Matthew Trueblood

In the Cubs' relentless search for a rotation upgrade, the final frontier might be Tampa Bay. Image courtesy of © Tommy Gilligan-Imagn Images Coming into this offseason, the Rays knew they needed to clear some payroll, and that the most sensible way to do so would be by trading from their pitching surplus. They traded Jeffrey Springs to the Athletics in a package trade several days ago, but they might still need to reconfigure their roster a bit as they head into a long season (and perhaps more) at a substitute home away from Tropicana Field. That could line up perfectly with the Cubs' progression of moves this winter, because they remain in search of an upgrade to their starting rotation—and the Rays have two talented hurlers ready to make a little bit of serious money, whom they might therefore be willing to trade. It's a tale of two Shanes. Shane McClanahan is the more obvious target, because he's left-handed; we know how much the Cubs love to collect southpaws. He also has three years of team control remaining, and will make a manageable $3.6 million in 2025. That will be the second season of multi-year deal to which he and the Rays agreed last winter. He's also a legitimate top-of-the-rotation starter. He comes at hitters with four plus pitches. His fastball sits 97 and scrapes 100, and he has a slider, curveball, and changeup that play nicely off of it. He's made 74 career starts, with a 3.02 ERA, a 28.0% strikeout rate and a 7.1% walk rate. This is all good news. Here's the great big 'but': McClanahan underwent his second Tommy John surgery in August 2023. He hasn't pitched in the big leagues since then. McClanahan is as high-upside as Garrett Crochet, in whom the Cubs had interest before he landed in Boston, but he's also an even riskier bet than Jesús Luzardo, whom the team scrapped plans to acquire earlier this week. He wouldn't be available if there weren't major injury questions hanging here, but unless the Rays discount their asking price for him on that basis, it's hard to imagine a deal coming together. Shane Baz offers a lot of the same features, but some important differences, too. He's a right-hander, and his Tommy John surgery was back in 2022, so he came back and pitched well in the second half of 2024. He didn't miss as many bats as one might expect during that stint, but he's as well-rounded a pitcher as McClanahan. His fastball is one of the best in the league, averaging 96 miles per hour with more ride and run than one would expect, and he has terrific feel for spin to go with that. His changeup isn't as good as McClanahan's, but being a righty, he doesn't need that pitch as badly as McClanahan does. MLB Trade Rumors only projects Baz to make $1.9 million in 2025, so the urgency to make a trade doesn't have to be all that great on Tampa's side. However, he's also a Super Two player, so this will be the first of four trips through arbitration for him. Players who qualify for Super Two status get very expensive in the final two years of their team control; the Rays might prefer to move him while they have more leverage, and there's more team control to receive compensation for. Either of these guys would cost the Cubs a pair of top prospects and a strong complementary arm. It's not easy to give up so much talent, and the odds of such a trade feel fairly remote. Still, as the team explores their options and the offseason slowly moves forward (narrowing those options in the process), McClanahan and Baz have to be on their radar. View full article

The most important player in Cubs history might finally be allowed to come home, after fessing up to some of his sins in a statement Thursday. Image courtesy of © Robert Hanashiro via Imagn Content Services, LLC Out of the blue, on a cold Thursday afternoon in December, Sammy Sosa struck like a lightning bolt—just as he did on so many warmer, semi-soporific summer weekdays throughout the 1990s and 2000s. He issued a statement that, if Tom Ricketts can be bothered to keep his word to Cubs fans, will pave the way for his long-overdue return to a Cubs fan base that has missed his presence for the last 20 years. Jon Heyman reports via tweet that it is, indeed, Ricketts's intention to invite Sosa back for the Cubs Convention, and presumably, there will soon be a sunny summer weekend day on which Sosa's number can be retired and raised up one of Wrigley Field's foul poles. Look, this is a bittersweet moment. It's akin to a reunion between a parent and child who spent two decades at odds, not speaking over something that was water under the bridge all along—but which, because it so divided them, negatively affected both of them ever after. It's good to see them reconcile, but that very reconciliation also underscores the excruciating, unnecessary misery they carried for so long. Our lives are finite, precious, and plenty hard enough. To set aside long-simmering bitterness or resentment or estrangement is wonderful, but it's also an acknowledgment that a finite, precious, already-hard thing was made shorter and harder and sadder in avoidable fashion. Sosa published a full statement, perhaps not fully satisfactory or explicit in its admissions but earnest enough. It is, down to the last word, Sammy, who was always well-meaning but a bit self-shielding and self-aggrandizing. It focuses mostly on how badly he wanted to excel and the relationship he felt with fans, and that part rings true. For far, far too long, Sosa's career has been disrespected and diminished—treated as a creation of his unadmitted steroid use, when it was nothing of the sort. Sosa was phenomenally talented and a tenacious worker, and his late-blooming step from star to superstar did owe something to chemistry, but it also owed a great deal to psychology and to plain old sweat equity. He grinded. He broke down the approach that made him a three-time 30/30 man and did a whole set of new things, including becoming much more disciplined at the plate. He bulked up, thanks to things that were not taken purely to help him recover from injuries, and that buried the lithe and gifted defensive center fielder who slid over to right in the mid-1990s and showed off a stellar arm. In his steroid-era career phase, he was a bit one-dimensional; his speed and defense collapsed. Yet, he was a very good player before he turned that corner, and he was a truly great one—a transcendently awesome one—after he did so. Again, you're only hurting yourself if you tell yourself the lie that he achieved that greatness strictly thanks to steroids. Was he a good teammate? The only fair answer is "sometimes". Was he a selfish person? The most honest answer is "yes". Sosa also isn't without darker stains than steroid use; he was accused of domestic violence in 1990 and it rarely comes up in discussions of his legacy. That can and should, perhaps, come to the forefront now. For most of the last two decades, though, the national baseball media has treated Sosa as a fraud and a liar, and it's had nothing to do with anything except PEDs. Some fans and (most painfully) the team to which he gave so much of himself have done the same thing. By admitting his mistakes in this area and apologizing, Sosa is trying to clear the air. He's the one crossing the divide. He's meeting everyone more than halfway. His legacy is complicated. His dedication to the fans often felt real, but it was certainly self-serving, too. Ironically, his reunion with the team begins with them inviting him to the Convention, an event he got into the habit of skipping each year. He was beloved by fans, but he tended to love them back most when it was most valuable to him. Still, this is special. It's healing. The scars still exist, because the cuts were real and deep, but there's healing here. I was eight years old in 1997, when I became a baseball fan in earnest. My parents got us cable for the first time, and so I was able to find the Cubs from our home in Northeast Wisconsin for the first time. It was Sosa, naturally, who seized and ensorcelled him. He was everything a kid wants a ballplayer to be: powerful, fast, hard-throwing, full of hustle; smiley, showy, bubbly. There was the sprint to right, the salutes to the bleachers, the hop on home runs, the kisses and the water poured over his head in the dugout. There was so much more to him than there was to anyone else on the field—or at least, he was less reserved and more willing to throw everything about himself out there before us, his passion and his bravado and his talent, than anyone else on the field. For the next seven years, I was a Cubs fan, and a baseball fan, but I was also a Sammy Sosa fan. It was a separate and almost equally important thing. His charisma was as powerful as his swing. He might have put on a show, and he might have hidden away unpleasant things about himself, and he might have set Ryne Sandberg's teeth on edge, but he wasn't lying to us about loving the game fiercely. He wasn't lying about wanting to win and to succeed. That much oozed from him. This is a happy occasion. We can share memories like these again, and savor and sit with them, and a little bit of the veil of tears separating us from them has been lifted away. Hopefully, this is a moment when many fans across the country can revisit his career and realize that it wasn't somehow fake, that his success was less legitimate than that of Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens. Hopefully, it's a moment when Sosa can keep making amends, and we can see Mark Grace, Kerry Wood, and (the desperately sick) Sandberg and Sosa bury old hatchets. I went to my first game at Wrigley with my dad in September 1997. It was Sandberg's last game there. It was (though we didn't know it yet) Harry Caray's last day in the booth. It was the end of a disappointing season for Sosa, the one between his thriving power-speed phase and his Hulkamania homer extravaganza. That game, like every kid's first game, was pure magic to me. The Cubs won 11-3, and Sandberg got his waves and waves of applause, and I didn't even mind that Sammy went 0-for-5. After the game, my dad and I waited at the old, rickety chainlink fence outside player parking, where there's now a green field and a beer garden from which the Ricketts family makes millions off the legacy of Sosa. The crowd was thick, so my dad put me on his shoulders to try to get an autograph. Sandberg came out, and people went nuts for him. He was close to me, but I was a little half-hearted in my pleas. Then came Sammy. I damn near fell off my dad's neck, leaning and lunging and imploring—until that huge, strong hand reached up gently and took my ball, and signed it and handed it back. I would not be writing these words if that moment hadn't happened. I don't know how much this will really clear the air. I don't know if we can now pretend, in any way, that the last 20 years didn't happen—that Sosa, too, didn't become something of a victim, so ostracized and marginalized and saddened by it all that he went through some deep personal hurt, even if it was partially of his own making. But I'm glad that he'll be back inside the Friendly Confines someday, because that building might not be standing today if he hadn't been who he was, for all the years he was that way. Steroids or not, Sammy Sosa was a tremendous baseball player, and the way he played the game and filled up the game deserves to be fondly remembered. View full article

I would've sworn I'd called him Minnesota Mike *to you*; I dunno. Haha.

