This MLB trade deadline goes through Chicago — Here’s what that means for the Cubs and White Sox
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Jesse Rogers, ESPN Staff Writer
CHICAGO — Hours before he took the mound against the crosstown Cubs on Wednesday night, Lance Lynn sat in one corner of the Guaranteed Rate Field clubhouse pouring over scouting reports about the hitters he was about to face — just as he had before his 69 previous starts with the White Sox. Nothing seemed different for the 36-year-old right-hander, even as he prepared for what would undoubtedly be the last time he pitched for the South Side club.
But the team’s inevitable breakup was the talk of the room around Lynn, a free-agent-to-be on a club clearly set on offloading veterans ahead of Tuesday’s MLB trade deadline. Players were huddling in small groups, openly wondering who was going, where and when. Lines like “Hey, have you heard where I’m going?” and “Did you see what they got for him?” replaced the usual pregame chatter.
Meanwhile, across the corridor in the visitors’ clubhouse, the Cubs were doing their best to tune out the same type of trade rumors flying about their own teammates, focused instead on another opportunity to prove to their front office that this team is worth keeping together — even though Fangraphs gives the Cubs an 18.2% chance of making the postseason and just 10.2% of winning the NL Central.
“We want to convince them to be buyers,” Chicago Cubs reliever Michael Fulmer said. “It’s definitely a winnable division. We have the team to do it. Lately, we’ve been playing a lot better. We have to keep it going. It’s something we could have been doing all year. It’s just happening right now. That’s a good thing. We’re excited about this little streak and hope to keep it going.”
By the end of the night, the White Sox were putting their deadline strategy in motion while a few hundred feet away the Cubs celebrated adding another victory to the case for going for it. It was the culmination of a wild 48 hours in Chicago that saw one baseball team meet its predictable fate while another breathed further life into a season of hope.
Here’s where things stand for the White Sox and the Cubs with four days left in a trade season in which two teams in the same city hold more trade chips than just about anyone else in the sport.
The White Sox officially ended their failed rebuild and perhaps started a new one, when the team announced late Wednesday that they were sending veteran starter Lucas Giolito and reliever Reynaldo Lopez to the Los Angeles Angels for prospects Edgar Quero and Ky Bush. There was some symmetry in the moves — both pitchers were acquired together in 2016, a move that kicked off a rebuild filled with high expectations, followed by a tumultuous past two seasons. Now both move on with just two playoff wins to show for their time in Chicago.
“It’s certainly not where anyone in this organization thought we’d be come the trade deadline but clearly moves like these … are essential,” general manager Rick Hahn said after announcing the move.
It’s bound to be the first of many for the fourth-place White Sox, who have collapsed two years after winning the AL Central by 13 games.
“It’s a challenging week,” White Sox manager Pedro Grifol said. “You have to take your mind off that and play baseball.”
The difficulty of tuning out the noise — particularly for a team 21 games under .500 — was evident when Lynn gave up seven earned runs in just 4⅔ innings during his deadline audition, an outing that may have scared off some potential suitors.
While Lynn and Giolito are the most well-known pitchers scouts were in town to see, they weren’t the only ones. The Yankees, Rays and Marlins were among the teams in attendance to watch relievers Joe Kelly and Kendall Graveman. Kelly is a free agent at season’s end while Graveman has another year left on his deal paying $8 million in 2024.
The Marlins are also keeping an eye on Tim Anderson, whom the White Sox might move. The shortstop has posted a .378 batting average since the All-Star break, making potential trade partners more likely to look past his paltry .245/.285/.285 season-long slash line.
“Just feeling more like myself,” Anderson said of his resurgence. “Just trying to get back to what I normally do.”
Anderson’s ability to shoot the ball to right field and the right center gap has returned, making him an interesting trade candidate for a team that needs a shortstop or second baseman. He played the latter position during the WBC and at least one contending team, the Seattle Mariners, has a huge offensive hole at that position. Asked if he knows what went wrong for the underachieving White Sox, Anderson shook his head.
“I don’t. I wish I did. That’s a crazy question,” Anderson said. “It’s life. Things happen. I try not to think about it. … I control what I can control. Whatever happens is going to happen anyway.”
