have sources but know someone who knows some stuff)