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Now that the Cubs have finally acquired a five-WAR player, what should Jed Hoyer do next?
--Rich J.
Trade a three-win player for air. That’s definitely the play.
The Kyle Tucker trade looks worse when you add Cody Bellinger to the package traded away. This now goes from a clear win to, in WAR terms, damned near a push. They upgraded from Bellinger to Tucker at a cost of Isaac Paredes and a top prospect. I’d probably still rather have Tucker, but the Cubs just aren’t all that much better today than they were prior to this sequence.
I’ve seen a few defenses of this payroll dump, and they’re terrible. One simply buys into the myth that the Chicago Freaking Cubs “had” to trade Bellinger to “afford” other things. Please just don’t, OK? It’s simply not true. Do you know what happens if the Cubs keep Cody Bellinger? Nothing happens. No one misses a meal. No one loses a home. No one has to drop out of college to work at the farm. It’s a paper loss for a business that’s worth $5 billion.
Moreover, there’s no viable place for the Cubs to spend that “savings” other than on Corbin Burnes. If they sign Burnes, it was a bad idea to trade Cody Bellinger. If they don’t sign Burnes, it was a hideous idea. There’s nobody else better than a #3 starter on the market.
The other defense is that the Cubs, after acquiring Tucker, had a roster logjam. This is true, they effectively had six players for five spots across the outfield, DH, and first base, with a couple of the team’s best prospects also outfielders. That’s an argument for trading Bellinger for a comparable starting pitcher, or catcher, or third baseman, or even a package of prospects. It’s not an argument for trading him for a 30-year-old with 83 career major-league innings.
Besides, roster logjams of this size are almost always resolved by injuries or underperformance. Seiya Suzuki misses 30 games a year. Kyle Tucker missed half the season in 2024. Pete Crow-Armstrong could easily hit his way back to Triple-A.
Trading Cody Bellinger for nothing isn’t a baseball decision. It’s a decision that made Tom Ricketts $25 million more wealthy. There’s no defense for it.
--J.