Chicago got close to a deal for Miami's high-upside, high-risk southpaw, but the deal collapsed. Jed Hoyer knows he still needs to make a major upgrade to his starting rotation. Where will it come from? Image courtesy of © Steven Bisig-Imagn Images After multiple reports throughout the last week that the Cubs were pushing to complete a trade for Marlins lefty Jesús Luzardo, Chicago baseball insider Bruce Levine gave word Wednesday evening that that deal is dead. It's a frustrating ending to an intriguing line of inquiry, but there were some who disliked the idea of Luzardo as the frontline upgrade the Cubs rotation needed, anyway. Now, they'll have the opportunity to pivot and pursue different options, including some with considerably more certainty attached—though all of those would also be more expensive. With Luzardo off the board, the Mariners emerge as a likely trade partner again. Luis Castillo costs much more money than Luzardo would have, but he's under control one more season, and his stuff (though slightly diminished in 2024) is still very good. He throws 96, with a four-seamer, a sinker, a slider, and a changeup, and the Cubs' project after acquiring him would be to repair the sinker and the change, which went a little haywire for him this past season. Those are the pitches that rely on pronation at release, so they're related problems, and this issue was a bit of a sticking point for multiple Mariners hurlers recently; the Cubs might feel that it would be an easy fix to unwind it. Castillo is not clearly superior to Justin Steele and Shota Imanaga, but he's as good a bet for an average-or-better 170 innings as almost any pitcher in baseball. His contract would mitigate the acquisition cost somewhat, too, which is why we've heard his name more than those of controllable hurlers Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Bryce Miller, and Bryan Woo. As I've already written, if the chance to get Miller arises, Hoyer should gleefully pay through the nose for him, but the other three names have all come up more often, and their prospect price tags in any deal feel a bit inflated. When it comes to Seattle, it's Castillo or bust. While we're eliminating options like Gilbert, Kirby, Miller, and Woo, we might as well also cross off some other oft-mentioned names. The Cubs are not and will not be in on Corbin Burnes, save in the wildly improbable case that he really does end up being interested in a short-term, high-AAV deal, rather than a megadeal elsewhere. They're not going to be in on Sean Manaea or Nick Pivetta, who received qualifying offers and aren't clear enough upgrades to consider giving up two draft picks and substantial amateur free-agent spending power for them. There have been loose connections between them and Dylan Cease, and some Padres fans even harbored a theory that the Cubs were looking to acquire Luzardo with an eye to flipping him for Cease. Cease is the best pitcher they have any chance to acquire, but he'd come at a major cost, and with both Cease and Kyle Tucker headed to free agency after 2025, you'd start to feel that this team was overcommitting to a single campaign, given that they still wouldn't be favorites in a playoff series against the Dodgers (or perhaps the Mets, Phillies, or Atlanta) even with Cease in the fold. Who else, then? It's time to think a bit creatively. The easier version would be to sign either Jack Flaherty or Walker Buehler, two free agents without qualifying offers attached to them and with enough upside to imagine them working at the front end of a rotation. Both pitchers will make handsome salaries, but Flaherty's would be more in line with Jameson Taillon than with Max Fried, and Buehler might be open to a one-year, prove-it deal. They'd be upgrades, on the same order as Luzardo, and they'd only cost money. There's still some risk that their markets end up more robust than the Cubs' comfort zone allows, though. On the trade market, there are some creative angles to play that get downright tantalizing—but which also come with lots of danger. The Pirates are, reportedly, open to trade discussions about either Mitch Keller (signed to a long-term, reasonable deal, but with a Taillon-like ceiling) or Jared Jones (with lots of remaining team control and a Sistine Chapel-style ceiling, but also with some injury risk attached). That seems a great fit, given that what Pittsburgh most needs is young, cost-controlled offensive juice, but would the two sides be comfortable striking such a high-stakes intradivisional trade? I can only note that they've talked about similar moves in the past, and that Hoyer and Ben Cherington know each other very well from their time together in Boston. Feel like rescuing a pitcher from Coors Field ruination? Ryan Feltner has four years of team control and a very interesting five-pitch mix, and Owen Caissie could do dazzling things in Colorado's thin air, but talking the Rockies into the reality that they're not contenders is always tricky. Feeling lucky and up for a challenge? The Twins are still very much trying to contend, but they have to cut some money from their payroll, and might be open to deals (with various structures) for Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober, or Pablo López. They might even let you pay handsomely for the right to undertake the project of moving Griffin Jax back to the rotation. The trick there is that the Cubs would have to find a package that helped the 2025 Twins compete, without hurting their own hopes. A deal centered around Minnesota native Michael Busch and either Ryan or Ober, with the Cubs then lurching back into the bidding for Pete Alonso or Christian Walker? It feels very improbable, but you could envision it. (I'm voting against this one, because if the team trades Busch after trading Cody Bellinger, a lot of you will yell at me. But it's interesting.) There's a reason why the Cubs tried hard to land Luzardo. The alternatives above all have exciting potential, but their cost or implausibility make them less desirable than the relatively straightforward Luzardo acquisition could have been. Medicals were the impetus for the non-transaction, sources said, but to be clear: that doesn't mean that Luzardo is secretly broken already. Nor does it mean a particular Cubs prospect was found to be hurt. Often, deals that fall apart at the medical review stage do so for probabilistic reasons, rather than absolute ones. When one side sees something they don't like on a medical report or a scan, they increase their internal estimate of that player's injury risk, and naturally, that leads to them asking for more or wanting to give up less. If the other team doesn't share their risk assessment on the basis of the new information, it can create a divide that becomes hard to bridge, but that doesn't mean anyone involved is guaranteed to hit the surgeon's slab within a month or anything. For that reason, it's still vaguely possible the two sides circle back to one another. It'd be a bad bet, though, so the Cubs have to turn now to energetic examinations of the options—likely and otherwise—outlined above. They could end up aiming lower in the rotation, and higher in the bullpen or in the final bat they add, instead, but of course, that would come with its own set of new complications and considerations. View full article

I beg of you: stop saying "if." That's happening. And while the Cubs should spend more money, not less, trading their fifth-best hitter was the right move either way. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images Reaction to the Cubs trading Cody Bellinger to the Yankees Tuesday afternoon has been, on balance, pretty critical. While a significant share of fans have shrugged and acknowledged the inevitability of the move, another significant share—and, to my eye, a disproportionate number of takes from media outlets with all the necessary information at hand to know better—have loudly balked at it, especially by wielding the most cutting two-letter word English gives us: "if". As in: "I guess we'll see if they spend all this money they just saved," or "If they turn around and add another starting pitcher and bolster the bullpen, then ok. But otherwise..." That line of discussion is foolish, and I find that foolishness grating, because it's voluntary. The Cubs' salary situation is fairly transparent. After this trade, they have about $163 million on their books for 2025, in terms of real money they will pay to players, and their competitive-balance tax threshold number is around $180 million. As I've reported this fall, and as several other (frankly) more connected reporters have also suggested, the Cubs will spend around $220 million in real money this year. That's the real limiting number, though they also won't stack up that money in some strange, extreme fashion that leads to their stumbling over the $241-million tax line