Cubs in Talks for Starting Pitcher

The Chicago Cubs rotation has been one of its strengths through the first two months of the season. Not only have they been good, they have been baseball’s best, good.

Currently the Cubs are the only team in baseball that features four starters with ERAs under 3.00, and the lone man out, John Lackey, isn’t far off the list. Either way, the Cubs have the best rated rotation in the league to this point.

A huge reason for the early success of the Cubs’ rotation has been their ability to force outs when they need them. Bleacher Nation’s Luis Medina covered each starters out pitch, and how successful they are at getting those outs. When you check out the charts (seriously, click that link and check out how dominate the Cubs pitches have been, I’ll wait) you have to be impressed with their dominance this season.

So, this is why people are a bit surprised that they team would be exploring a deal for another starting pitcher.

Source says one of the pitchers the #Cubs are focusing on for possible deal is #Yankees SP Nathan Eovaldi. Nothing imminent.

— Julie DiCaro (@JulieDiCaro) May 29, 2016

This isn’t the first time the Cubs brass have been sniffing around the New York Yankees, having completed the trade which sent Starlin Castro to New York for Adam Warren during the offseason. Then this report by Joel Sherman mentions the Cubs had interest in Eovaldi during the winter meetings.

While Julie DiCaro mentions that there hasn’t been talk (at least not through available sources) of potential players in return. I would believe that both sides has a starting point with their most recent conversations, since they had already begun talks this past winter.

While many would think that the Cubs would be talking to the Yankees about Andrew Miller, the lefty stud in their bullpen, Eovaldi has the Cubs attention. Nathan has seen parts of six seasons in with New York, Miami, as well as in Los Angeles (playing with the Dodgers). He was a huge part in a five player deal which the Yankees sent Martin Pardo to the Miami Marlins for Nathan, Garrett Jones, and Domingo German in exchange for Pardo, and David Phelps.

Eovaldi has been relatively subpar in his six seasons, but his 14-3 record from 2015 was something of note. While pitching in the American League will certainly add a point or so to your ERA, and the American League East could certainly do the same, Nathan’s career FIP (3.62) shows us that he could possibly be better than his overall numbers suggest.

So how and why does this make sense for the Cubs? Well at face value it probably doesn’t… Nathan could provide the team with another “super utility” pitcher, someone that will see a lot of innings as the first man called into either Jason Hammel or Kyle Hendricks‘ starts. This was the role of Adam Warren, until his recent struggles, but the potential Yankee return could be much more than the Cubs should give up in a deal for someone they would use in a glorified long man role.

It very well could be a return to talks about Eovaldi, but also including conversations around Miller or possibly other lefty relievers in the Yankees pen? It is June, and teams do start having some more advanced trade discussions before the July 31st trade deadline, so expect more and more rumors to start to surface. What I would say is, at this time of year, rumors you hear are often current, but as you get closer to the deadline, those talks are usually over once they are public.

Sources: Fangraphs, MLB, Baseball-Reference, NJ

Jamie Baker

Hi, I’m Jamie and I run this site. I’ve published work on multiple other sites and through that experience I decided to create CHICAGO style SPORTS. We truly aim to speak for the Chicago fan. Additionally, as a member of the IBWAA (Internet Baseball Writers Association of America) you can be assured that all content you read will be written with incredible integrity.

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