Matthew Trueblood

's the internet. You either die a sweetheart or live long enough to see yourself become the dickhead. I erred by rushing out the piece. Should have gone slower; the pace of rumors today messed me up. I'm pleased with our overall coverage and still perfectly happy to wear that one, if those two positions can be viewed as tenable at the same time.

Image courtesy of Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images The Chicago Cubs see an opportunity to win now—like, right now, apparently. They've struck again as the MLB trade deadline rushes nearer, trading top infield prospect Jefferson Rojas to the New York Mets for starting pitcher Clay Holmes and outfielder Tyrone Taylor. Jon Heyman of the New York Post delivered the news. Holmes, 33, has a 2.39 ERA this season, but it’s come in just nine starts. He fractured his leg in May and is just now on the cusp of a return to the majors. He throws from a standard three-quarter arm slot, but has a sidearmer’s or submariner’s heavy sinker, which makes him deceptive as well as sheerly nasty. He does it with a unique combination of grip and supination, particularly unexpected based on his arm angle, and because of that ability to supinate, he also throws a plus sweeper and a funky changeup with depth but relative cut. He’s under contract for $13 million this season, so he’s owed about $4 million the rest of the way. He can also earn $12 million in 2027, but if he comes back and pitches well the rest of the way, he’ll almost certainly opt out, which the deal allows him to do. Taylor, 32, is also an impending free agent. He's a plus-plus athlete and great defender in either outfield corner. Bringing him in should mean more time at designated hitter for Seiya Suzuki, and it could mean less playing time against left-handed pitchers for Ian Happ. Taylor is batting .241/.290/.503 in what is the best season of his career to date; he's playing on a one-year, $3.8-million deal. He reunites with Craig Counsell, for whom he played parts of five seasons after being a second-round pick by the Brewers way back in 2012. For his career, he has fairly neutral platoon splits at the plate, but he has 11 extra-base hits in 77 plate appearances against southpaws in 2026. Rojas, 21, entered this season as the Cubs' top prospect, but had been surpassed by Josiah Hartshorn (and, depending on whom you ask, others) by the middle of summer. He's played fine for Double-A Knoxville, with a .799 OPS, but he's moved off shortstop and is unlikely ever to go back to that spot. As a third baseman, he'll face some pressure to hit that forces him to hit his 70th-percentile projection in order to be more than an average player. Swapping out Rojas for Holmes and Taylor sends a clear message: Chicago is all-in for this season. Whether they believe they can catch the Brewers and win the NL Central or merely plan to beat them (and the Dodgers) in the postseason, the front office has taken a big swing at this deadline. Holmes and Taylor each strengthen the team's depth in an important aspect, but they'll both be free agents in three months, no matter what. In trading a top prospect for them, Jed Hoyer is throwing down a gauntlet. View full article

Image courtesy of Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images Mere minutes after securing a controllable starter who's a bit of a project, the Cubs have snapped up a reliever to give them a more formidable bullpen for a push toward the playoffs, a source confirmed to North Side Baseball. Jeff Passan of ESPN broke the news on Twitter. Zeferjahn, who headlined my piece this morning about names to watch as the day unfolds, has a high-octane heater and bat-missing stuff across the board. He's been too wild to dominate the way his raw stuff would have otherwise allowed for most of his career, but he seemed to turn the corner recently, which brought him to the top of many teams' wish lists as they shopped for controllable relievers at the deadline. The Cubs expect to have Daniel Palencia resume his place at the back end of the bullpen soon, but Zeferjahn slots into their suite of high-leverage options right away. He, Jacob Webb and Palencia give the team three right-handed relievers who miss bats, and increases the depth of Craig Counsell's options box. In return for Zeferjahn, the Cubs will send catcher/designated hitter Moisés Ballesteros and pitching prospect Mason McGwire to the Halos, according to Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register. That will sound like too dear a price to some, but after Ballesteros proved himself unable to catch in the majors and struggled to adjust at the plate in his first prolonged exposure to big-league pitching, the team began to value him a bit less highly. Packaging Ballesteros and McGwire to snare a potentially elite reliever is risky but intriguing, and it underscores their desire not to give up Owen Ayers, a similar prospect to Ballesteros in some ways on whom the Angels repeatedly insisted when Chicago tried to obtain Detmers. Under team control through 2030, Zeferjahn has a chance to be the high-impact addition of this deadline for Chicago. All five of his pitches rate as better than average, some by huge margins, according to Baseball Prospectus's StuffPro. That arsenal, combined with his surge in effectiveness recently, is why Zeferjahn was an expensive acquisition. It's also how the Cubs could end up with the kind of high-powered relief corps that takes a team far in October. Giving up Ballesteros and McGwire stings a bit, but the Cubs believe they paid that price for access to a higher possible tier of achievement come the postseason. View full article

