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Cubs Planning To Add Starting Pitcher In Offseason

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The Cubs are planning to add an established starting pitcher to their rotation this winter, reports Patrick Mooney of The Athletic. The club has Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon and Javier Assad in four spots. Per Mooney’s report, adding one more name into that mix would push guys like Ben Brown, Cade Horton, Jordan Wicks and Hayden Wesneski down the depth chart.

“In one sense, you feel like you’re in a solid position because we have a number of young pitchers (who) have had success in the big leagues,” Manager Craig Counsell is quoted as saying in the piece. “Now with all of them, there’s been injuries. And it’s not a big sample as of yet. But that’s also kind of the nature of pitching. It’s the nature of young pitching. So we’re in a good spot in terms of that area of depth. But as we saw this year, it disappeared quickly.”

The quartet of Imanaga, Steele, Taillon and Assad have been the club’s best starters this year, both in terms of quality and quantity. Each of that group has an ERA of 3.41 or lower at the moment and all of them have tossed between 130 and 175 innings on the season thus far.

But as Counsell alluded to, there were also some challenges. Steele made a couple of trips to the injured list, one for a left hamstring strain and another for left elbow tendinitis. The Cubs had picked up a $16.5MM club option to bring back Kyle Hendricks but that ultimately proved to be a misstep. Hendricks struggled badly enough to get moved to the bullpen. He eventually retook a rotation spot but has a 6.28 ERA for the year overall. Wicks is currently on the IL for the third time this year, having gone on the shelf for a left forearm strain and then two separate stints for right oblique strains. Brown hasn’t pitched since June due to a stress reaction in his neck. Horton last pitched in May, getting shut down with a subscapularis strain and suffering a setback while trying to return the mound.

An argument could be made for rolling into 2025 with the same front four, letting the group of Wicks, Brown, Horton and Wesneski fight for the fifth spot. But with so many issues in 2024, adding some more security makes plenty of sense. None of those four are fully established. Wesneski is the only one with more than 81 big league innings pitched, and his 186 frames have been split between the bullpen and rotation. Wicks, Brown and Wesneski all still have options, meaning they could be stretched out in Triple-A if not needed on the big league staff. Horton isn’t yet on the 40-man and doesn’t need to be protected from the Rule 5 draft until December of 2025.

The Cubs also might not have much else on their winter to-do list. Even if Cody Bellinger eventually opts out, the outfield will still have Ian Happ, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Seiya Suzuki and Mike Tauchman, with Alexander Canario, Owen Caissie, Kevin Alcántara and Brennen Davis at Triple-A. The infield has Isaac Paredes, Dansby Swanson, Nico Hoerner and Michael Busch, with Matt Shaw knocking on the door. Miguel Amaya has shown some progress at the plate and Christian Bethancourt can be retained for next year if the Cubs believe in his recent performance. Moises Ballesteros will also be pushing for a job soon.

The bullpen arguably should be a focus but president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer had made it clear he would prefer to not to make free agent splashes there. As shown on MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, since Hoyer was hired in November of 2020, the club hasn’t given a multi-year deal to any reliever. And of the one-year deals they have given out, the only guy to get more than $5MM was Héctor Neris, who got $9MM.

Unless a change is coming in terms of the approach to bullpen construction, starting pitching is a logical target with the position player group in strong shape. And there should be some powder dry for reinforcements. The club went narrowly over the $237MM competitive balance tax this year, with RosterResource currently pegging their number a bit over $238MM. Next year’s tally is only at $126MM right now. Arbitration raises for guys like Paredes and Steele will certainly add to that number and it will grow significantly if Bellinger decides to stay, but there will still be room for a notable contract.

Hoyer hasn’t played at the top of the market in terms of starting pitching but has given out some mid-market deals. As shown in the MLBTR Contract Tracker again,  Imanaga, Taillon and Marcus Stroman have each received guaranteed between $53MM and $71MM, the largest guarantees the Cubs have given to starting pitchers in the Hoyer era.

This winter’s starting pitching class will be topped by guys like Corbin Burnes, Max Fried, Jack Flaherty and Blake Snell, assuming Snell stays healthy and opts out of his deal. Signing any of those guys would likely require the Cubs to go to a new level of spending, getting into nine-figure territory. If they want to stay in that Stroman/Taillon/Imanaga tier, they’d probably be debating names like Luis Severino, Sean Manaea, Nick Pivetta and others. Hall-of-Fame-bound veterans Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander will be limited to short-term deals since they are both in their 40s and coming off injury-plagued years in 2024.

The trade market will be another option for the Cubs. The White Sox didn’t end up flipping Garrett Crochet at the deadline but could perhaps make him available again in the winter. The Marlins lost almost all their rotation options to injury this year but it’s possible to see them considering deals as the group gets healthier for 2025. Somewhat similarly, the Rays seem to have an abundance of rotation options with Jeffrey Springs, Shane Baz and Drew Rasmussen returned from long absences, with Shane McClanahan to join them next year. Other possibilities will surely emerge as the winter goes on.