again. Jed Hoyer can and will spend a good $40 million from here to Opening Day. It might be slightly less, if the team can't find a good way to spend those dollars. It might be even more, if another opportunity as juicy as the chance to acquire Kyle Tucker presents itself. That it will be any less than $30 million is unthinkable, though, and the implication that the Bellinger trade is a pointless salary dump reflects a focus on money to the exclusion of really understanding ball, on the field and in the clubhouse. We should all be able to agree that the Ricketts family ought to spend more in annual payroll on the Cubs. As I've said several times, one of the perduring separators between the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, and Phillies and the Cubs is the willingness of those clubs to spend upwards of $280 million per year on players, while the Cubs break into a cold sweat at the notion of going to $250 million. I don't rise in defense of the Bellinger deal by way of excusing ownership's unduly careful spending. However, in this case, it's important to realize how little is lost by saving some money on Bellinger before pivoting to multiple major reinforcements of the pitching staff. Firstly, Bellinger is just not that good a player at this point. That's unfortunate for the Cubs, and it means I was wrong, because I felt they should stop hemming and hawing and sign him to a longer-term deal last winter, coming off his impressive 2023. Although the deal he ultimately signed was player-friendly, they did dodge a bit of a bullet by not investing in him long-term. It looks like he's poised to resume some measure of decline, after his Chicago resurgence. It's true, though, and if we were to take his name and/or visage out of the equation, it would be easier to see it. Bellinger not only injured himself playing center field for a second year in a row (and third out of four) back in April, but rated as a below-average defender there for the season. He doesn't belong in center field at all, as he enters his 30s, and that's important. As a corner outfielder and/or first baseman, there's a lot more pressure on his bat to be incontrovertibly above-average, and it's not at all clear that he meets that standard at this point. Famously, Bellinger found all that offensive success in 2023 with batted-ball metrics that didn't quite support the results. He did, however, become excellent at avoiding strikeouts, and he still drew a fair number of walks. Combining those skills with the ability to lethally unload on mistakes in hitter-friendly counts made him a great all-around hitter, though the market still showed its skepticism when he hit free agency last winter. The bet on him for 2024 and beyond was rooted in the idea that he could remain that selectively aggressive, sustaining a very low strikeout rate while getting on base and generating ample power. The hope was that he would integrate his 2023 adjustments and end up bringing the hard-hit and barrel rates up, without having to give back all the new contact he found. Instead (while he did replicate those marvelous strikeout and walk rates), Bellinger's contact quality only eroded further in 2024. He lost the ability to hit the ball to center or left field with any authority, but he also pulled the ball less often than he had previously. He hit (incrementally) more ground balls. Statcast released swing speed data, which confirmed what the eye test was telling everyone, anyway: Bellinger's bat speed is below average. Again, he still adapted well, and he fought his way to a fine season. The ceiling of his profile sagged much, much lower, though, as both offensive and defensive limitations came into sharper focus. That's why he opted in last month, and it's why the Cubs were never going to get much in return for him, even if they had eaten more money. I would argue that they still should have done so, because I believe Will Warren is a better long-term pitching piece than Cody Poteet, but the difference between the two is as practically negligible as the difference between the $5 million they sent to the Yankees and the $10 million or more (all of which would have been loaded into the first year, in that case, rather than spread between 2025 and 2026) that the Yankees wanted them to kick in if it were Warren coming back. It's also a neat summation of why the team simply didn't need him. Bellinger posted a 111 DRC+ in 2024, according to Baseball Prospectus, which is respectable. It trailed the 120 of Seiya Suzuki and the 117 of Michael Busch, though, and those are the two incumbents who play the positions for which Bellinger is best suited at this point. Ian Happ tied Bellinger at 111, but Happ (despite striking out much more) projects to hold up better than Bellinger: he has above-average bat speed and far better contact quality, plus elite plate discipline. To that collection of corner outfielders, DH candidates and first basemen, the Cubs added Tucker (2024 DRC+: 141). It was time to get one player out of the way of the others in that group, and it was a no-brainer that it should be Bellinger. Trading Suzuki would have meant giving back too much of the upgrade represented by the Tucker acquisition. Sending out Happ (no-trade clause, deep roots with the organization, better defense and better offensive bedrock) was never a consideration. Nor was dealing Busch, who's still under team control for five years and was every bit the defender Bellinger is at first base by the end of his rookie season. Keeping Bellinger around just as a contingency and rotational player would have been uncomfortable and bizarre. Not even the Dodgers spend $30 million on spare parts. We all wanted to see a genuine shakeup that would give the Cubs' roster a massive infusion of talent and a more modern feel; this is what that looks like. This was the right baseball move. Again: don't stop pressing the Rickettses to spend more money. At the same time, don't waste breath or attention on the vague possibility that this was a salary dump motivated basically by profit margin. It was, rather, the right thing to do in the wake of the Tucker move, and it will facilitate big additions to the team's starting rotation and bullpen. They might add three more above-average pitchers under team control for multiple seasons before Opening Day, and that's expensive, and this move both clears the decks for those pursuits and eliminates a potential source of frustration or drama in the clubhouse, before it could develop. Only the billionaires win when we get distracted by squabbles about money, and as fans, we only lose when we get tunnel vision on the payroll. Sometimes, wonderfully, we get good chances not to be thus burdened, and we can talk about the baseball reasons for and ramifications of a trade, rather than allocating all our energy toward kvetching about the business side of the game. Let's not squander this one. View full article

In a move necessary because of the Cubs' acquisition of Kyle Tucker from the Houston Astros, the team has dealt outfielder/first baseman Cody Bellinger to the New York Yankees. Image courtesy of © Kyle Ross-Imagn Images In order to add Kyle Tucker's projected arbitration salary (in excess of $15 million) and maintain the payroll flexibility they need to further supplement the roster thereafter, the Cubs needed to offload the hefty contract of Cody Bellinger. After acquiring Tucker Friday afternoon, the team sent Bellinger and cash to the New York Yankees, in exchange for right-handed swingman Cody Poteet. Poteet, 30, is an interesting pickup. He has four years of remaining team control and can still be optioned to the minors, which is welcome flexibility. He has five pitches, though his soft stuff—sweeper, curveball, changeup—is a little better than his four-seamer or sinker. He only throws about 93 miles per hour, and the slot and the movement are fairly vanilla. He doesn't strike out a lot of hitters. He's a fairly fungible arm, but a clearly usable one, and he can cover multiple innings—even as a three- or four-inning long man or spot starter. Poteet would probably be a more known quantity, if not for a string of brutal injuries. The second half of his 2021 season was pulverized by a knee issue. He underwent Tommy John surgery in mid-2022 and missed all of 2023, and in 2024, he spent about half the season on the shelf with a triceps strain. That's why the Cubs (like most teams would) now view him mostly as a reliever, rather than because he's unable to start from a skills perspective. It's also why he was available in this deal. He has real upside; he's just not reliably available. Sending out Bellinger is as much about accommodating the personnel as about money, but without question, it's about both. The team is very unlikely to spend up to the competitive balance tax threshold, according to multiple sources, which means that clearing a hefty