Just two weeks ago, the Cubs were 42-48 and seemed destined to be joining the White Sox with an everything-must-go approach to the deadline, setting up Marcus Stroman and Cody Bellinger to be two of the most coveted players available this summer. But winning seven of their past eight games means the Cubs’ decision on what direction to take will now come at the “11th hour,” according to one team source.
“It’s fun for you guys to write about and it’s fun for us to make their job challenging,” shortstop Dansby Swanson said after Tuesday’s 7-3 win over the White Sox. “We’ve been playing well recently. It’s fun to be part of a collective group that believes in one another and is willing to lay it out there each and every night.”
With no major moves likely to come before the end of the weekend, the Cubs have a chance to inch closer to first place with a four-game series against the struggling St. Louis Cardinals that they started with a 10-3 win. The Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds are on the road against the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers, respectively.
With Bellinger’s trade status potentially hanging in the balance, it’s safe to say front office executives will have their eyes glued to the NL Central standings.
Now that the Angels have announced they are keeping Shohei Ohtani, Bellinger is clearly the best position player with a chance to move in the next week. Several teams are watching him closely, including the Yankees, and his value has never been higher. He has a 1.176 OPS since the All-Star break and is looking more like the 2019 NL MVP than the player the Dodgers non-tendered this offseason. The Cubs front office now has to juggle his potential impact for the rest of this season with the reality that they will get nothing more than draft pick compensation if he leaves via free agency.
The other Cubs star who has drawn the most trade buzz is Stroman, the starting pitcher who can opt out of his deal and walk away for nothing at season’s end. Unlike the surging Bellinger, Stroman’s stock is headed in the wrong direction going into the deadline. While his first 16 starts produced a 2.28 ERA, his past six since facing the Cardinals in London — including a poor one in front of scouts from several contenders on Wednesday — have an 8.00 ERA attached due to a tendency to leave pitches up in the zone.
“Ever since London, I’ve been off mechanically,” he said after Wednesday’s game. “More so with my slider. My rhythm and consistency with my slider is off.”
Stroman then waved off talk about the trade deadline, choosing to focus on his own game and his team’s recent surge.
“I keep a lot of it in the back of my mind,” he said. “I love the group of guys. I know what we’re capable of when we’re hot.”
The Cubs’ dilemma is compounded by the competitive balance tax. The team is about $5 million under the first threshold and it’s not likely they’ll be willing to exceed it by adding salary, particularly when the playoffs are still a long shot, according to a source familiar with their situation. A scenario where Stroman is moved to clear up some dollars — and Bellinger is retained — is a real possibility. Then the Cubs could go into the trade market for a reliever with less worry about the tax.
“If it means trading the entire team to win a World Series sooner, that’s the job that’s at hand,” Cubs manager David Ross said. “I want to win a World Series. That’s what we’re all pushing for. The more we keep the good players, the closer to doing it [we’ll be].”
The Cubs believe they played two of their best games of the season against the White Sox. They hit six home runs and stole nine bases, their most in a two-game span in 30 years. Barring a collapse this weekend, the players hope it will be enough for the front office to add instead of subtract before Tuesday’s deadline.
“You see where the potential is. When we do everything right, we have a really good chance of winning every night,” Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks said. “We know we have everything we need in this clubhouse. We can’t wait to put it all together and go on a run no matter what.”
With five games left to play before the deadline arrives, the Cubs are treating each one like a must-win matchup. On the other side of town, the only intrigue in the coming days will be seeing how many veterans the White Sox ultimately trade away.
Sports
‘I wasn’t trying to build anything in a lab’: How Jacob deGrom is learning to throw smarter, not harder
SURPRISE, Ariz. — When Jacob deGrom stepped on the mound for his first live batting practice this spring, a voice in his head told him: “All right, I want to strike everybody out.” That instinct had guided deGrom to unimaginable heights, with awards and money and acclaim. It is also who he can no longer be. So deGrom took a breath and reminded himself: “Let’s not do that.”
