The Chicago Cubs need to put all this trade deadline sell talk on hold, at least for the immediate future.
Granted, the Chicago Cubs have played sub-par ball and do not look like much of a serious post-season threat. They begin play June 15 at just 30-37, having lost 24 of 40 since May 1. They’ve played better in June, but that’s still only led to a .500 record (6-6).
The two best reasons why the Cubs — or any team — ought to go into “sell” mode are that they have no short-term prospect for success, and that they have marketable assets.
The second reason is clearly true in the case of the Cubs. Their best pitcher, Marcus Stroman, is having an All-Star season. He’s 7-4 with a league-leading 2.42 ERA in 14 starts. More significantly, at season’s end, he has an opt-out in his three-year deal, which nominally runs through 2024.
The way he’s going, Stroman would be an idiot not to exercise that opt out. It is widely understood across the MLB landscape that he is not an idiot.
The other marketable asset is center fielder Cody Bellinger. He’s been sidelined with an injury since the second week of May, but Bellinger is expected back soon to resume a renaissance season. He’s hitting .271 with an .830 OPS, and has been a positive force in center field.
There are two other reasons why the Cubs might be inclined to sell Bellinger. First, he’s playing on a one-year deal. Second, his replacement, veteran Mike Tauchman, is having a decent season himself. Since taking over in center field, Tauchman is batting .299 with a .758 OPS.
Those are the reasons for the Chicago Cubs to sell … but there are also at least two excellent reasons not to sell.
For the present, anyway, those reasons out to outweigh the impulse to sell that often pervades decision-making on the North Side.
The first is simply that, for all their inconsistent play, the Cubs remain very much in the running in the under-nourished NL Central. Granted, they are seven games below .500 (30-37), but that leaves them only 4.5 games behind the division-leading Pirates.
The confusion engulfing the entire division should give the Cubs hope. The Central’s perennial powerhouse, the St. Louis Cardinals, are 15 games below .500. They’ve lost five in a row, 10 of their last 12, and with each passing day appear more and more befuddled.
The Brewers, the alternative preseason favorite to St. Louis, are schlepping along at .500 (34-34), but they too are on a losing jag. In Milwaukee’s case, it’s six straight and seven of nine.
That leaves the Pirates and Reds, a pair of young and upcoming teams but hardly intimidating. Why shouldn’t the Cubs believe they can contend with Pittsburgh and Cincinnati?
The second reason is that when teams sell talent, they do so in the hope that doing so will bring back prospects who will enrich them down the road … but that hope is often illusory.
The Cubs know this from personal experience. They went through a major sell jag just two years ago at the 2021 trade deadline.
Within a handful of days in late July that year, the team dumped the under-performing core of its 2016 championship squad. Anthony Rizzo went to the Yankees, Javier Baez to the Mets, Craig Kimbrel to the White Sox, and Kris Bryant to the Giants. The return featured seven prospects or young veterans.
Two seasons later, none of the seven has established himself as potentially valuable in a reconstructed Cubs pennant contender either this year or in the near future. Several, in fact, have demonstrated just the opposite.
In exchange for Rizzo, the Cubs got two touted prospects, outfielder Kevin Alcantara and pitcher Alexander Vizcaino. Alcantara has not progressed above High-A, where he’s batting.249 with a .659 OPS. On the plus side, he’s only 20, so there’s still hope. Vizcaino is out of baseball entirely.
Bryant brought back pitcher Caleb Kilian and outfielder Alexander Canario. Kilian, 26, has made four starts with the parent team, and they were each a disaster, working out to an 0-3 record and 12.27 ERA. He’s been sentenced to a second season at Triple-A Iowa while the front office tries to figure out whether Triple-A is his ceiling..
Canario, 22, played last season at High-A, and was credible at .281, but he sustained a season-ending shoulder injury playing winter ball.
The most intriguing return at the time was and remains Pete Crow-Armstrong, a center fielder obtained from the Mets for Baez. If there is eventually to be a substantive return to the Cubs from that 2021 fire sale, it is likely to be Crow-Armstrong. He is 21 and is making an impression at Double-A Tennessee, where he is considered the system’s top prospect.
The trade of Kimbrel to the White Sox returned reliever Codi Heuer and infielder Nick Madrigal, both established major leaguers. But Heuer sustained an elbow injury late in the 2021 season, underwent Tommy John surgery, and is fighting control issues during a rehab stint at Triple-A. Madrigal is batting .241 as a part-timer.
So even if the Cubs trade Stroman and/or Bellinger, there’s no guarantee they’ll get anything of substantive value back in return. They might be surrendering a plausible run at a division title for little or nothing.
And while it’s fair to argue that even if the Cubs do make the postseason, they hardly look like a team with a championship run in them, it’s also important to keep in mind that the playoffs are a different animal.
The Phillies didn’t look like championship material last season, entering as the final NL Wild Card, but they won the pennant. Washington won the 2019 World Series as a Wild Card, as did St. Louis in 2011 and San Francisco in 2014. The Giants beat fellow Wild Card Kansas City that year.