In a just-for-fun exercise at ESPN today, Jeff Passan picked one perfect offseason move for each of the 12 playoff teams plus 9 other plausibly active clubs. No overlaps or duplicates, so each club gets just one more.
The one Passan picked for the Cubs, incidentally, is the one I would pick, too (well, with a little caveat to follow). It’s Japanese ace Tatsuya Imai, who will be posted soon. From ESPN:
“The perfect transaction: Even with Tucker expected to leave, the Cubs still have plenty of thump in their lineup. They will win or lose based on pitching, and their starting rotation needs help. The Cubs aren’t the sort of team inclined to pay pitchers for past-their-prime years, and while that tends to be the sort of thing that’s incompatible with free agency, there happens to be a 27-year-old available this winter who won’t even cost a draft pick to sign. It’s just money, and seeing as the Cubs don’t spend a whole lot of that — their current projected payroll is around $150 million — now seems the right time to splurge a little. Sign free agent right-hander Tatsuya Imai.”
The logic is simple and sound, with two open questions: (1) how highly do the Cubs evaluate Imai in his transition to MLB? and (2) are the Cubs willing to spend what it would take to sign Imai?
We don’t yet have a great sense of how the Cubs project Tatsuya Imai – and we probably won’t – but we can at least speculate on number two. Historically, the Cubs don’t hand out too many $100+ million contracts, and the last one that went to a pitcher was nearly eight years ago (Yu Darvish). So betting that Imai will be the pitcher to cause the Cubs to leap is not a great bet.
That said, he’s only 27. He is not attached to a Qualifying Offer. He is part of a growing pipeline of talent coming over from Japan that the Cubs seem keen to tap into. And Imai has the kind of premium velocity potential that the Cubs have generally lacked from their rotation. Oh, and he’s potentially a front-two arm, available to a club that desperately needs that kind of addition. Yes, this feels like a “perfect” move for the Cubs (and, admittedly, many other clubs).
The caveat I mentioned above is a pretty thin one: if the Cubs found the right trade partner for an impactful starting pitcher, I could just as easily call that “perfect.” I like that same Joe Ryan, MacKenzie Gore, Edward Cabrera, Sandy Alcantara group of trade candidates just about as much now as I did at the Trade Deadline. Tatsuya Imai isn’t literally the only starter addition that could wind up perfect move for the Cubs.
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