chunk of the $30 million they owed Bellinger for 2025 was important if they were to make a big splash elsewhere on the roster. This move ensures that they'll have that flexibility. The team can now turn its attention back to free-agent targets like Kirby Yates and Kyle Finnegan, but they might not be done making significant trades, either. On Friday, the Cubs and Yankees were talking about starting pitching prospect Will Warren as compensation for Bellinger, but as the sides haggled, the Cubs became increasingly resistant to sending the amount of money the Yankees demanded to consummate that version of the deal. In the end, they'll send just $5 million to New York. Getting Poteet while clearing so much money from their books lets the Cubs pivot more flexibly toward their next set of acquisitions, including (but not limited to) another starting pitcher. Losing Bellinger's high-contact, occasionally powerful bat from the lineup will lightly sting, but the team was left-handed enough as it was, especially after bringing in Tucker—who is a marked upgrade from Bellinger. The real risk embraced in this trade is tied to Pete Crow-Armstrong, who is now operating without a net as he enters his first full, unfettered season as the team's center fielder. Non-tendering Mike Tauchman and trading Bellinger are clear messages about the faith the Cubs have in their young defensive whiz and his offensive upside, but right now, they also leave the team staring at a choice between Kevin Alcántara and Alexander Canario as the backup center fielders. In all likelihood, the team will try to land one more accomplished center fielder (albeit on the cheap), so they have some measure of insurance against regression or injury for Crow-Armstrong. Bellinger and the Cubs were largely good for each other; the rest of the club's roster-building just wasn't good enough to fully capitalize on what he brought to the table. He also struggled to stay healthy, twice running into outfield walls and ending up injured in the process of making good catches. He probably didn't belong in center field anymore, anyway, so when he opted back in after the season, this immediately popped onto the team's radar. Getting Poteet and significant salary relief for Bellinger is another win, especially because the Cubs have clearer utility for him than they had for Wesneski. It's a smaller, secondary trade in the shadow of a true blockbuster, but this one, too, has a chance to make the Cubs substantially better, by giving them more spending power this winter and bringing in a controllable arm who could become a fixture. View full article

The rumor mill has tied three high-leverage relievers to the Cubs as potential free-agent signees this offseason. Which one should the team prioritize as they round out their roster? Image courtesy of © Eric Hartline-Imagn Images It's hard to keep a firm hold of all the rumors that have floated around, in a winter in which rumors have been abundant. That's a nice change of pace, after a few years in which the hot stove was so cold and unlit that even scuttlebutt was in short supply, but it's still a bit overwhelming. Better (but more unwieldy) yet, the Cubs are deeply involved—not only in the rumors, but in honest-to-God activity. This winter, they've brought in Kyle Tucker, Eli Morgan and Matt Thaiss via trades; signed Matthew Boyd and Carson Kelly as free agents; and made a Rule 5 Draft selection for the first time since 2020. (Remember the Gray Fenter Endeavor?) More even than that, rumors are still swirling about what the team did next, and it seems clear that some action is imminent. Before Christmas, the Cubs will trade Cody Bellinger (probably to the Yankees; probably in exchange for right-handed pitcher Will Warren), and sometime this week, they might well finish a trade with the Miami Marlins to complete their rotation by acquiring Jesús Luzardo. Nor will they necessarily be done, even after those moves come to fruition (or not). The big remaining checklist box for the team, once those pieces find their place, will be adding a power arm at the back end of the bullpen. Right now, that unit is theoretically fine, with Porter Hodge, Tyson Miller, and Nate Pearson anchoring a group made deeper not only by the addition of Morgan, but by the likely relegation to relief duty of some other arm in the wake of Boyd and (perhaps) Luzardo joining the rotation. Between theory and praxis lies a dangerous chasm, though, and the Cubs know they need to be better-positioned to hold late leads right from Opening Day in 2025. Cobbling together a strong pen only on the other side of Memorial Day is a recipe for annual disappointment, as demonstrated in 2019, 2023 and 2024. Thus, we've heard rumors of the Cubs taking interest in a higher caliber of reliever than is their custom. Yes, they signed Héctor Neris in late January to be one of the anchors of the 2024 pen, but that was a case of overpaying an aging hurler in a mere gesture toward real improvement. This time around, the focus is on finding someone at least as good as Hodge—in other words, a new relief ace. Three names have dominated that discussion, so far. Each has something significant to recommend them, though there's also a reason that each is available at a non-prohibitive price. A close study of the options should help us alight on a best choice in the set. A.J. Minter, LHP In this middle-class shopping space, Minter is the top left-handed reliever available. The bad news is, he had an injury-disrupted 2024 season and underwent season-ending hip surgery in mid-August. The good news is this: Minter has a fastball that sits 95 and touches higher, with plenty of rise and that cut-ride shape the Cubs love so dearly. He pairs it with a cutter that has slider shape but hums in at 90 miles per hour fairly often, and a changeup with good two-plane movement off the heater. He can miss bats with both secondary offerings, and has had slight reverse splits over the last few years. In other words, while he'd be plenty effective against lefties (especially as a lefty at Wrigley Field), he's someone you can also call upon with confidence against many solid right-handed batters. There's a chance his market will be held up until the other side of the New Year, when he might be ready to demonstrate his good health for interested teams. If the price is right, though, Minter would be a great addition to a relief corps that features just one southpaw (Luke Little, who comes with his own questions about durability) at the moment. MLB Trade Rumors projected him for a two-year, $16-million deal at the start of the offseason. Kyle Finnegan, RHP Let's not spend an overlong time on Finnegan today. If you want the details on what makes him an intriguing target, I wrote about it last week. In brief: Finnegan throws very hard, and has experience as a closer. He's tended to give up way too much hard contact, because he has the unfortunate habit of throwing his main non-fastball (a splitter) in the meaty part of the zone, and because he doesn't yet trust an overhauled slider that could become a major weapon for him. If he signs with any team who recognizes the potential in that breaking ball, he could take off, and the Nationals could end up feeling foolish for having non-tendered him to save a little under $8 million. It's never a bad idea to go year-to-year with a reliever, but Finnegan is one arm who might make sense on a multi-year deal, if he's amenable to one at a decent price. He's probably viewing this as a blessing in disguise, in that he was able to reach free agency a year earlier than he otherwise would have. He's a late bloomer who turned 33 in September. Two years and $16 million, the projection for Minter, is probably his ceiling, and it's worth a look. Kirby Yates, RHP Though he's been through an injury ringer and will turn 38 years old next March, Yates is much in demand, because when he's on the mound, he's nasty. He was one of the sport's elite relievers in 2018 and 2019, then got hurt, then managed to come back and become one of the sport's elite relievers again in 2023 and 2024. He walks more batters now than he did then, but he's fanned 33.6% of the batters he's faced since the start of the 2023 season. He gets there with a fastball that only averages 93 miles per hour, too. The interaction of Yates's arm angle and his fastball shape allows him to miss bats with that heater, despite its pedestrian speed, and he also baffles hitters with a splitter that somehow has precisely the same horizontal movement as the fastball, but far more vertical depth. It doesn't make sense for his splitter to be able to do that, given the low slot, but there he is, doing it. Yates would cost roughly as much over one year as Minter or Finnegan would over two. Whereas those guys would be complementary options with only the upside of becoming the team's closer, though, Yates would be the unquestioned one from the moment he signs. As long as they succeed in moving Cody Bellinger, he's the best target. The money he would cost shouldn't stop the team from doing any of the other things they're realistically likely to do, anyway, and he'd be the highest-impact option. The Tucker trade was one signal that the organization is turning away from its obsession with depth and embracing the value of individuals who can transform a segment of the roster. Yates would be another, and a crucial one for the confidence of everyone from fans to the players themselves as a difficult fight for the playoffs looms before them. View full article