It will be an interesting offseason for the Cubs. Their signing of Swanson heading into 2023 seemed to signal a wish to return to contention after a couple of rebuilding years. They had a solid but unspectacular year in 2023, winning 83 games. They may top that here in 2024, currently at 80-76, but will miss the postseason again. Pressure figures to be high for a club that hasn’t made the postseason in a full campaign since 2018, but a lot of good elements are in place and a few finishing touches could perhaps get them over the hump in 2025.

Cubs Have Not Approached Jameson Taillon About Potential Deals

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When the Cubs signed righty Jameson Taillon to a four-year, $68MM deal in December 2022, that contract included a 10-team no-trade clause.  According to Taillon last night (link via Patrick Mooney of The Athletic), “I haven’t had to say yes or no to anything.”

Taillon, who professed his love for Chicago, coughed up six runs in four and a third innings to the Reds in Cincinnati last night.  He’ll turn 33 in November.  Taillon’s average fastball velocity is down a full tick this year, with his strikeout rate falling to 19.1%.  Though his ERA was 4.84 last year and currently sits at 3.35, there hasn’t been a skill change in these 18 starts.

Given that Taillon is owed $18MM in each of the 2025 and ’26 seasons, it’s possible the Cubs could look to get out of that commitment.  In the best case scenario, they could also extract some useful players from a market that saw the Astros provide a strong return for lefty Yusei Kikuchi.  Though the Cubs’ acquisition of Isaac Paredes from the Rays signaled an intention to retool and compete next year, trading Taillon before today’s 5pm central deadline could still make sense.

As Mooney notes, the Astros were one of the teams that had been connected to Taillon.  The Padres, Orioles, Yankees, and Red Sox have also been linked, though Baltimore picked up Zach Eflin.  We’ve also seen the Brewers, Cardinals, Royals, and Red Sox add starting pitching this month.  If he is to trade Taillon today, Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer has to contend with several better options being available on the market like Jack Flaherty, Garrett Crochet, and Blake Snell, plus similar ones in Nestor Cortes and Tyler Anderson.

Padres Notes: Taillon, Catching, DeVries

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Cubs right-hander Jameson Taillon has reportedly drawn interest from several teams as the trade deadline approaches, and it appears as though the Padres can be added to that list.  The Athletic’s Chandler Rome, Ken Rosenthal, and Patrick Mooney write that the Friars “have Taillon on their radar,” as starting pitching remains a need in San Diego.

Joe Musgrove might be on the verge of starting a minor league rehab assignment this coming week, but he’ll need multiple ramp-up starts since he hasn’t pitched since May 26.  Yu Darvish’s last MLB game was on May 29 and his last minor league rehab game was on June 19, and his return date remains uncertain given how the veteran is still on the Padres’ restricted list dealing with a personal family issue.

San Diego’s rotation has still posted solid numbers even without these two frontline pitchers, with the trio of Dylan Cease, Michael King, and Matt Waldron leading the way.  Bolstering that group with a veteran like Taillon, however, would allow the Padres to bump the struggling Adam Mazur out of the starting mix.  Should the Padres get Musgrove, Darvish, and a new addition joining up with Cease, King, and Waldron, they could perhaps adopt a six-man rotation to keep everyone fresh for the playoff drive, or this semi-surplus could resolve itself should other injuries emerge.

Taillon is far more than just a rental player, as he isn’t yet halfway through the four-year, $68MM contract he signed with Chicago during the 2022-23 offseason.  Taillon receives $18MM in each season of the deal, so he has roughly $43MM remaining in owed salary — a number that won’t appeal to a Padres club that is trying to reset its Competitive Balance Tax status.  After paying the tax in each of the previous three seasons, staying under the CBT line was a known goal for the Padres this season, and the team is projected (as per RosterResource) for a current tax number of roughly $224.8MM.

While this gives San Diego some wiggle room under the $237MM tax threshold, acquiring Taillon would alone absorb the rest of that CBT space, to say nothing or any other additions the Padres might might before the deadline.  The Padres could look to sweeten the prospect return in order to get the Cubs to cover a larger chunk of Taillon’s remaining salary, or perhaps some kind of larger multi-player deal could be arranged involving a notable contract heading from San Diego to Chicago to help offset the Taillon contract.  A.J. Preller and Jed Hoyer are no strangers to creative trades, and it is perhaps worth noting that the two clubs have been linked up on multiple trades over the last eight years — most notably the blockbuster that sent Darvish to San Diego during the 2020-21 offseason.

Speculatively speaking, it might be more likely that the Padres view Taillon as something of a backup plan, as one would imagine the Friars would first explore less-expensive options before considering adding another long-term pitching contract into the organization.  A possible trade might also be a moot point if Taillon happens to have San Diego as one of the 10 teams on his no-trade list, as his contract contains some partial protection against a deal.

Winners of their last six games, the streaking Padres have moved into a wild card position, and are only percentage points behind the Mets for the top NL wild card spot.  Since San Diego is only 6.5 games behind the Dodgers, the NL West title isn’t yet out of the question, but in any regard, the Padres are heating up at just the right time.  Preller figures to be aggressive in buying at the deadline to fully cement his team as a contender after missing the playoffs in 2023, even if upgrading while staying under the CBT line presents an interesting secondary challenge.

