Although the Cubs are obviously in sell mode regardless of what happens over the next few days, that isn’t the same thing as being in a total teardown mode. In the latter, your goal is not only to acquire as many talented prospects as possible for some future year, you also explicitly do not care about your team’s performance over the next X year(s), because it will mean higher draft picks, the ability to sell more, and payroll savings.
For the Cubs, by contrast, the roster was going to turn over after this year no matter what – not everyone can be extended. So, with so many short-term guys in the final year of their contracts, trades make sense. Get what you can get while you can get it, and before guys leave for nothing. Those kind of trades. Not trading everybody.
That is to say, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that the Cubs could compete in 2022. With a loaded free agent class, with very few commitments on the books, and with an increasingly deep pool of prospects that can be deployed in a variety of ways, I think it would be silly to rule out 2022 as we sit here today. I may or may not think it’s likely, but dismissing it out of hand in July of 2021 is not the kind of thing the Chicago Cubs should be doing, and Jed Hoyer has said he’s not looking at a “rebuild.”
That’s why I never expected the Cubs to seriously entertain trading Kyle Hendricks.
Sure, there’d be huge value there (though maybe less on the market than would be justified by his performance, since he’ll always project meh with low-velocity risk). But the Cubs are going to need quality starting pitchers next year, too, and Hendricks is under cheap team control for three more years. Of course, if some team comes to you with an absolutely franchise-altering offer, you take it … but no team would be nuts enough to make the kind of offer I’m talking about.
Anyway, that’s all backdrop to twin reports that indicate the Cubs are not looking to trade Hendricks right now, despite all the other movement. Citing industry sources, Gordon Wittenmyer indicates Hendricks won’t be traded absent “a knockout offer nobody in the game anticipates.” And Mark Feinsand tweets:
Although the Cubs have a number of players up for grabs, don’t count on Kyle Hendricks being part of the exodus. The pitcher is “definitely not being shopped” according to a source, and barring an unexpectedly great offer, the Cubs are “not trying to move him.”
— Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) July 26, 2021
The message being sent out by the Cubs? Sure, we’ll consider anything, but don’t waste our time trying to talk about Kyle Hendricks unless you’re prepared to do something stupid. Teams won’t do that. So Hendricks will enter 2022 anchoring the Cubs’ rotation.