It sure sounds like the Cubs intend to get a deal done with the Miami Marlins, to finish building a rotation heavily leaning left. What does it mean, and what will it beget? Image courtesy of © Jonathan Dyer-Imagn Images If the Cubs have their way, they will complete a trade with the Miami Marlins for left-handed starting pitcher Jesús Luzardo—and soon. Multiple reports from well-connected Chicago baseball reporter Bruce Levine in the last few days have connected the team to Luzardo, and sources confirm that these talks are ongoing. It seems like a good moment to run down what's appealing to the team about Luzardo, and what this would mean for the rest of their winter. Firstly, if you missed the piece I wrote yesterday morning about Luzardo's recent injury history, rough 2024, and needed adjustments, you can still catch up here. In brief: Luzardo is a fascinating fastball-changeup-slider guy, and although the Marlins are associated with pitching in the minds of many based on recent successes in scouting and acquiring good starters (Sandy Alcántara, Zac Gallen, Pablo López, etc.), they seem to have failed in really developing Luzardo into the best pitcher he can be. Luzardo would be the fourth lefty starter in the Cubs' rotation, joining Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga, and free-agent signee Matthew Boyd. The chances of ending up with four lefties in a rotation constructed without regard to handedness, based on the proportion of the population of big-league starters who throw with each hand, are right around 1.0%. This is no accident, and part of the reason may be a systematic handedness effect at Wrigley Field, as I documented earlier this offseason. The Cubs are building a rotation full of southpaws, intentionally and consciously, and they're probably wise to do so. That does come with some knock-on effects, though. For instance, the more left-handed pitchers you use, the more right-handed batters you're likely to face. That makes the left side of your infield defense especially vital, so if the Cubs do turn to rookie Matt Shaw as their regular third baseman in 2025, they'd better feel very, very good about his glove at that position. Reports suggest that they do, so all is well there, but it's an interesting wrinkle. It might make them incrementally more likely to go out and sign a strong defensive infielder like Josh Rojas in the next few weeks, knowing so many grounders will be heading that way. By contrast, facing a lot of right-handed batters makes your right fielder more important than your left fielder, defensively. Good thing, then, that the Cubs dealt for Kyle Tucker, a huge defensive upgrade over Seiya Suzuki. It also makes it a tiny bit easier to put Suzuki in left field, some days, at the expense of Ian Happ, who can DH more. This deal would be a big-time embrace of variance on the part of the Cubs, just as signing Boyd was. This is the kind of upside play in which the Dodgers have specialized for years. The Cubs jumping into that kind of risk-taking is exhilarating. It comes with a frisson of nervousness, because the chances that Luzardo can't get everything sorted back out or that he continues to struggle with injuries are a little too high for comfort. In that way, it would also be a leap of faith by the team, trusting its existing organizational pitching depth—guys like Javier Assad, Ben Brown, Jordan Wicks, Cade Horton, Brandon Birdsell, and more, who wouldn't be in the Opening Day starting five if Luzardo were in the fold but who would certainly end up being called upon over the course of the season. The deal is not done, and not yet imminent, to my eye. That could change almost instantly from here, though, because of the stage the teams have reached in negotiations. It wouldn't be the highest-aiming move the team could still make, but it would leave a little more of their powder dry than other moves might, and the Cubs are still in a mode of trying to create value, as much as acquiring it. Luzardo's potential to improve under better tutelage is a point of extreme interest for the team, and might make him the apple of their eyes as they try to leave themselves flexibility for the rest of the offseason. View full article

Earlier this month, the Cubs finalized their coaching staff for 2025 and hired new staff for their player-development department, plucking two staffers from the Yankees organization in the process. Now, we can see why, with hard data. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images Craig Counsell lured Quintin Berry away from the Brewers earlier this offseason, but whereas Berry was the first-base coach for the Milwaukee speed demons in 2024, he'll move over and be the third-base coach under Counsell in 2025. One of his chief duties is outfield instruction and positioning while the Cubs are on defense. He'll play a role for the Cubs in helping spot tics and tells on opposing pitchers, but since he wouldn't be whispering in the ears of runners at first base, you already knew the team was planning something else to bolster their running game. Now, we know what shape that will take. After the Cubs hired José Javier (as their first-base coach) and Matt Talarico (offensive coordinator, base running, in the player-development department) away from the Yankees, the immediate word was that each was selected partially for their excellence in assisting runners. You could have been forgiven, though, if you wondered why the Yankees would be the organization to target for recruiting such specialists. After all, they stole just 88 bases in 114 attempts last season, good for 24th in MLB. As of Monday, we can see and articulate the reasons, pretty clearly. At Baseball Savant, they're rolled out new numbers, rating baserunners (and teams) and assigning value to their various skills. One of the juicy detailed data sets introduced in the new section: lead distance gained. It's a measurement of how many feet away from their starting base runners got between the first movement of a pitcher's delivery and the release of the ball, and they have columns both for all pitches in stolen-base situations and for only those pitches on which hitters actually attempt a steal. Here are the five teams who, on average, gained the most ground in the time from pitchers starting their delivery to their releasing the ball, when attempting a steal. Team Lead Distance Gained Yankees 14.1 Cardinals 13.4 Giants 13.1 Twins 12.6 Mets 12.6 These definitely aren't the best base-stealing teams in the league. On the contrary, they're five of the least strong. Some of this, then, is a selection bias: these teams only ran when they had their few good runners aboard and it was relatively easy to get a great lead. It runs deeper than that, though. For instance, among players who attempted 11 or more steals on the season, Anthony Volpe (not even especially fast or gifted in this area, with just 24 steals in 29 tries) led the league in lead distance gained from a pitcher's first move to their release. He gained, on average, a staggering 15.1 feet in that sliver of time. That's indicative of great preparation and of a process, and the Yankees have one that they teach exceptionally well. Here's a glimpse of it. Volpe Bounce.mp4 Technically, Volpe doesn't even get a great lead here—until Aaron Nola has committed to his delivery. Then there's a bounce, a slide, and zoom—he's off. The Yankees started implementing this as a base-stealing protocol back in 2022, and the rules changes in 2023 made the move exponentially more dangerous and valuable. Here's the pull quote from an article in The Athletic early that season. That piece identifies the primary architect of the maneuver, too: Talarico. And while it might not have been possible to transform the sluggardly sluggers populating the big-league lineup into valuable runners last year, the system works in a much more broad-scale way when even moderately athletic players are allowed to embrace and employ it. The 2024 Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, the Yankees' Triple-A affiliate, led the International League by 34 steals, with 251 of them in 300 attempts. That was the affiliate where Javier worked as a defense and baserunning coach. Pete Crow-Armstrong and Nico Hoerner are obvious candidates to benefit from this, but so are Seiya Suzuki, Kyle Tucker, Matt Shaw, Ian Happ, and Michael Busch. The Cubs weren't bad at stealing bases in 2024, but they made three hires this winter that suggest that they intend to be a better one—perhaps one of the bast in baseball—in 2025. The rules are in their favor. Now, so is the technique. View full article