Beyond pitching, the Padres might also need help behind the plate, as the New York’s Post Jon Heyman writes that catching could be a target area.  Luis Campusano and Kyle Higashioka have handled the catching duties this season, with Campusano hitting .237/.280/.375 with six home runs over 239 plate appearances and Higashioka showing unexpected pop in hitting .226/.269/.540 with 12 homers in 145 PA.

That translates to a 127 wRC+ for Higashioka and an 89 wRC+ for Campusano, who has also posted subpar defensive metrics.  Former top prospect Campusano was seemingly starting to break out in 2023, but this season’s tough results could at least result in the loss of more playing time, if the Padres opt for the hotter hand in Higashioka.  Adding a new catcher would shake things up entirely, and Campusano could potentially see himself sent to Triple-A in that scenario since he still has a minor league option remaining.

Since Ethan Salas is one of baseball’s top prospects, the Padres already have a “catcher of the future” in the wings for a couple of seasons down the road, giving them some leverage to eventually move on from Campusano if he can’t get back on track.  Of course, there is danger in shuffling the catching position at midseason, and some teams shy away from deadline catching trades since it can be difficult on a catcher to join a new team and learn a new pitching staff’s tendencies on the fly.

Speaking of prospects, it remains to be seen how willing the Padres are to trade significantly from a minor league pipeline that has already been heavily mined for trades in recent years.  The Athletic’s Dennis Lin opines that shortstop prospect Leodalis De Vries might not be entirely untouchable in trade talks but is at least close to such status, as “the Padres will not consider moving him for anything less than controllable, star-level talent.”

The 17-year-old De Vries was an international signing just this past January, inked to a hefty $4.2MM bonus.  De Vries has already started to deliver on his potential by hitting .242/.362/.450 with nine homers and 11 steals (in 12 attempts) over his first 276 professional plate appearances, all at the A-level.  Xander Bogaerts told Lin that he was very impressed by De Vries’ talent and maturity when the two were briefly teammates during Bogaerts’ minor league rehab assignment this season, further enhancing De Vries’ status as a possible future cornerstone in the Padres’ lineup.  It is fair to assume plenty of other teams have taken notice and asked about De Vries in trade talks, giving Preller another big chip to possibly consider dangling for the right return by July 30.

Astros Interested In Erick Fedde, Jameson Taillon

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The Astros are prioritizing starting pitching before Tuesday’s deadline. They seem to be casting a wide net in their pursuit of at least a mid-rotation arm. This morning, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times listed the Astros among the teams in on Rays right-hander Zach Eflin. Eflin is one of many arms on their radar.

Russell Dorsey of Yahoo! Sports reports that the Astros and Cardinals are among 10 teams in contact with the White Sox about Erick Fedde. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale first reported the Cards’ interest in Fedde over the weekend. Chandler Rome, Ken Rosenthal and Patrick Mooney of the Athletic report that the Astros are also among the teams in the mix for Cubs starter Jameson Taillon, a Houston-area native.

Both pitchers have performed like #3 caliber starters this season. Fedde would command the more significant prospect package because of his affordability. A former first-round pick of the Nationals, Fedde never emerged as more than a back-end arm in Washington. He tweaked his pitch mix after signing with the KBO’s NC Dinos last season. After dominating en route to the KBO MVP award, he returned stateside on a two-year, $15MM free agent deal with the White Sox.

It’s the most successful move of Chris Getz’s general manager tenure to date. Fedde’s stuff has played in this look against big league hitters. He carries a 2.98 earned run average across 20 starts. Fedde is averaging nearly six innings per appearance and hasn’t had any difficulty turning a lineup over three times. His 21.6% strikeout rate is right around league average, while his 6.6% walk percentage is strong. Fedde doesn’t have the swing-and-miss stuff of teammate Garrett Crochet, but he has been a very productive source of above-average innings.

As something of a buy-low signing, Fedde is plenty affordable. He’s playing this season on a $7.5MM salary and will make a matching amount in 2025. Jon Heyman of the New York Post writes that the Sox are telling interested teams they’re willing to hang onto Fedde into next season if clubs don’t overwhelm them with a trade package. It’d nevertheless be a huge surprise if the 31-year-old is still in a White Sox uniform by Wednesday. There’s no realistic path for the Sox back to contention by next season and little chance that Fedde’s trade value will be higher than it is now — when he’s pitching at a career-best level and comes with a year and a half of cheap control.

Taillon’s production has been very similar. The 32-year-old righty has a 2.96 ERA over 100 1/3 frames. He’s striking out 19.1% of batters faced against a minuscule 5.1% walk rate. It’s a nice rebound after a home run spike led Taillon to allow nearly five earned runs per nine during his first season in Chicago. Taillon’s average fastball speed has dropped a tick to a career-low 92.5 MPH. That’s somewhat alarming but hasn’t prevented him from performing well this year.

Fedde is the more appealing trade chip based largely on the differences in their contracts. Taillon signed with the Cubs on a four-year, $68MM deal over the 2022-23 offseason. He’s playing on an $18MM salary and due a matching annual sum from 2025-26. While Fedde’s contract is well below what he’d get on the open market, Taillon’s is closer to neutral. If the Cubs were primarily concerned about offloading the latter half of that deal, they wouldn’t get a huge prospect return.

