The Bay Area’s Trash Might be the Cubs Treasure
There have been quite a few interesting moves around baseball today, one of which was the Chicago Cubs non-tendering Addison Russell. Of other non-tendered players across baseball, there are a couple that could help the Cubs in 2020.
The first of which is the centerfielder – Kevin Pillar.
Pillar was set to make $9.7 million in his final year of arbitration and the San Francisco Giants decided to non-tender him. Pillar was once renowned as perhaps the best fielding centerfielder in baseball. While his defense took a step backward this past season, Wrigley Field is one of the easier outfields to play. A player of his defensive caliber would do wonders to solidify the outfield.
The other positive, his bat would translate well in Chicago. While no one should get fantasies of him leading off, he just doesn’t carry the ability to reach base at a high clip, he would bring some more pop to the lineup. He hit 21 homers last season for San Francisco. Bring that to Chicago and you could see it expand to 25 or more? Plus add Gold Glove level defense? I’d take a flier on him.
The other low-hanging fruit that Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer should pick is Blake Treinen. The cash deprived Oakland A’s non-tendered Treinan as well, after his projection of about $7.5 million.
Blake had historically been very damned good but hit a wall in 2019 after posting a 4.91 ERA. Before 2019, Treinen owned a career 2.64 ERA while featuring an average fastball of 97 MPH. Not only that his slider registered at 97, would toss his cutter at 93 and his slider registered at 89 MPH. The dude is the perfect projection of what the Cubs are looking for in their bullpen. That fad of finding hard-throwing relievers that just need a little work to be next to unhittable. Treinen is probably a step ahead of anyone else out there as he has already been incredibly hard to hit.
Get this guy into the pitch lab, fine-tune him, and this is the shutdown set-up man the Cubs lacked in 2019. They will need to help with his control, as he had a 5.7 BB/9 in 2019, more than double his respectable 2.4 mark in 2018. If he can bounce back and have a season closer to his 2018 – where he finished sixth in AL Cy Young voting after posting a 0.78 ERA – this dude could be incredible once again.
With a rejuvenated Craig Kimbrel and Treinen at the backend, the Cubs could essentially lock down games after only seven innings.