Stop trying to make 'fetch' happen. It is not going to happen. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images It's not wholly incomprehensible. A couple days after having acquired Kyle Tucker—without giving up Seiya Suzuki!—the Cubs still have not traded Cody Bellinger, and some fans (not indefensible) are trying to daydream a little. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. They're imagining a lineup the Cubs could deploy on a daily basis, against right-handed pitchers, if they simply hold onto Bellinger, accept the looming luxury-tax bill, and slide Michael Busch to the place vacated when the team traded third baseman Isaac Paredes as part of the Tucker trade. Ian Happ - LF Kyle Tucker - RF Seiya Suzuki - DH Cody Bellinger - 1B Dansby Swanson - SS Michael Busch - 3B Nico Hoerner - 2B Pete Crow-Armstrong - CF Miguel Amaya - C You have to admit, that does look like an awfully good lineup. Most fictional lineups do. Why would you bother drawing up a back-of-the-napkin lineup that didn't look really good? Ok, now take that napkin, wipe up whatever mess might be at hand, and throw it away. Because that lineup will never, ever happen. As it turns out, the world is not so easily bent to our whims and wants. The Cubs are as smart as you are. They've seen this possibility, and they've rejected it, because it's not really a possibility. Michael Busch is a solid player. He's coming off a really strong, encouraging, even exciting rookie season, during which he posted a 117 DRC+ (17% better than a league-average hitter), making excellent adjustments at the plate en route to delivering both power and plate discipline. He also blossomed as a first baseman. Early in the season, he was hard-handed and unsure of his footwork, despite having been a collegiate first baseman. It took two months for him to fully acclimate to his defensive duties. Over the second half, though, he might have been the National League's best defender at the position. At the very least, we can say that he was noticeably better than average with the leather. Because of his size and his athleticism (each of which are, loosely speaking, befitting a player at some spot other than first base), the temptation to try moving him back to second or third base (where he played more often in the minor leagues while part of the Dodgers organization) is understandable. It's just misgiven. Busch's improvements at first this year made it look like he might have upside at another position, but in truth, he doesn't. Busch has a weak arm. He's not as quick as he looks, and his size limits his range on reaching or diving plays. The Cubs like him a lot; they just don't like him at all at any position other than first base. They made that clear when they acquired him last winter, and they haven't wavered on it. Nor did the ill-fated experiment of trying to make Christopher Morel a third baseman last spring leave a good taste in their mouth for this kind of attempted glow-up. That's not to say that the Cubs won't attempt position changes for some players, even if it occasionally means sending a player back to a previously abandoned position or otherwise sliding them up the defensive spectrum, against the prevailing direction of such movements. It's one way to create value on a roster, and it's been fruitful for a number of teams recently. Mookie Betts is, suddenly, a middle infielder. Several teams are moving relievers back to the starting rotation, having identified them as possessing a deep enough pitch mix and some durability. The Padres moved Jake Cronenworth to first base almost full-time in 2023, but he was back to playing a lot of second base in 2024. In general, it's a good idea to consider moves like these. In this case, though, it's an idea worth forgetting. Busch just isn't up to it. He's not a Cronenworth-caliber versatile athlete. He's not a Betts-caliber super-freak. He's a good player. It will be best for everyone involved if fans stop making the perfect the enemy of that goodness. The Cubs are going to trade Bellinger, anyway (to the Yankees? For Will Warren? I still feel fairly confident that gets done.). They would do so even if they thought Busch could play another position, in all likelihood. They want to manage and massage their budget, and they want to spend the remaining money they do have mostly on pitching. I would guess they'll also sign either a lower-tier infielder (think Yoán Moncada or Josh Rojas) or an outfielder who can more credibly back up Crow-Armstrong in center (think Harrison Bader or Michael A. Taylor), but they intend to direct most of their resources to the pitching staff. There's also Matt Shaw to think of; the team views making more room for Shaw as an ancillary benefit of the Tucker trade. Busch is a solid player, and although the team might eventually look to plug a right-handed slugger in occasionally against lefty starters, he's not in danger of losing his deep foothold in the lineup. He could bat anywhere from first to seventh, on a given day, but he's going to be a big contributor to the 2025 Cubs. It just can't, won't, and shouldn't be anywhere on the infield, other than first base. View full article

Saturday's hot trade rumor had the Cubs in talks with the Marlins on a deal for the talented but oft-injured left-handed starter. It's a fascinating potential move—but a dangerous one. Image courtesy of © David Frerker-Imagn Images It's been clear all along that the Cubs intended to add another starting pitcher this winter, even after signing Matthew Boyd to join a rotation that included three established veterans and a bevy of younger options. Now, in the wake of the team's blockbuster deal for Kyle Tucker and the shadow of the likely Cody Bellinger trade, the team seems to be closing in on that higher-end acquisition. Names circulating include Luis Castillo of the Mariners and San Diego ace Dylan Cease, but on Saturday, 670 The Score's Bruce Levine brought forth another name that had long been in the mix: Marlins southpaw Jesús Luzardo. Luzardo, 27, has two years of team control remaining. He's often mentioned as a starter with big upside, because he's a lefty who (at his best) throws 97 miles per hour with a plus changeup. However, he's available not only because Miami is in the midst of a bone-scraping rebuild, but because he's been inconsistent and (worse) often hurt throughout his career. He pitched 179 innings with a 3.58 ERA and a 28.1% strikeout rate in 2023. In 2024, he managed just 12 starts, with an ERA of 5.00. His strikeout rate plunged to 21.2%, and (worse) his average fastball was 95.2 miles per hour, down from 96.7 in 2023. The Marlins and Cubs are uniquely perfect potential trade partners, because Miami is still working its way toward a nadir in its sudden reconstruction and Chicago has exactly what the Fish lack: high-upside, cost-controlled young hitters, including ones whose MLB service time clocks have not yet even begun to tick. Whereas Miami once had a clear surplus of exciting starters, though, their whole rotation is now populated by players with notable warts. Sandy Alcántara is the least complicated case, but he'll just be returning from Tommy John surgery in 2025. The rest all come with some degree of uncertainty, whether it centers on performance, injury, or both. It's probably still Luzardo who carries the most promise. The 2024 season was just a setback. Fortunately, the latter fact means the Cubs should be able to acquire him at a non-premium price, but the former could make him worth that splash—if the Cubs believe they can keep him healthy and get the best out of him. Let's figure out what the latter looks like, and whether the former is compatible with it. Luzardo's fastball lost some zip in 2024, but his two main secondary offerings—his slider and changeup—each degraded, too. His Stuff+ and StuffPro, the two leading pitch-modeling grading systems, each indicated that those pitches had gotten worse, based on movement, release point, and location. Here are his movement profiles for the last two seasons, side by side. Right away, you can see that Luzardo's fastball had a bit more rising action and a bit less arm-side run in 2024. The same was true of his changeup and sinker. Glance down at the lower lefthand corner of each image, and you can see a partial explanation of that: Luzardo raised his arm angle slightly this season. The adjustment was not for the better. You can see why the Marlins might have wanted Luzardo to raise that angle. Low-slot lefties often aren't able to