Houston has stormed back to overtake a reeling Mariners team atop the American League West. They’ve put themselves in position to buy — validating a front office that consistently maintained they’d do so — and now need to fortify the rotation. Houston is giving starts to rookies Spencer Arrighetti and Jake Bloss without much success.

They’re looking to move to a six-man rotation to lighten the stress on the rookies behind Framber Valdez, Hunter Brown and Ronel Blanco. Houston is hopeful of getting Justin Verlander and Luis Garcia back from injury after the deadline, but neither has had a linear recovery process. Cristian Javier and José Urquidy are down for the season, while Lance McCullers Jr. has hit repeated snags as he rehabs a flexor injury. If everyone’s healthy, acquiring another starter could push one or both of Arrighetti and Bloss out of the rotation.

The Astros don’t have a ton of assets to leverage in trade. Aggressive trades, picking at the back of the draft, and the fallout from the sign-stealing punishment have thinned the farm system. Outfielder Jacob Melton is the only Houston player on Baseball America’s most recent Top 100 prospect list, and the organizational depth is also lacking.

That’s not to say they can’t add rotation help. Hypothetically, Melton would be a compelling headliner in a Fedde package. Young big leaguers like Bloss, Arrighetti or outfielder Joey Loperfido are interesting potential secondary pieces. Houston isn’t working with the same prospect stockpile as are a lot of other teams in the market for rotation help, though.

One way to compensate for the mediocre farm system would be to take on salary. That’s particularly true with a player like Taillon. Yet Houston is already at an organizational high in terms of player spending. They’re going to pay the luxury tax for the first time in franchise history.

RosterResource calculates their CBT number around $256MM. Any noteworthy deadline pickup is going to push them past the $257MM mark for the second tier of penalization. That’s not much of an impediment on its own, but it involves a 32% tax on further spending. Houston is already paying a 20% fee on their first $20MM above the $237MM base threshold. It’s not clear how much further owner Jim Crane is content to stretch.

To that end, The Athletic writes that the Astros are trying to offload Rafael Montero in trade packages. Houston re-signed Montero to a three-year, $34.5MM deal early in the 2022-23 offseason. (That came while Crane was playing an outsized role in baseball operations between the firing of previous GM James Click and before Houston tabbed Dana Brown as general manager.) It has proven a very poor decision.

Montero was tagged for a 5.08 ERA across 67 1/3 innings a year ago. While this season’s 4.58 mark is a bit more respectable, Montero’s strikeout rate has plummeted to 14.6%. Montero has given up 12 runs over 13 2/3 innings since the start of June. He has walked nine batters and surrendered four home runs with only eight strikeouts in that time. Manager Joe Espada has had little choice but to relegate the veteran reliever to low-leverage work.

Clearly, Montero’s contract is well underwater. He’s playing on $11.5MM salaries this year and next. Other teams aren’t going to have any interest in taking any portion of that unless the Astros take back an undesirable deal or add to the prospect capital they’re putting in the offer.

Orioles Have Reportedly Shown Interest In Jameson Taillon

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The Orioles are among the teams that have expressed some interest in Cubs starter Jameson Taillon, reports Bruce Levine of 670 The Score. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale connected two other AL East teams — the Yankees and Red Sox — to Taillon over the weekend.

Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer admitted recently that the front office was prioritizing next season and beyond in its deadline dealings. That more or less rules them out of the bidding on impending free agents and suggests they’re open to offers on their rentals. It doesn’t mean they’re planning to aggressively market players under contract or team control beyond this season.

Taillon is under contract through 2026. The Cubs could certainly hold him even if they’re conceding it’s unlikely they’ll make a playoff run this season. The veteran righty is set to make $18MM in each of the next two years, though, so Chicago could prefer to offload that commitment and look to reallocate the money to other areas of the roster next offseason.

Getting out from the Taillon contract seemed unlikely just a few months ago. His first season in the Windy City wasn’t great, as he struggled to a 4.84 earned run average through 154 1/3 innings. His run prevention has improved here in 2024, with his ERA down to 2.96.

His underlying rate stats haven’t changed as drastically, however. He had a 21.4% strikeout rate and 6.3% walk rate last year, with those figures at 19.1% and 5.1% in 2024. He’s allowed fewer home runs and his batting average on balls in play has dropped from .292 to .275, helping his strand rate climb from 64.6% to 76.4%. FIP, which credits pitchers for home runs or the lack thereof, has Taillon going from last year’s 4.61 to this year’s 3.77. But SIERA, which normalizes home run rate, has given Taillon a lesser shift from last year’s 4.34 to this year’s 4.23.

Whether Taillon has significant changed from last year or not, he has a track record of being a decent rotation stalwart. He now has over 1,000 innings in his career with a 3.90 ERA, 21.4% strikeout rate, 5.9% walk rate and 42.3% ground ball rate.