Image courtesy of Jonathan Dyer-Imagn Images EDITOR'S NOTE: The original version of this piece indicated that the Cubs were acquiring Angels left-hander Reid Detmers, based on my own reporting and that of Bleacher Nation Cubs reporter Michael Cerami. I won't speak for Cerami, but my own understanding is that both pitchers were in play for the team, but that the Cubs backed away from the Angels' demands on Detmers at the last moment and pivoted to Garrett, in whom they've been interested for some time, as we reported last week. My source had their wires crossed as to which pitcher was acquired, and I failed to follow up with sufficient thoroughness after Cerami's report broke. I apologize for the confusion. Without speaking for Cerami, I take responsibility for rushing the reporting on the deal.] The Cubs have been close to acquiring Braxton Garrett before. On Monday, ahead of the MLB trade deadline, they finally reeled in the fish. Jeff Passan of ESPN broke the news on Twitter. Garrett, 28, has spent most of this season in the minor leagues, battling to complete his rehab and to reestablish his foothold in the Miami rotation after undergoing Tommy John surgery in December 2024. His sinker is a ground-ball machine, and when he can fill up the zone with his five-pitch mix, he can be dominant. He's an upside play for Chicago, after they acquired Kevin Gausman Sunday night to co-lead their playoff rotation alongside Shota Imanaga and Matthew Boyd. Like Reid Detmers, whom the team considered heavily before pivoting based on the intransigence of the Angels regarding the return, Garrett is under team control through 2028. He can also be optioned to the minors, and might spend time at Triple-A Iowa before joining the team for the stretch run, a source briefed on the team's thinking said. As befits the seasons each pitcher is having, the Cubs are paying a much lower cost for Garrett than they would have had to pay for Detmers. Christine De Nicola of the Miami Herald was first with the names of Jonathon Long and Jace Beck, two lower-tier pieces in the thin Cubs farm system. Garrett is, in the Cubs' eyes, a buy-low version of Detmers. They were interested in Detmers even at a higher price, but not the one to which the Angels cleaved even at the endgame of negotiations. Chicago is expected to move on to a relief addition before the deadline. View full article

Wrote about this here, but yeah: I'm calling it 'controllable,' distinct from capital-C Controllable. They would have these guys next year. Not quite the same as a Detmers or a Kirby thing, but if the price difference is big enough.....

Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-Imagn Images 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. View full article

Yep. My favorite name I've heard (save one wild rumor that came to nothing) connected to them the last couple days.

Image courtesy of D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images After the Angels sent starter José Soriano to the Blue Jays Monday morning in the first big trade of deadline day, multiple league sources indicated that the team is likely to trade Reid Detmers, too. The Chicago Cubs remain interested in Detmers, but are trying to find a way either to avoid giving up catching prospect Owen Ayers or to replace him by acquiring a different young backstop as part of a two-step maneuver if they must surrender Ayers to get the controllable starter they've craved. One source familiar with the Angels' plans said interim GM John Mozeliak is working hard to capitalize on the value of players with medium-term team control, believing that the nucleus of the next good Halos team is nestled in the team's farm system, rather than being found on the current big-league roster. That could mean that, in addition to Soriano and Detmers, reliever Ryan Zeferjahn is available. Zeferjahn, 28, has a 97-MPH fastball and a sweeper that has helped him rack up a 33.6% strikeout rate this year. He's the kind of power arm the Cubs bullpen currently lacks, though he also walks too many batters to feel like a legitimate relief ace. He's controllable even longer than Detmers, so a package deal would require a prospect haul from Chicago, but adding both of those hurlers would transform Chicago's pitching staff for the stretch run and raise their ceiling for the future, to boot. Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins won't wait around on that potential deal, though. They're also in active conversations with multiple other teams looking to move relievers, including the Orioles (a reunion with Andrew Kittredge is very much in play; the Cubs are also keen on Rico García), Reds (Pierce Johnson, Emilio Pagán, Caleb Ferguson and Brock Burke) and Rangers (Jacob Latz, a lefty with high-leverage experience already who's arriving late on the market). García might be the most intriguing and plausible of those options. He's not at all in the vein of Zeferjahn, but the journeyman has tapped into something impressive since joining the Orioles last summer and looks like a solid potential complement to Jacob Webb in support of the soon-returning Daniel Palencia. Finally, the team is checking in on available right-handed bats who could fit on their bench and take on platoon roles, sources say. They talked to the Royals about Lane Thomas before he was dealt to the team from outside Atlanta. They've also spoken with the Mets about outfielder Tyrone Taylor, and though they didn't choose to bundle in George Springer with Kevin Gausman when trading with the Blue Jays yesterday, they might yet revisit that possibility. An acquired batter could spell Ian Happ against left-handed pitchers, but it's more likely that they would find their playing time as a designated hitter. That gives the team a wide variety of ways to improve, but they still have to find the right fit for a team with a strong, set lineup full of veterans. Even after taking on Gausman's significant remaining salary Sunday, the Cubs can spend more money to get better today, a source said. They have identified their preferred avenues for doing so, but so many teams are acting in both buying and selling capacities (or leaning toward staying inactive altogether) that what comes next is even harder to predict than usual. View full article