live well in the starting rotation, against lineups that can be stacked with right-handed batters to neutralize them. Vertical profiles tend to work better for southpaw starters, and higher arm slots tend to produce those pitch shapes. The thing with Luzardo, though, is that he's a natural pronator. You can see that in the movement profiles above. Even his slider doesn't move to the glove side the way many pitchers' do. His four-seamer, sinker and changeup, by contrast, all move more to the arm side than do most pitches from hurlers with similar velocities and release points. If that's your natural movement signature, you might as well lean into it, with the lower slot Luzardo used to employ. The Cubs would certainly work with him to keep the release angle down, and they'd probably integrate his sinker more, too. Bringing his sinker along is especially key, not only because it suits his natural mechanics, but because of the way he attacks the zone. Here's his pitch location profile for his top four offerings for 2024. Notice the way his four-seamer primarily pounds the third-base side of the plate, inside on a righty and away from a lefty. Given the movement on it and the arm angle at which Luzardo works, that's not what you'd automatically expect, which is one reason why he's effective. Despite a very different natural fastball shape, he achieves a similar effect to fellow southpaw Justin Steele. But this quirk also means he has to lean on the sinker to attack the arm side of the plate with heat. Given his current pitch mix, as it played in 2024, that's not essential—but it could become so, as part of the team's plans to optimize him if they brought him aboard. Luzardo was better at keeping the sinker on that arm-side edge in 2023, rather than letting it stray over the plate. He also did better with his slider, which got to the lower inside corner to a righty (away from a lefty) more often. From the lower slot, he's capable of working with those pitches to force lefties into uncomfortable at-bats, and he can get righties thinking more about covering the whole plate, too. If the four-seamer will dominate inside to righties and away from lefties, the sinker is the pitch that can keep everyone honest and resolve the problems he's had with hard contact recently. This stuff doesn't automatically work, once conceived of, and the Marlins' reputation for pitcher development is strong. Here's the twist: some of that reputation is unearned. They're excellent at scouting pitchers, but not necessarily good at helping them unlock their talent. They traded Pablo López to the Twins two winters ago, and he quickly got better—especially by adopting a sweeper, which is exactly what I think the Cubs might encourage Luzardo to do. Ace upside is probably too generous a label to apply to Luzardo, but he can be right in line with Steele and Shota Imanaga, at his best. If the Cubs could keep him healthy, he'd make their rotation one of the best in the National League. For that, giving up James Triantos would not be too high a price. However, if the Marlins insist upon getting Owen Caissie or even Kevin Alcántara in the deal instead, the team might need to maintain the resolve to walk away. Luzardo is a big fish, but there are others in the sea, too. View full article

In a move that could radically alter the future of the franchise, the Chicago Cubs have pulled the trigger on their most aggressive trade in nearly a decade. They now have the star slugger their lineup has been missing since 2016. Image courtesy of © Erik Williams-Imagn Images After multiple days of heavy rumors, the Cubs and Astros finally wound their way to an exchange on which they could agree. The Cubs will receive All-Star right fielder Kyle Tucker, set to turn 28 in January, on the heels of four seasons in which Tucker batted .280/.362/.527, made three All-Star teams and took home both a Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger. In return, Chicago will send third basemen Isaac Paredes and Cam Smith to Houston, surrendering the jewel acquisition of their trade deadline this past summer and their first-round pick in the 2024 MLB Draft. It's not a light package. The Cubs gave up Christopher Morel and two young pitchers to get Paredes, and Smith represents the least renewable resource in baseball: a first-round pick with star-level upside and some proximity to the majors. Wesneski, first acquired two and a half years ago for reliever Scott Effross, is a dynamic arm who still has a chance to mature into (if nothing more) a high-strikeout, high-leverage reliever. However, Tucker is the perfect target at the perfect time. He's been metronomic over the first several full seasons of his career, with between 23 and 30 home runs in each of the last four campaigns—even 2024, when he missed a long stretch of the second half with a fracture in his shin. Tucker maintains a very low strikeout rate, especially for a player with so much power. He showed the ability to accept his walks as soon as he arrived in the majors, but over the last two years, his walk rate has shot up, to a new level. He has a career OPS of .883 against right-handed pitchers and .840 against lefties, so he's essentially immune to the platoon disadvantage. He plays above-average defense in right field, and is both efficient and aggressive on the bases. He's one of the 10 best hitters in baseball, and perhaps one of the five or six best. This is just one move, in a series. The Cubs will trade Cody Bellinger to the Yankees in a related (but separate) trade for right-handed starting pitching prospect Will Warren, but it now appears that they'll retain Seiya Suzuki, thereby cementing Tucker and Suzuki as the core of their offense. They'll further add to the roster, because with this move, they push many poker chips into the middle of the table. Being very, very good in 2025 is now essential, because Tucker is likely to depart after the season as a free agent. The Cubs can and should try hard to extend him for a decade beyond the end of 2025, but traditionally, they haven't spent the kind of money that would take. Then again, until today, Jed Hoyer has not traditionally taken swings as big as this trade, anyway. View full article

While there remain several paths forward for the Cubs this winter, their priority appears to be a trade for the All-Star Houston outfielder. Meeting the Astros' asking price will be tricky, though, and might require mutual creativity. Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-Imagn Images Although the reports are just confused and confusing enough to leave everyone bickering about the real nature of the demands, all indications are that the Astros want both Seiya Suzuki and Isaac Paredes in a trade for Kyle Tucker, whom the Cubs would then control for just one season before he hits free agency. Tucker might be worth those two, in an emerging paradigm of player value that disproportionately elevates stars at the expense of average-ish players, even though they're under team control for longer than he is and are solid contributors themselves. Houston (understandably) also wants to get a longer-term benefit from giving up such a superb player in the short term, though, and that has led to a long negotiation. The Cubs don't want to give up Matt Shaw, or even Cam Smith, in exchange for Tucker, at least without holding onto one of Suzuki and Paredes. While one report Thursday night juiced a new round of speculation and excitement, the chances that these two teams are unable to bridge the divide and end up deciding not to do business together is still significant. The path out of this encroaching stalemate could go through the Houston bullpen. Earlier this winter, multiple reports suggested that the team was looking to trade reliever Ryan Pressly, to whom they owe $14 million in the final year of his most recent contract extension. After Houston signed Josh Hader to a massive deal last winter, they have a surplus of talent in the bullpen, and with Bryan Abreu available to act as Hader's second in the relief wars, Pressly has gone from one of the game's elite closers to an expendable set-up man in short order. Because he's owed so much and because he's declined somewhat sharply over the last two years, Pressly has negative trade value. To move him in a separate deal, Houston would have to attach a prospect or eat as much as $4 million. Pressly struck out 31.9% or more of his opposing batters every year from 2018-22, but that figure plummeted to 27.6% in 2023 and 23.8% in 2024. His velocity has similarly flagged, from an average fastball at 95.4 miles per hour as recently as 2021 to 93.8 MPH in 2024. That's not a great case for the Cubs acquiring him, of course. Still, it could help balance the scales. With Tucker and Pressly going to Chicago and Paredes (but not Suzuki) going to Houston, the Astros would save something like $25 million for 