The Cubs pulled off a huge deal last week, acquiring outfielder Kyle Tucker from the Cubs in exchange for third baseman Isaac Paredes, right-hander Hayden Wesneski and prospect Cam Smith. President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer spoke to members of the media today (including Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune, Bruce Levine of 670 The Score and Maddie Lee of the Chicago Sun-Times), addressing Tucker and the club’s corner infield options.
While Tucker is a big upgrade for the 2025 team, he is set to be a free agent after that. That means he doesn’t currently provide the Cubs any value beyond the upcoming season, apart from the extra draft pick they would receive if he rejects a qualifying offer at season’s end and then signs elsewhere.
The Cubs could always change that future by signing Tucker to an extension, something that Hoyer touched upon a bit. “I don’t know what the future holds,” he said. “But obviously Chicago sells itself really well. And so, I’m excited to bring him in for this year, and we’ll see where it goes beyond that. But clearly this was the kind of player that we lacked.”
It’s fair to assume that the Cubs would love to have Tucker beyond just the one year. They clearly value the player highly, based on the strong package of talent they gave up just for that one season, plus the aforementioned QO compensation. Tucker himself also spoke today (per Levine) and said he’s open to having talks before he hits the open market.
While it’s nice that Tucker is open to having talks, agreeing on a price point might be a challenge. Tucker has been one of the better players in baseball in recent years and is slated to hit free agency ahead of his age-29 season. To get a really good player to sign an extension just before hitting free agency ahead of his 30th birthday isn’t cheap, as shown in MLBTR’s Contract Tracker. Some recent examples include $365MM for Mookie Betts, $341MM for Francisco Lindor and $313.5MM for Rafael Devers.
It’s a somewhat similar situation to the one that just played out between Juan Soto and the Yankees. He was acquired from the Padres with one year remaining before hitting free agency, said he was open to contract talks at any time, but ultimately became a free agent and signed a mega deal with the Mets.
With the Cubs, it’s arguably even less likely to get done. Tucker’s earning power isn’t as high as Soto’s but the Cubs have never given out deals even to that Betts/Lindor/Devers level. Jason Heyward’s $184MM deal is still the largest in franchise history, even though it’s almost a decade old at this point. Since Hoyer took over, the club’s largest deal has been $177MM for Dansby Swanson, the only time he’s gone higher than $85MM. Perhaps they are willing to break that pattern for Tucker, who they clearly like, but it would likely require them to effectively double the Heyward/Swanson deals.
Hoyer also addressed the third base situation at Wrigley, as trading Paredes created an opening there. It has been expected that the club would be willing to give prospect Matt Shaw to take that spot. Hoyer seems to be open to that coming to pass, saying that Shaw would get a “long look”, though he wouldn’t just call it a done deal. “He has to earn that job,” Hoyer said. “I’m not going to gift him that on a conference call in the middle of December.”
That’s a fair position to take. Though Shaw has performed very well in the minors, even the best prospects can struggle when first called up to the majors, so nothing can be taken for granted. Selected 13th overall last summer, Shaw has slashed .303/.384/.522 so far in 159 minor league games across different levels. That includes a line of .298/.395/.534 in 35 Triple-A games to finish his 2024 season, so there’s definitely an argument for him cracking the majors to start 2025.
But since there’s no guarantee he will hit the ground running, the Cubs will need to have backup plans. The Cubs had six players spend at least 85 innings at third this year, but Miles Mastrobuoni is the only one of the six left on the roster. As mentioned, Paredes was in the Tucker deal. The Cubs traded Christopher Morel to the Rays in order to acquire Paredes in the first place. Nick Madrigal and Patrick Wisdom were non-tendered at season’s end. David Bote was outrighted off the roster in August.
Infielder Gage Workman was just grabbed from the Tigers in the Rule 5 draft, so he has a roster spot for now, but he doesn’t have any major league nor any Triple-A experience. Ben Cowles and Luis Vázquez are other multi-positional infielders currently on the 40-man. Perhaps the Cubs will look at adding to that group by signing a veteran utility man, whether that’s to a modest major league deal or a minor league pact.
One thing that is apparently not under consideration is moving Michael Busch across the diamond. The club had an outfield logjam but Cody Bellinger can play first, so it was theoretically possible for them to open that spot for Bellinger by moving Busch to the hot corner, a position where he has 99 1/3 innings of major league experience. But Busch got strong grades for his first base defense this year and Hoyer suggested their focus would be keeping him there. Bellinger was traded to the Yankees after Hoyer’s comments this afternoon.
Unrelated to Hoyer’s comments, there was another Cubs tidbit of note this week. Patrick Mooney and Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic report that the club has considered the possibility of stretching out right-hander Nate Pearson as a starter.
There’s some merit to the plan but it may be difficult to pull off. Pearson was a starting pitching prospect of note with the Blue Jays before injuries pushed him into a relief role. As recently as July, he expressed an interest in returning to a rotation role, shortly before he was traded to the Cubs.
Bullpen-to-rotation conversions have been all the rage lately. Some recent success stories have included Michael King, Seth Lugo, Reynaldo López, Garrett Crochet and others. It doesn’t always work, with the A.J. Puk experiment one attempt that didn’t pan out, but clubs seem to be warm to the idea. The Mets have signed Clay Holmes with a plan of stretching him out next year and there have been some reports suggesting Jeff Hoffman might get a rotation gig next year as well.
With Pearson, it’s tough to see a path next year. The Cubs already have Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, Matthew Boyd, Jameson Taillon and Javier Assad in the rotation, with reported interest in Jesús Luzardo of the Marlins as well. They also have Jordan Wicks, Ben Brown, Cade Horton and other potential starters around, so all those guys might not leave a lot of room for Pearson to get big league starts. As such, Mooney and Sharma admit that Pearson is most likely to stick in a relief role next year.
