Yu Darvish is gone. Victor Caratini is gone. Any illusions about what’s going on are gone.
Or…are they?
It’s very possible the Cubs are in full sell-off mode. They certainly just made a major sell-off, giving up a Cy Young candidate and a valuable catcher in exchange for Zach Davies and four high-risk, high-upside, long-term projects of prospects: :Prospects who will replenish a slowly rebuilding farm system but offer no immediate impact, and frankly, fall below what we expected the Cubs to receive for a package of the caliber they gave up. We may see more trades soon. We may see a slew of them this summer. The Cubs may be looking to cut every dime they can off the ledger.
But then again…
As current rosters stand, here’s the NL Central’s projected fWAR, per FanGraphs:
| Position Group | Brewers | Cardinals | Reds | Cubs | Pirates |
| Catcher | 1.4 | 1.6 | 1.8 | 2 | 2 |
| First Base | 1.1 | 2.9 | 1.3 | 3.5 | 0.2 |
| Second Base | 2 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.2 | 1.4 |
| Shortstop | 1.5 | 3.3 | -0.1 | 2.3 | 0.6 |
| Third Base | 1 | 1.6 | 2.6 | 2.8 | 3.4 |
| Left Field | 4.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.4 | 0.5 |
| Center Field | 1.7 | 2.5 | 1.5 | 2.2 | 0.8 |
| Right Field | 0.6 | 0.4 | 0.7 | 1.8 | 0.1 |
| Designated Hitter | -0.5 | -0.2 | -0.4 | -0.5 | -0.5 |
| Starting Pitching | 12.4 | 9.7 | 13.2 | 7.4 | 10.4 |
| Relief Pitching | 3 | 1.4 | 2 | 1.6 | 0.6 |
| Total | 28.8 | 26.4 | 26 | 25.7 | 19.5 |
The Cubs are, as one would expect, the fourth-best team on paper, now that they’re Darvish-less and Caratini-less. And yet, it’s rather close. Granted, there are a lot of offseason moves yet to be made, but from the sounds of it, there isn’t a great market at this moment for Kris Bryant, and we haven’t heard any real rumblings about Javier Báez. There’s a rotation hole to fill, and while it could be filled by committee, it seems more likely the Cubs will grab some cheap arm off the free agency blocks, with guys like Matt Andriese—who signed last week with the Red Sox—commanding less than three million in salary and offering enough projected WAR for the Cubs to hop the Reds and get close to the Cardinals. Step up from an Andriese to even some washed-up vet like Homer Bailey and the Cubs are, on paper, better than the Cardinals. As it stands, they’re within striking distance of everybody in the division, and while this could change, the Brewers/Reds/Cardinals triumvirate isn’t exactly making moves of its own right now.
You don’t want the Cubs to be managed like the Rays. You want that kind of efficiency, sure, but you don’t want trades like this one, because the resources are vastly larger than those of the Rays: Large enough to keep the Yu Darvishes of the world. But if you’re going to be cheap, you could do worse than following the Rays model, which often revolves, in part, around selling too early rather than too late. Was this a small haul, given what was given up? Yes. But it’s not without upside, and in the very immediate term, one year of Zach Davies is serviceable enough to cushion a bit of the blow. It stings, and it stinks, and the financial constraints being placed on the front office appear disingenuous and unnecessary, but if these are the constraints with which Jed Hoyer is constrained, worse could be done than what’s been done so far. We’ll see if the Cubs continue to sell. We’ll see whether they fill out the rotation or just go forward with two serviceable starters, two question marks, and a shop of horrors on the fifth days. But at the moment, even with this roster, the Cubs can contend for a title in a bad division while developing a now very medium farm system.
You can be upset about the trade. I’m upset about the trade. But remember a few things:
- Yu Darvish was sold at peak value.
- Yu Darvish is getting old.
- The NL Central is bad.
- This offseason has a long way left to go.
We’ll see.