The Cubs could hang onto him for the remainder of that contract but there’s also logic in making him available, as the long-term rotation picture still looks good even without Taillon in it. They could go into next season with Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga, Javier Assad and Jordan Wicks in four spots, with guys like Hayden Wesneski, Ben Brown and Caleb Kilian in the mix as well. Cade Horton, the club’s top prospect, is current dealing with a subscapularis strain but could be back on the mound later this year and in line for his major league debut. Prospects like Brandon Birdsell and Connor Noland have also reached the Triple-A level.

For the O’s, they are tied with the Guardians for the best record in the American League despite some rotation challenges. Kyle Bradish, John Means and Tyler Wells all required season-ending UCL surgery earlier this year, knocking three arms out of Baltimore’s rotation mix.

Currently, they have Corbin Burnes, Grayson Rodriguez, Dean Kremer and Albert Suárez as the core four in their rotation. Burnes and Rodriguez make for a solid one-two but Kremer is mostly a back-end guy. Suárez is having a nice season with a 3.48 ERA, but he’s a 34-year-old journeyman in the big leagues for the first time since 2017. They’ve given brief looks to prospects Cade Povich and Chayce McDermott without much success.

Adding to that group should be an obvious target for Baltimore. They’ve also been connected to a high-upside option in Garrett Crochet but it’s fair to wonder if that’s possible or likely. It’s also possible to see both Crochet and Taillon co-existing in this rotation next to Burnes and Rodriguez.

Speaking of Burnes, he’s an impending free agent, which will open a massive hole in next year’s rotation. General manager Mike Elias has admitted that adding controllable starting pitching would make sense for the club, perhaps making the extra two seasons on Taillon’s deal part of the appeal for them. Levine’s report adds that Taillon’s contract allows him to block trades to ten teams, but it’s not known which teams are on that list.

Hoyer: Cubs Prioritizing “2025 And Beyond” At Deadline

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This morning, The Athletic reported that the Cubs did not anticipate buying at the deadline. President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer essentially confirmed as much in a chat with reporters just before tonight’s matchup with the Brewers.

Hoyer said the front office will approach the deadline with an eye toward to the future. “Where we are right now, I would have to say that moves only for 2024 – unless things change over the next week – we probably won’t do a lot of moves that only help us for this year,” Chicago’s baseball ops leader said (link via Jesse Rogers of ESPN). “If moves help us for 2025 and beyond I think we’re exceptionally well positioned.”

While Hoyer left open the slight caveat that the situation could change this week, there’s not much ambiguity in how he expects to handle the deadline. He spoke frankly about the team’s “poor position” with regards to this season. “We simply dug a hole with underperformance for two months. That doesn’t affect how I view the organization or how I view things going forward but it certainly affects 2024,” Hoyer said.

It’s clear the Cubs aren’t going to pursue any impending free agents. Hoyer didn’t term Chicago’s approach as buying or selling. That leaves open the possibility of trying to acquire MLB talent that is under team control beyond this season. While that’s not unprecedented (the Reds’ acquisition of Trevor Bauer and the Mets’ deal for Marcus Stroman in 2019 are examples of teams acquiring controllable players at the deadline despite being out of contention), it’s not common. The Cubs would need to outbid teams that are motivated to land those players for both a potential playoff push this summer and future seasons.

Chicago’s farm system is regarded as one of the strongest in the league. That gives Hoyer and his staff the ammunition to make a deal for a controllable player of note, but the likelier outcome is that the Cubs will just move a few short-term veterans. Hoyer shot down any suggestion of a complete teardown, saying it’s “not going to be an option so (there’s) no point in going through the hypothetical.” That makes it unlikely they’d deal core pieces who are under contract or team control beyond this season (e.g. Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga, Ian Happ, Michael Busch).

Prioritizing 2025 would ordinarily put a team’s rentals on the table, but the Cubs don’t have much to offer in that regard. Kyle Hendricks, Drew Smyly (whose deal contains a $2.5MM buyout on a $10MM mutual option) and recent minor league signee Jorge López are the only true rentals. Hendricks is playing on a $16.5MM salary and has an earned run average pushing 7.00. While he has pitched better lately after a dismal start to the season, there’d be minimal interest. The Cubs could try to pay down almost all of the contract to find a trade partner. Hendricks also has full no-trade rights after reaching 10 years of MLB service (at least the last five of which have been with his current team) earlier this season.

Smyly has a 2.92 ERA across 37 innings in a long relief capacity. That solid run prevention isn’t supported by mediocre strikeout and walk rates (21% and 10.2%, respectively). Between his $8.5MM salary and the aforementioned option buyout, there’s likely to be limited interest in the veteran left-hander.

Cody Bellinger has the ability to opt out of the final two years and $50MM on his contract. He has had a fine but unexceptional season, hitting .269/.331/.410 across 344 plate appearances. That’d be a difficult contract to move even if Bellinger were healthy, and he went on the injured list a couple weeks ago with a broken finger.

If the Cubs wanted to more or less run things back in 2025, they’d be in for a very quiet deadline. Yet even if they’re not likely to move long-term core pieces, Chicago could entertain offers on role players who are controllable beyond this season. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported over the weekend that the Yankees and Red Sox were looking at starter Jameson Taillon, who’ll make $18MM annually between 2025-26. Rogers reports that the Cubs have also gotten interest in third baseman/DH Christopher Morel and relievers Héctor Neris, Mark Leiter Jr. and Tyson Miller.

