Both the Yankees and Red Sox have checked in with the Cubs and discussed the potential availability of right-hander Jameson Taillon, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale writes in his weekly Sunday Notes column. The Cubs have yet to determine whether they’ll off any veteran pieces prior to the deadline, per the report. However, Chicago has dropped consecutive games coming out of the All-Star break and now sits 10 back in the NL Central and 4.5 back in the Wild Card chase, so it’d hardly register as a surprise if they were at least getting a feel for the market on some of their potential trade assets.
The 32-year-old Taillon (33 in November) is in the second season of a four-year, $68MM contract he inked with the Cubs in the 2022-23 offseason. After a very rocky showing last May and June, he’s righted the ship. Taillon is sitting on a pristine 3.10 ERA (3.81 FIP, 4.18 SIERA) in 93 innings this season, but his turnaround really dates back to the second half of the ’23 season. Though he finished out his first Cubs season with an ERA just shy of 5.00, that brutal stretch in May/June heavily weighed down his season-long line.
Over the past calendar year, Taillon boasts a tidy 3.34 ERA (4.05 FIP, 4.11 SIERA) with a 21.1% strikeout rate that’s only about a percentage point shy of league-average and an outstanding 5.1% walk rate. That walk rate is the 11th-lowest among qualified starters in the majors.
Taillon is still owed about $6.8MM of his 2024 salary as of this writing. He’s also being paid $18MM in each of the next two seasons. That’ll bring the tab on him to a bit less than $43MM over the next two-plus seasons. On its face, that’s a generally reasonable rate for a pitcher of Taillon’s caliber.
However, it’s also worth noting that the Yankees are a third-time CBT payor who are in the top tier of luxury penalization. They’d pay a 110% tax on Taillon, at least this season and possibly in future seasons, depending where their luxury ledger lands in 2025-26. Boston currently has a projected $218MM worth of luxury considerations, per RosterResource, so they could acquire Taillon and take on his full contract without crossing into luxury territory this season. As for the Cubs, they’re just $3MM shy of the $237MM luxury threshold; moving Taillon would create some breathing room in the event that the front office opts to deal from its rotation depth but simultaneously bring in some other players to address needs (e.g. third base, bullpen).
As far as the Red Sox go, the reported interest in Taillon is pretty straightforward. Boston has seen Lucas Giolito, Garrett Whitlock and depth starter Chris Murphy go down with season-ending injuries. Righty Bryan Mata recently had another setback in his recovery from a hamstring injury. At the moment, the Sox have a rotation comprised of Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford, Nick Pivetta and Brayan Bello. Both Cooper Criswell and Josh Winckowski have gotten looks in the fifth spot of the rotation. The depth beyond that quintet is fairly suspect.
The current top four in Boston’s rotation is solid, but both Houck and Crawford are going to sail well beyond their 2023 workloads as they set new career-high marks for innings pitched. Even if they avoid injury while doing so, there’s real possibility of fatigue setting in and impacting the quality of their results (which have thus far been excellent). Taillon would add some stability and push Criswell and Wincowski down the depth chart. He’d also add a solid veteran arm to the 2025-26 rotations, which surely has some appeal with Pivetta slated to become a free agent this offseason.
The Red Sox currently hold the third Wild Card spot in the American League. They’re a long shot within the AL East but certainly not buried, sitting 6.5 games behind the division-leading Orioles and 4.5 games behind the second-place Yankees.
Speaking of the Yankees, they’re of course no stranger to Taillon. The righty pitched the 2021-22 seasons in the Bronx and fared well, logging 321 1/3 innings of 4.08 ERA ball over the life of 61 starts. The Yankees have a mostly healthy rotation now that Gerrit Cole is back from the elbow injury that sidelined him into June, but they did lose breakout righty Clarke Schmidt to a late-May lat strain that’s going to sideline him for a considerable period. The Yankees announced on May 30 that Schmidt would be shut down up to six weeks. He was transferred to the 60-day IL on June 18. He’s out until at least the end of this month, but that’ll likely stretch into next month. Schmidt only began throwing off a mound this weekend, and he’ll need to make multiple minor league rehab starts (and dodge any possible setbacks) before he’s an option.
Right now, manager Aaron Boone’s rotation includes Cole, Carlos Rodon, Nestor Cortes, Marcus Stroman and Luis Gil. It’s a talented quintet, but Gil has faded considerably after posting a sub-2.00 ERA for the first couple months of the season. His sky-high walk rate always made his ERA a little dubious, but over the past seven starts Gil has pitched to a 6.00 ERA. He’s not the only Yankee starter struggling, either. Each of Rodon, Cortes and Stroman has an ERA north of 5.30 in the past month. Rodon has been clobbered for 24 runs in his past 22 innings. If anything, Gil has begun to right the ship with a pair of excellent starts his last two times out, but it’s plenty understandable if his workload concerns and the generally shaky performance from the rest of his rotationmates has the Yankees seeking external help.
