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I’m fascinated to watch what the Cubs do with rotation spots 3-5 in 2021. It’s absolutely wide open after Darvish and Hendricks. There are so many questions that need answering, and the path to finding those answers is less clear than ever. A brief thread.
First will be the Jon Lester decision. He has essentially a $15 million option (25M contract vs 10M buyout). Lester will turn 37 in the offseason of this decision. I suppose you could rip up the contract and negotiate something at a lower AAV for 2-3 years?
At the same time, the Cubs will need to decide on whether to extend Quintana a qualifying offer, which I imagine will be around the same dollar amount as last year: $17.8 million. By FanGraphs metrics, Quintana has been “worth” that amount in all but one season of his career.
Hanging over all of this is the decision on player payroll, which like it or not, will be impacted by organizational financial losses in 2020. With rising costs from the arbitration eligible offensive players in 2021, how limited financially will the Cubs be in finding 3 SPs?
It would be super helpful if the Cubs could have confidence in a young player to take over a rotation spot, but will 2020 offer enough information to have any confidence? Be it Mills, Alzolay, Marquez, Abbott, Miller, Cotton, Steele, Thompson, etc.
I feel like the looming hammer of a reduced payroll and the need for young players to fill rotation spots makes the likelihood of trading one of the offensive free agents-to-be (you know who I’m talking about) higher than it would have been pre-pandemic.
If I had to guess today what the 2021 Opening Day rotation looks like, here’s what I got:
1. Hendricks
2. Darvish
3. Young pitcher acquired in winter KB trade
4. Lester (re-signed for 3 yr deal at lower AAV)
5. Mills (with Marquez potentially replacing midseason)
1. Hendricks
2. Darvish
3. Young pitcher acquired in winter KB trade
4. Lester (re-signed for 3 yr deal at lower AAV)
5. Mills (with Marquez potentially replacing midseason)
A really nice follow-up to this thread by Brett. Really hit home for me how important it will be for orgs to NOT lose 2020 as a development year for their minor leaguers. However that looks. This is what’s going to separate the good orgs from the bad for the next coupla yrs. https://twitter.com/bleachernation/status/1263909064427425792
