For the trade for a TOR SP crowd, who are you looking at that is better than Steele and/or Imanaga that is potentially available in trade and at a cost the Cubs can afford in prospects?
I can only come up with 4 and all but one is coming with only 1 year of control. Garrett Crochet, Dylan Cease, Michael King, and Framber Valdez.
Every one of those guys is going to cost a pretty nice prospect, if not multiple pretty nice prospects, in return for a very short window of opportunity, Crochet being the only one I would consider over trading those prospects for a bat on a 1 year deal.
There's 4 pitchers going into FA that you could argue in various ways would be #1 on the Cubs. Jack Flaherty, Yusei Kikuchi, Max Fried, and Nathan Eovaldi. Which pitcher are you trading for that is potentially available in trade that is better than them at a cost the Cubs can afford in prospects?
I would much rather sign one of the FAs to a modest deal. Probably not going to be Flaherty even though he probably fits the Cubs MO the most, I just think he'll get a deal that would make me uncomfortable betting on 1 year of success following multiple years of failure, similar to how teams viewed Bellinger last season. And then use tier 2 prospects to trade for a guy like Reid Detmers to fill in the back of the rotation. Then I still have my tier 1 prospects to go after a bat and/or catcher.