2025. The Cubs would be taking on significant money, but they'd also have their lineup anchors in place, and they'd rebalance their books by trading Cody Bellinger—which they're treating as a prerequisite for acquiring Tucker, anyway. Meanwhile, bringing in Pressly would lighten the pressure to make any further additions to the bullpen, so it would effectively free up the money they would otherwise have had to earmark for that item on the to-do list. Under those circumstances, they'd probably be much more amenable to trading a top prospect—even if it be Shaw. Another structure could emerge, too, where the Cubs would send Owen Caissie, Cam Smith and Paredes to Houston, allowing them to retain Shaw and James Triantos with an eye to having one or both of them play third for the next several years. To circle back to Pressly, despite the dipping velocity and strikeout rate, this isn't exactly a Héctor Neris situation. For one thing, Pressly has a deep arsenal. As he's aged, he's added a sinker and a changeup to that mix, which included an elite fastball, slider, and curve at his best. Now, according to pitch modeling ratings, the fastball has sagged badly, to about average—but the curve and slider are still among the best in the game, and the changeup he just found in his early 30s is turning out to be an average-plus offering. The smart money says that, despite losing his ability to overpower and befuddle hitters, he can still get them out at a solid rate. If we assume the Cubs would go on, after this trade, to get Carson Kelly sewn up, we can loosely project a roster for 2025 based on the things we understand the team to be trying to do. Starting Lineup Ian Happ - LF Kyle Tucker - RF Seiya Suzuki - DH Michael Busch - 1B Dansby Swanson - SS Matt Shaw - 3B Pete Crow-Armstrong - CF Carson Kelly - C Nico Hoerner - 2B Bench Miguel Amaya - C Gage Workman - IF Alexander Canario - OF Miles Mastrobuoni - UTIL Starting Rotation Shota Imanaga Justin Steele Jameson Taillon Matthew Boyd Javier Assad Bullpen Ryan Pressly Porter Hodge Tyson Miller Nate Pearson Eli Morgan Julian Merryweather Luke Little Daniel Palencia This includes a trade of Cody Bellinger, but excludes any player received in exchange for him. It also leaves undreamt any dreams of adding another starter to the front end of the rotation, rather than to the back end (via the acquisition of Will Warren, perhaps). From this position, the Cubs could try to package more young talent (Kevin Alcántara, any of several strong pitchers just off the fringes of the MLB roster) or find a way to land Nico Hoerner in Seattle and get back Luis Castillo. The latter option would further risk the team's fortunes on the performance of young players, since Triantos would then need to come up and help the team almost right away. Not quite a juggernaut, the team above would nonetheless be markedly higher-ceiling and more dynamic than the one the Cubs have now. It would have to be accomplished by accepting some suboptimal arrangements and stretching the team's expected 2025 budget near its breaking point, and there is always a very real risk that this front office will back off when faced with that set of choices. However, if bringing Pressly into a Tucker trade could keep Shaw and/or Suzuki out of it, the Cubs have to explore that possibility. One way or another, we're likely to know by the end of this weekend whether anything will come of all that big Winter Meetings week talk. View full article

Though no consequential hot stove news broke Thursday, below the surface, there were indicators that the Cubs were moving toward something big. One new name reached the public sphere, and it's one that has come up in connection with the team before. Image courtesy of © Bill Streicher-Imagn Images It's become clear, over the last two days, that the Cubs' major focus is to complete a trade for Houston Astros right fielder Kyle Tucker. They have sidelined multiple negotiations with free agents for the time being, hoping to get a deal done and have more clarity about their roster before needing to add a new signee to that group and create a space by designating someone for assignment, at what could be an inopportune time. All their energy is going toward big swings in the trade market, and Tucker is the prize. However, they view it as important to trade Cody Bellinger first, since Houston does not value him highly enough to warrant his inclusion in a Tucker deal. Thus, the linchpin of the team's tactical approach to grabbing Tucker is sending Bellinger to one of the other interested teams. The most likely of those, by far, is the Yankees, where Bellinger could fit at multiple spots and would reduce the Bombers' uncertainty in the lineup, without foreclosing any of the other options they're pursuing. That makes the reports of progress between Chicago and New York Thursday evening important ones, and the inclusion of pitching prospect Will Warren in those discussions is especially compelling. Warren, 25, has been on the Cubs' radar for a while. He's primarily a sinker-sweeper guy, and his stuff is nasty. He struck out 28% of opposing batters, even in a season in which he posted an ERA just under 6.00 in Triple A and a mark over 10.00 in the majors. Warren doesn't overpower hitters with sheer velocity, but his location of both the sinker and the sweeper is superb, and the movement on the two pitches combined with that command makes for a devastating attack. He also has an average four-seamer, a changeup, and a cutter, making his arsenal deep enough and his swing-and-miss sufficient to slot into the middle of a starting rotation at his best. As you might expect from someone who works east-and-west the way he does, Warren has a fairly low arm slot. He also has a bit of crossfire to his delivery, with a closed stride that forces his body to sweep around his front leg. That puts a lot of pressure on his four-seamer, when it comes to getting lefties out. To his credit, after a very rocky start to the season in Triple A, Warren did figure that out, emphasizing the four-seamer more after Jun. 1. Because his changeup separates from his sinker only in velocity, and not in terms of movement, he needs that four-seamer to set it up to lefties. The sinker does a fine job of putting right-handed hitters into a fork as a partner to his sweeper, but as the season progressed, he even ratcheted up the usage of that four-seamer to righties. He also virtually scrapped the cutter mid-season. This is adding up to rather a lot of changes. Did they help him pitch better as the year went on? In short: yes, but it still looks a bit messy. His season breaks down thusly: Through 5/31 (AAA): 205 batters faced, 44 1/3 innings, 48 strikeouts, 19 walks, 13 home runs allowed, 8.53 ERA, .918 opponent OPS Jun. 1-Jul. 25 (AAA): 220 BF, 51 1/3 IP, 67 SO, 16 BB, 5 HR, 4.03 ERA, .656 opp. OPS Jul. 30-Aug. 31 (MLB): 104 BF, 21 2/3 IP, 26 SO, 9 BB, 4 HR, 9.55 ERA, .985 opp. OPS Sep. 6-18 (AAA): 61 BF, 14 IP, 21 SO, 4 BB, 1 HR, 4.50 ERA, .662 opp. OPS After all that, he did make one more forgettable and meaningless appearance in the big leagues to finish the season, but it's not worth further muddying that water. Suffice it to say this: Once Warren tweaked his pitch mix, while he was in the minors, he had a ton of success. However, he's prone to the home run, and hasn't yet solved some of the more complex problems posed by high-level hitters. At least one scouting report also indicated that Warren's sweeper is a pitch uniquely ill-suited to the automated strike zone used for much of the season in Triple A, so he might have been even better than these numbers look once he sorted things out in the minors. Obviously, Warren is an intriguing arm, with plenty of potential bullpen utility if the starting thing doesn't work out. Predictably, he has significant platoon splits. He would slot somewhere in with Javier Assad, Brandon Birdsell, Ben Brown, Cade Horton, Hayden Wesneski, and Jordan Wicks, the Cubs' gratifyingly deep stable of back-end rotation arms with upside either in the middle of a rotation or the bully portion of a bullpen. Where he fits is a matter of scouting preferences and other considerations, but he'd increase the team's ability to trade from that sector of their roster, which might come in handy, be it in Tucker negotiations with Houston or in pursuit of Dylan Cease from San Diego. The Cubs hope not to have to eat more than $5 million in the Bellinger trade, to give themselves as much financial flexibility as possible when they turn their attention to other necessary moves. If they succeed in getting the Yankees to take on nearly all the money, Warren would probably be the only piece they get back. That's fine. He has clear flaws, just as the other pitchers in the mix he would join do. However, he'd be a strong return in a trade primarily motivated by the need to free up other options. View full article