Even after Shota Imanaga accepted his one-year, $22M qualifying offer last week, the Chicago Cubs are expected to pursue another front-half-of-the-rotation starting pitcher this offseason.
Whether that pitcher is signed out of free agency (Dylan Cease, Tatsuya Imai, Michael King, Zac Gallen, etc.) or acquired via trade (Joe Ryan, Kris Bubic, Sandy Alcantara, Edward Cabrera, MacKenzie Gore, etc.) remains to be seen. But the need, willingness to act, and supply of quality options is clearly there.
And because that supply runs so deep in both pools, it’s not really worth getting hung up on the availability of any one arm … which is mostly just a way of me pre-empting the bearishness of today’s Cubs trade rumor update.
Maybe Sandy Alcantara Won’t Be Available?
One early storyline making its rounds this offseason is an anticipated increase in spending from notorious under-spenders in Miami (Marlins) and Pittsburgh (Pirates). Now, no one actually believes their motives to be pure — they’re more likely trying to avoid additional grievances from the Union and internal battles with other owners who are upset about their balance of spending to revenue-sharing. But the outcome may yet be the same.
But as it turns out, there may be even more at play here than that, and it could bleed into their trade efforts, as well as free agency.
To understand why, let’s turn to Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich, who uncovered some critical details on the league revenue-sharing rules and expectations.
“If a team’s final luxury-tax payroll is not one and a half times the amount it receives in a given season from local revenue sharing, it will likely stand a better chance of losing a grievance for not properly using its revenue-sharing money to improve on-field performance, which the CBA requires.”
Got that? To avoid getting in trouble, revenue-receiving teams (like the Marlins) need to spend 1.5x the amount they receive from the league on payroll in any given year.
Last season, according to The Athletic, the Marlins received “roughly $70 million” from the league. So simple math tells us that their payroll would need to be around $105M to satisfy the CBA’s requirements. But the estimates for last season (2025) have the Marlins at just $85M, which is already a problem for them, no matter what happens next.
But to avoid it being twice as big an issue, they’re going to have to spend significantly this winter, too: their current luxury tax payroll estimate for 2026 is sitting at a paltry $69.69 million per Roster Resource.
And that’s including their highest-paid player (by a WIDE margin) … Sandy Alcantara.
Jim Rassol-Imagn ImagesIn 2026, Sandy Alcantara is going to make $17.3M in salary, with a CBT hit of $11.2 million. No other individual Marlins player is even in the double-digits. Get where this is going?
Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich spell it out:
But while many in the industry expect them to trade their highest-paid player, right-hander Sandy Alcantara, purging his $17.3 million salary would make it that much more difficult for the team to satisfy the thresholds specified in the CBA.
In short, if the Marlins were to trade Alcantara for prospects or cheap young players this offseason, their CBT payroll would be reduced even further to $58.49M. And assuming their revenue sharing is the same as last year (~$70M), that means they’d need to add upwards of $46M in average annual payroll this winter for NEXT SEASON, alone, to avoid being delinquent in back-to-back seasons. That’s nearly doubling their payroll. The penalties and outcomes of those grievances remain unclear, but you can tell they’re taking it seriously based on those reports of “big spending to come.”
And that’s the thing, it’s already difficult to believe the Marlins are going to spend what it will take to get up to $105M in CBT payroll WITH Sandy Alcantara on the books. Without him, they’d have to commit some serious dollars and convince free agents it’s worth signing with them, all this winter … ahead of a brand new CBA, when the rules might change anyway.
What I’m getting at here is I’m suddenly not very confident the Marlins will deal Alcantara at all, unless they can find some sort of convincing package that provides enough value AND ALSO returns a pricy contract to help balance out their books. It’s a common thing in other capped leagues, but not something baseball fans face often.
And while losing Sandy Alcantara as an option isn’t the end of the world, you do prefer there to be more supply, not less. And with Shane Bieber, Jack Flaherty, and Shota Imanaga already reducing the pool of available free agent starters, while guys like Freddy Peralta and Tarik Skubal have reportedly come off the market, the Cubs’ options are shrinking. There are still plenty, and I still expect them to land somebody of note, but Alcantara is/was a good target, with a lot of upside, multiple years of control, and a calendar year of Cubs rumors behind him. Just something to keep in mind.
Final thought: Much of this can also apply to the Pirates and Mitch Keller, another guy who was a rumored Cubs target in July. But the Pirates are actually in a better place in terms of spending than the Marlins both last year and right now. Plus, Keller is less attractive and less likely to be dealt to the Cubs. Just didn’t want to ignore that thread entirely, as it broadly applies there, as well.
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