Quote:
Originally Posted by Hoover
I wouldn't write off the Cubs any time soon. You do realize they they don't pay dick for most of their position players.
Shit, the only guys they pay any real money from is Jason Heyward, Rizzo, and Zobrist. Everyone else is under team control or in the early stages of arbritration. Do they need to get better? Yeah. Has the money spent on starting pitching worked out? No. But this is a 95-100 win team year in and year out.
For this Cubs fan, I think they should do a little rebuild, trade a legit asset for some young pitching, but I doubt that happens.
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Yeah, as a Royals fan who admires both the Cubs and Cardinals approaches to winning, I think the doom and gloom towards the Cubs’ window is a bit short-sighted.
The Cubs definitely need to enhance their bullpen and starting pitching, but they aren’t irreconcilably behind in those spots.
I think they need to add an experienced stopper on the back end. The relief market is pretty rich this year, and I would expect the Cubs to be in play for one of Andrew Miller, Britton, Holland (who was vintage as a National), or Familia.
In the starting pitching market, there’s not a ton there. They’ll pick up Hamels’ option and start their rotation with Lester, Hamels, Hendricks, and Darvish. That leaves them hunting one spot (also have Smyly returning 18+ months out from his Tommy John).
(Edit) Hit post and realized I’d completely left Quintana out of this. He’s an factor, too, obviously.
Is one of Keuchel or Corbin possible? Hard to say as those are clear top 2s. But there are also a lot of intriguing guys I could see Epstein kicking the tires on:
Eovaldi
Harvey
Ryu
Happ
Gio Gonzalez
They also have a pair of good-but-not-as-good-as-they-used-to-be pieces in Schwarber and Russell, who are expendable. I imagine a team like the Dbacks - who seem poised for a retool if not a rebuild - might be willing to offload Greinke for something built around those guys.