The Chicago Cubs were on the market for a starting pitching -upgrade prior to the Handelsdeadline of 2025. Instead of exchanging the best prospects for a pitch of the upper shelf, they have made a smaller bet on the former Washington National Lucer Soroka. So far it doesn’t look like a big gamble.
Even president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer admits that this is not the case.
Soroka is already on the injured list after he has been removed from his first start with the Cubs because of shoulderongemak.
What makes it even more worrying is that the Cubs knew that Soroka had experienced a slight dip in his speed in its start prior to the trade deadline. Soroka underwent an MRI to exclude something problematically, where all the results have come back clean.
Yet the Cubs were aware of the speed drop – usually a large indicator of a kind of arm problem – and he decided to continue with the trade.
Hoyer admitted on Tuesday that the move was a risk and that it is not looking for a good gamble now. He added that if it doesn’t work, it all falls on him.
“We knew the speed was trending,” said Hoyer on Tuesday afternoon, via ESPN’s Jesse Rogers. “We worked on that extensively. Given the market, given the asking price … we felt like it was a good gamble to make. At the moment it doesn’t look like a good gamble.”
The fact that Soroka has injury problems should not be a surprise. A large part of his career was put on a sidelines due to injuries, and cost him very 2021 and 2022 and limits him to only 49 performances in the past two and a half seasons.
That Trackrecord, along with the fall in speed, should have expanded large alarm bells for the Cubs.
The good news is that they have not traded any of their elite for Soroka, but it still dismisses Hoyer and the Front Office of Blame.
The 65-47 Cubs are in a position in which they get the chance to make a serious run this season at the National League-Wimpel, and they are confronted with pressure to win in view of the uncertain future of star-outfielder Kyle Tucker. Tucker will probably test the free agent market this season and will leave for the highest bidder, making it a very important rental home.
There should be an incentive to take a big step in the trade deadline to not only keep track of the other teams in the competition, but to position themselves better to win. They did not want to pay the top capital and went for a cheaper option. It doesn’t look like a promising path and could have the Cubs and their fans, ask “what if” at the end of the season.
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