Morel, 25, is under team control through 2028. He’ll be a borderline candidate for the Super Two cutoff for early arbitration next offseason. The Cubs are certainly under no financial pressure to move him, but it’s possible they’re prepared to move on if another team views Morel as a regular. Morel is a good athlete with big power upside who has never found a defensive home. Chicago has unsuccessfully tried him in second base and throughout the outfield in previous seasons. They’ve given him 562 innings at third base this year, hoping his top-of-the-scale arm strength would work at the position. Defensive Runs Saved and Statcast’s Outs Above Average have each given him very poor grades for his stint at the hot corner.

This also hasn’t been a great season for Morel at the plate. While he has 18 homers, he’s hitting .202 with a .304 on-base mark. It’s a step down from the .241/.311/.471 career slash line that Morel carried into the season. While that’s clearly not ideal, it belies some intriguing developments from a process perspective. Morel has upped his walk rate by a couple points while dramatically slicing his strikeouts. After fanning in over 30% of his plate appearances for his first two seasons, he’s striking out 23.8% of the time this year. An unsustainably low .221 average on balls in play has kept that from materializing into better results.

Even if the Cubs expect Morel’s offensive performance to normalize with an uptick in his average on balls in play, the lack of a defensive fit makes him a difficult player to value. The Cubs could hope to turn third base over to last year’s first-round pick Matt Shaw as soon as next season. They don’t have much in the way of short-term alternatives. If the Cubs traded Morel, they’d probably rely on Miles Mastrobuoni and Patrick Wisdom to cover the position for the rest of the season.

The Cubs should be open to offers on anyone in their bullpen. Neris has handled the ninth inning since Adbert Alzolay went down with a forearm strain. The offseason signee has been shaky, walking 16.1% of opponents and blowing four saves in 17 attempts. Neris had a 1.71 ERA for the Astros last season, but that’s up two runs this year thanks to his control woes. The 35-year-old righty is playing on a $9MM salary and has a matching option for next year. That’s currently a team option but would convert to a player option if Neris pitches in 24 more games.

Given his inconsistency, the Cubs aren’t likely to want Neris back at that price point. They’d presumably be happy to find a trade partner, but the potential for being saddled with a $9MM player option if Neris hits his vesting marker could make other teams wary. There’s less risk with regards to Leiter and Miller. The former is striking out 34.4% of opponents with a 50.6% grounder rate across 34 innings. He’s playing on a $1.5MM salary and is under arbitration control through 2026. Miller, whom the Cubs acquired from Seattle in May, has broken out with a 2.04 ERA while striking out nearly 26% of opponents across 35 1/3 frames.

Whether the Cubs get compelling enough offers to move anyone from that group remains to be seen. They’re not entirely buried in the Wild Card standings, sitting 3.5 games back of the last playoff spot (currently held by the Mets). With four intervening teams to jump, the front office has decided they’re at best a long shot to make the postseason. How much they’re willing to reshape the roster with the ’25 campaign in mind will be one of the bigger questions of the upcoming week.

Cubs Don’t Expect To Be Deadline Buyers

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The Cubs’ deadline trajectory has been an oft-discussed topic over the course of the past few weeks, with the team sitting at or near the bottom of the NL Central but also within striking distance of the final NL Wild Card spot. They’ve ostensibly explored possibilities on both ends of the buy/sell spectrum, showing interest in Toronto catcher Danny Jansen while also reportedly talking with both the Yankees and Red Sox about the potential of a Jameson Taillon trade. The Cubs dropped their first two games coming out of the All-Star break to a D-backs team that’s now tied for the final Wild Card spot, though they dodged a sweep in an extra-inning win Sunday.

While the Cubs are 3.5 games out in the Wild Card hunt, the latest report from Patrick Mooney, Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon of The Athletic indicates that the Cubs aren’t planning to be buyers at next week’s trade deadline. That’s not an indication there’ll be any kind of prominent fire sale for the Cubs either, however. Chicago hopes to contend next year and isn’t likely to move players who are under control unless they receive big league-ready talent in return.

As for the Cubs’ slate of rental players, there’s simply not much to peddle to other clubs. Drew Smyly is sitting on an impressive 2.92 ERA in 37 relief innings, but he’s also walked 10.2% of his opponents and is playing on a contract other teams will want to avoid. Smyly is owed the balance of an $8.5MM salary for the current season (about $3.2MM) in addition to a $2.5MM buyout on a $10MM mutual option for the 2025 season.

Righty Kyle Hendricks is a free agent at season’s end but isn’t going to draw any interest with a $16MM salary and a 6.69 ERA (unless the Cubs eat the entirety of his contract, perhaps). Hector Neris has a 3.74 ERA and 24.2% strikeout rate in 33 2/3 innings — but he’s also walked a career-worst 16.1% of opponents. Neris is playing on a $9MM salary, and his $9MM club option will convert to a player option if he appears in 24 more games this season (60 total). That’s going to turn off any potentially interested parties. Cody Bellinger can become a free agent at season’s end, but he’s on the injured list with a fractured finger and the two opt-out provisions on his three-year deal would’ve made trading him extraordinarily difficult anyhow.