Image courtesy of Denis Poroy-Imagn Images Needing a starting pitcher who offers a blend of durability, experience and the ability to miss bats, the Cubs hit the sweet spot with a trade for Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman, a source familiar with negotiation said Sunday night. Ken Rosenthal and Mitch Bannon of The Athletic were first with the news, on Twitter. Gausman, 35, has a 4.38 ERA in a league-leading 23 starts for the Blue Jays this season. That, however, would be his worst ERA since 2019, and his peripheral numbers suggest he's still quite a bit better than the ERA suggests. He's striking out 23.5% of opposing batters and (as usual) walking very few opponents, with a 6.7% free-pass rate. He's in the final year of a five-year, $110-million signed with Toronto before the 2022 campaign. He also has a 3.83 ERA in 14 appearances and 56 1/3 career postseason innings. The Cubs will absorb the entirety of the $7 million and change still owed to him for the balance of the season, a club source said. It's a simple operation, but it can be extremely effective. Gausman has a standard three-quarters arm slot and good ride on his four-seam fastball, even though that offering only averages 94 miles per hour in velocity. He relies heavily on a splitter of which he has exceptional command, and mixes in a slider to keep righties from hunting the other two pitches too eagerly. He's pitched over 2,000 innings in the majors, and despite not having as deep an arsenal as is now typical of veteran starters, he thrives on his guile and his feel for pitching. For Chicago, he slots easily into the top part of the starting rotation. Whether he, Shota Imanaga or Matthew Boyd is the rightful ace of the staff depends on who has the best feel for their secondary offerings on a given day, but the trio make up a solid potential playoff rotation—even though none of them throw as hard or rack up as many strikeouts as some of the hurlers against whom they're likely to work in October. Unlike some past Cubs pickups ticketed for similar roles, Gausman also comes with a track record of such unblemished durability that it would be monumentally unlucky if he weren't available to take the ball and work deep into a game when the team needs him down the stretch. In return, the Cubs will send outfield prospect Brett Bateman and infield prospect Ty Southisene to Toronto. Bateman, 24, was an 8th-round pick out of Minnesota in 2023 and has made steady progress through the Cubs farm system. He's a smallish left-handed-hitting center fielder, unlikely to hit for enough power to hold down a regular role but well-suited to a bench job in the big leagues. He's hit well for Triple-A Iowa this season. Southisene, 21, is much further from the majors. The Cubs gave him an overslot bonus to buy him out of a college commitment as a Nevada high-school product in 2024, after selecting him in the 4th round. He's fast and twitchy, but even smaller than Bateman, and even less powerful at the plate. The Blue Jays were, plainly, happy to target and roll the dice on some speed and feel to hit in this deal. The Cubs, for whom those are two of the strengths of a generally thin farm system, pounced on the opportunity to exchange strength for strength. Gausman rounds out their projected postseason rotation, giving them roughly 20 hours to explore higher-upside moves for starters under medium-term club control from a place of leverage, rather than under pressure—and to address the bullpen. View full article