Major League Baseball’s offseason is upon us, and the outlook is as murky as murky could be. On the heels of the infamous 2018-19 free agency, in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and with CBA changes already on the horizon after the 2021 season, what certainty there is consists of the knowledge that this could get very ugly. Revenues are down, and while it’s impossible to know by how much due to the lack of transparency by Major League Baseball and its owners, this can’t be helpful for free agents. There are talks of labor negotiations this offseason in addition to those looming next offseason. There are plenty of rumors about what will become of the luxury tax, whether a salary cap will be enacted, what long-overdue changes could be on their way for the service time system, etc.
As for the Cubs: While one can’t know the state of their books without resorting to espionage, there are legitimate reasons to believe the Cubs to be on the higher side of those suffering from a coronavirus-driven revenue decrease. This was the debut year of the Marquee Sports Network, something that was supposed to bring in a lot of cash but got only 60 games, not 162, and hardly got on even Comcast before games began. The Cubs get more revenue, volume-wise if not percentage-wise, from attendance than the average franchise, and that well was dry this year. And while these factors might not be a death sentence for offseason activity given neutral priors, the priors are not neutral. The Ricketts family has been clear for two years now on not wanting to lead the league in payroll, or at least not wanting to lead the league by a large margin. Spending will likely be down across the league. It will almost certainly stay down for the Cubs.
Given this backdrop, let’s talk about the one clear and obvious hole in the 2021 roster.
Yu Darvish and Kyle Hendricks are in the 2021 rotation plan. Alec Mills is there too. From the sounds of things, Adbert Alzolay is part of the script. That leaves at least one spot open (yes, it would be better to have six or more viable starters, but one spot has to be filled), with five options for how to fill it:
Option: Bring Back Jon Lester
This option might not be particularly likely, but it’s probably the most likely of the five. $25 million, the price of Lester’s 2021 option, is steep, but so is $10 million, the price of his buyout. Finding a number between those would likely mean overpaying for a pitcher who’ll be 37 on Opening Day and posted a 5.14 FIP across the abbreviated season, but it may present better value than paying $10 million and finding another arm to take his place.
Option: Promote from Within
Brailyn Marquez is a person who exists, and he’s a person with some enticing expectations coming out of the minor leagues. Asking him to be part of an Opening Day rotation would be a big bet, but it’s a viable path, and not something to rule out just yet. On the whole, it’s effectively an option within this next option, but it’s being discussed enough in the blogosphere to be mentioned explicitly.
Option: Do Nothing
This could go in two directions:
The first would be a game of prospect roulette, in which the Cubs hope that one of Marquez, Cory Abbott, Justin Steele, Tyson Miller, or maybe even Keegan Thompson can get the job done. That’s a lot to ask, and there’s a philosophy out there that pushes to avoid rushing prospects to the majors out of fear they might land irreparably below their potential from the experience. I don’t personally know if there’s any data to back up this philosophy, but the idea exists.
The second would be a game of swingman roulette, or intentional bullpen games. Regular bullpen games have been done, and have been done by contenders. The Cubs did have a strong bullpen in 2020 by the time all was said and done. They would need to add a few bullpen pieces, but that’s not prohibitively difficult or even unusual in the context of the last few tight-budget years. It’s also a smaller ask to turn minor leaguers into viable relievers than to find one to be a viable full-time starter.
Option: Trade
As you may have heard, the Cubs have a number of big names with one year remaining before free agency.
By definition, the trade market is near-universal, so it’s hard to name specific potential targets at this point, but one would guess it would be more likely for Epstein & Hoyer to pursue a younger, controllable arm than one year of someone closer to the top of the rotation, due to both salary reasons and the high number of projected post-2021 free agents already on the roster.
Option: Free Agency
And finally, the free agent market.
This is right there with re-signing Lester as a likely route. There are cheap starters available, a category that possibly includes José Quintana and likely includes Tyler Chatwood, though I doubt there’s appetite to really just run back the 2020 crew and hope for the best. There’s also a wrinkle here that may be encouraging to those among us who want to hope for the absolute best in 2021:
The Cubs aren’t the only team loathe to spend money right now. They aren’t the only team wary of long-term commitments to players. It’s a bad market for players. Which could make it less of a bad market for the Cubs.
There will be more bargains available than usual, and with a new CBA coming down the pipes and the pandemic likely over by the 2021-22 offseason, there may be a top arm or two willing to go the unconventional route, sign a one-year deal, and bet on himself. Yes, Trevor Bauer might fit this mold. His agent, Rachel Luba, is not Scott Boras, a man who is seemingly always looking for the largest total contract value, something that involves signing deals for a lot of years. Bauer is, as a person, unconventional, with a seeming draw towards doing unusual things for the sake of their unusual-ness, and out of an interest in revisiting the player side of the game the way Billy Beane made front offices revisit the roster-construction side of the game.
The Cubs are not strong contenders, at this point, to sign Trevor Bauer. But this offseason figures to be a strange, anxious one for all involved. Don’t rule anything out.