The Athletic’s report at least raises the speculative possibility of listening to offers for starter Justin Steele, though with three-plus seasons of club control remaining, the price would presumably be as high or even higher than the asks for crosstown ace Garrett Crochet (two years of club control remaining) and AL Cy Young front-runner Tarik Skubal (the latter of whom is not expected to be traded). There’s no reason to think the Cubs would outwardly shop Steele, but listening to see if someone steps up with a Juan Soto-esque haul for last year’s fifth-place NL Cy Young finisher is sensible enough.

With regard to Taillon, there’d be some sense to moving him even if the team doesn’t envision a broad-reaching sell-off. In signing any free agent to a long-term deal, a team is most interested in the first couple years of said contract. The 2025-26 seasons will be Taillon’s age-33 and age-34 campaigns. He’ll earn $18MM in each season on his slightly backloaded $68MM deal. Moving him would free up some money to potentially spend on a younger pitcher this offseason — or perhaps on another area of need entirely.

The Cubs control Steele, Shota Imanaga, Javier Assad, Ben Brown, Hayden Wesneski and Jordan Wicks through at least the 2027 season. Prospects Cade Horton and Brandon Birdsell are rising quickly through the system. There’s some depth from which to deal, and a Taillon trade could bring in talent, shed future payroll and reduce future luxury tax obligations. Taillon wouldn’t command nearly the same type of haul as Steele for a number of reasons (age, salary, general talent level), but there aren’t many arms available so the Cubs could conceivably take advantage of that shortage and see what the market bears.

It’s worth emphasizing, too, that most teams’ plans remain pretty fluid this time of year. While teams facing a gaps of eight, nine, ten or more games in their respective postseason pursuits are sure to focus on selling (just as clubs in the opposite position will primarily focus on adding), nearly half the teams in baseball exist in a relative purgatory between those two ends of the spectrum. There’s currently a three-team tie for the third NL Wild Card spot (Mets, D-backs, Padres), and another five teams are within four games of that final spot — the Cubs among them. In the American League, there are four teams within six games of the final Wild Card spot.

For instance, if the Cubs snapped off six or seven straight wins beginning today, they’d presumably be far more open to the idea of adding some pieces. That’s particularly true because their next three games come against the division-leading Brewers. But a win streak of that nature is always a long shot, and it’s plenty notable that for the time being, Chicago isn’t viewing itself as a team that will trade even lower-caliber minor league talent in exchange for some marginal rental upgrades. Time will tell whether the players on the field can push the front office to take a more aggressive stance, but right now it seems likely the Cubs are in for a relatively quiet deadline.

Red Sox, Yankees Have Reportedly Talked To Cubs About Jameson Taillon

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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.

Cubs Activate Kyle Hendricks From Injured List

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TODAY: The Cubs officially reinstated Hendricks from the injured list this morning, and announced that right-hander Jose Cuas had been optioned to Triple-A Iowa in the corresponding move. Cuas, 30 next month, has struggled to a 9.00 ERA and 5.03 FIP in six appearances with the club this year.

May 11: The Cubs plan to activate right-hander Kyle Hendricks from the 15-day injured list tomorrow, manager Craig Counsell told reporters (including Maddie Lee of the Chicago Sun Times) following tonight’s game. He’ll start tomorrow’s game against the Pirates opposite left-hander Bailey Falter. The Cubs will need to make space for Hendricks on the active roster prior to the game.

Right-hander Jameson Taillon was initially expected to start tomorrow’s game, but Counsell told reporters (as noted by Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune) earlier today that the right-hander was dealing with a bout of back stiffness that cropped up during a bullpen session on Tuesday. While Counsell indicated after the game that Taillon’s bullpen session today went well, he nonetheless is “not quite ready” to start another game. With left-hander Shota Imanaga lined up to start Monday’s series opener in Atlanta, that would put Taillon in line to potentially take the ball opposite the Braves on Tuesday.

That Taillon won’t require another trip to the injured list is surely a relief for Cubs fans. The right-hander missed the first three weeks of the season with lower back and quad issues but has been excellent in four starts since being activated off the IL, with a 1.13 ERA and 3.52 FIP in 24 innings of work. On the other hand, it’s somewhat surprising to see Hendricks activated off the injured list so quickly. While the right-hander has been on a rehab assignment since the start of May, the club had previously indicated that the plan was for Hendricks to make a third rehab start this weekend before determining next steps. That plan now appears to have been scuttled in favor of Hendricks returning to the club’s rotation.

Rushing the veteran back into action at the big league level is a risky decision after his start to the season. The 34-year-old righty was placed on the injured list at the end of April due to a lower back issue of his own after making five starts, the results of which were nothing short of brutal. Hendricks has yet to record an out in the sixth inning in any of his appearances this season, and has completed the fifth inning just once while striking out just 15.1% of batters faced. While his 6.6% walk rate is more or less in line with his career norms, he’s allowed a whopping eight home runs this season en route to a ghastly 12.00 ERA and 7.72 FIP in 21 innings of work. MLBTR’s Anthony Franco explored Hendricks’s tough start in depth shortly before the club placed him on the IL last month.

Assuming Taillon is able to slot back into the club’s rotation next week and Hendricks will remain in the mix for starts for the time being, the Cubs figure to have an overflow of starting pitching options for their rotation at the moment. Right-hander Ben Brown has already moved into a bullpen role after starting four games for the club earlier this year, and lefty Jordan Wicks is currently on the injured list while nursing a forearm strain, but that still leaves Imanaga, Justin Steele, Javier Assad, and Hayden Wesneski in the mix for starts alongside Taillon and Hendricks, to say nothing of top prospect Cade Horton lurking at the Triple-A level.

Assuming an injury within that group doesn’t solve the logjam organically, the Cubs appear likely to either utilize a six-man rotation or simply move Wesneski to the bullpen, where he would pair with Brown to form a lethal multi-inning duo who could be used in a variety of roles to bolster a struggling relief corps. Assad also has relief experience on his resume, but it would be something of a shock to see the Cubs move the 26-year-old out of the rotation given sensational start to the season that’s seen him pitch to a 1.70 ERA in eight starts. It’s also possible that if Hendricks’s struggles continue the club could look to remove him from the rotation, although his lone relief appearance at the big league level came all the way back in 2016.

Cubs Notes: Taillon, Steele, Wisdom

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Cubs right-hander Jameson Taillon opened the season on the injured list after missing all of Spring Training due to calf and back issues, but club manager Craig Counsell told reporters (including the Chicago Sun Times’ Maddie Lee) that Taillon’s next start will come with the big league club in Chicago after a strong rehab start from the 32-year-old Friday night during which he struck out 4 in 3 2/3 scoreless innings while building up to 68 pitches.

Taillon is in the second year of the four-year, $68MM deal he signed with Chicago and enters 2024 hoping to get off to a better start after a brutal first half sank his 2023 campaign. The right-hander pitched to solid results in his first 3 starts with the Cubs last year but struggled badly following a groin injury he sustained in mid-April, posting a 7.61 ERA and 6.07 FIP in his next eleven starts. From there, however, the right-hander appeared to turn a corner and performed more like the mid-rotation arm he was signed to be, with a 3.38 ERA and 4.24 FIP over his final 90 2/3 innings of work.

If the veteran righty can maintain that form he showed in the second half of the season last year, it would provide a major boost to the Cubs’ rotation. The club has been forced to lean heavily on youngsters Javier Assad, Jordan Wicks, and Ben Brown to this point in the young 2024 campaign due to injuries sustained by Taillon and ace lefty Justin Steele in addition to the struggles of veteran right-hander Kyle Hendricks, who has posted a 12.08 ERA across the first three starts of his 2024 campaign. Taillon’s return to the rotation could allow one of those young pitchers to move to the bullpen, where the club has seen closer Adbert Alzolay and veteran free agent signing Hector Neris scuffle somewhat to open the season.

Looking beyond Taillon, it seems as though more reinforcements for the club’s pitching staff could be on the way in the coming weeks, as Counsell indicated to reporters (including Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune) that Steele was also making progress in his bid to return from the hamstring strain he sustained during his Opening Day start against the Rangers. Per Counsell, Steele was scheduled to throw a 25-pitch bullpen session yesterday. It’s a notable step forward for the lefty, which MLB.com adds comes on the heels of a 75-pitch simulated game pitched off flat ground in San Diego earlier this week.

The news appears to leave Steele on track to return sometime next month. That Steele appears to be on track to return fairly quickly is surely a relief for Chicago, as the lefty has broken out as one of the game’s best starters in recent years. Dating back to June of the 2022 season, Steele has pitched to a sterling 2.73 ERA with a 3.05 FIP across 45 starts. In that time, only Justin Verlander, Shohei Ohtani, and Blake Snell have posted a lower ERA in at least 250 innings of work, while only Verlander, Spencer Strider, Kevin Gausman, and Sonny Gray boast a lower FIP.

Also on the mend from injury is slugger Patrick Wisdom, who began the season on the injured list due to back strain. The 32-year-old is six games into a rehab assignment with Triple-A Iowa, however, and could be rapidly nearing a return. Counsell told reporters recently (including those at MLB.com) that Wisdom could rejoin the club at some point during their current road trip. The Cubs will finish a series in Seattle this afternoon before wrapping their road trip with a three-game set in Arizona.

Should Wisdom end up joining the club in Arizona, that could be the end of veteran first baseman Garrett Cooper’s time with Chicago. Cooper has impressed in part-time duty with five hits including a double, a triple, and a home run in his first 15 plate appearances with the club. Even so, it’s hard to imagine the Cubs having room for both the 2022 All Star and Wisdom on the roster when Michael Busch and Christopher Morel appear to have locked down the infield corners for the foreseeable future. Cooper cannot be optioned to the minor leagues after signing a minor league deal with the club in free agency, though each of Wisdom, Nick Madrigal, and Miles Mastrobuoni have options remaining should the Cubs wish to retain Cooper on the big league roster.

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