Nobody in the world has ever thrown a baseball like deGrom at his apex. His combination of fastball velocity, swing-and-miss stuff and pinpoint command led to one of the greatest 90-start stretches in baseball. From the beginning of 2018 to the middle of 2021, he was peak Pedro Martinez with a couple of extra mph — Nolan Ryan’s fastball, Steve Carlton’s slider, Greg Maddux’s precision.
Then his arm could not hold up anymore, and for more than three years, deGrom healed and got hurt, healed and needed Tommy John surgery in June 2023 to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, then healed once more. That delivers him to this moment, in camp with the Texas Rangers, ready to conquer a 162-game season for the first time since 2019 — and reminding himself when to hold back.
The instinct to be all he can be never will go away. But instead, as his efforts at learning to throttle down manifest themselves daily and were particularly evident in those early live ABs, deGrom induced ground balls on early contact and ended his day with a flyout on the second pitch of the at-bat.
DeGrom had blown out his elbow once before, as a minor leaguer in October 2010, and this time he understands his mandate. He is now 36, and nobody has returned to have any sort of substantive career after a third Tommy John, so keeping his arm healthy as he comes back from his second is imperative. This is the last phase of deGrom’s career, and to maximize it, he must change. It does not need to be a wholesale reinvention. For deGrom, it is more an evolution, one to which he accustomed himself by watching video of his past self.
DeGrom at his best simply overwhelmed hitters. At-bats turned into lost causes. He was the best pitcher in the world in 2018, when he threw 217 innings of 1.70 ERA ball and struck out 269 with just 46 walks and 10 home runs allowed. The following year, he dedicated himself to being even more, winning his second Cy Young and proving he was no one-season fluke. DeGrom routinely blew away one hitter, then made the next look like he’d never seen a slider. He painted the plate with the meticulousness of a ceramic artist.
“I look at the best — ’18,” deGrom said of his first Cy Young season. “There were times where I hit 100 or close to it, but I think I sat around 96.”
He did. Ninety-six mph on the dot for his high-spin four-seam fastball. It jumped to 96.9 in 2019, 98.6 in 2020 and 99.2 in 2021. In the 11 games deGrom pitched toward the end of 2022, it was still 98.9 — and then 98.7 before he blew out again.
“I have to look at it like, hey, I can pitch at that velocity [from 2018],” deGrom said. “It is less stress on your body. You get out there and you’re throwing pitches at 100 miles an hour for however many pitches it is — it’s a lot of stress. It’s something that I’m going to look into — using it when I need it, backing off and just trusting that I can locate the ball.”
He had not yet adopted that attitude in 2022, when those 11 starts convinced deGrom to opt out of his contract with the New York Mets, who had drafted him in the ninth round in 2010. Immediately, the Texas Rangers began their pursuit. General manager Chris Young pitched for 13 years in the major leagues and knows how hard it is to be truly great. He grunted to hit 90 with his fastball. Someone who could sit 99 with 248 strikeouts against 19 walks in 156⅓ innings (as deGrom did in the combined pieces of his 2021 and 2022 seasons) and make it look easy is one of a kind. Injury risk be damned, Texas gave deGrom $185 million over five years.
He played the part in his first five starts for Texas. Then he left the sixth with elbow pain. Done for the year. Surgery on June 12 — 11 days after the birth of his third child, Nolan. He carried Nolan around with his left arm while his right was in a brace that would click a degree or two more every day to eventually reteach deGrom to straighten his arm.
He taught himself how to throw again, too, under the watchful eyes of Texas’ training staff and Keith Meister, the noted Tommy John surgeon who is also the Rangers’ team doctor. They wanted to build back the deGrom who scythed lineups — but this time, with decision-making processes guided by proper arm care.
Part of that showed in deGrom’s September cameo last year. His fastball averaged 97.3 mph, and he still managed to look like himself: 1.69 ERA, 14 strikeouts against one walk with one home run allowed in 10⅔ innings. Rather than rush back, deGrom put himself in a position to tackle the offseason. Those innings were enough to psychologically move past the rehabilitative stage and reenter achievement mode. He trained with the same intensity he did in past seasons. The stuff would still be there. While peers were spending the winter immersed in pitch design, deGrom was seeking the version of himself that could marry his inherent deGromness with the sturdiness he embodied the first six years of his career.
“I wasn’t trying to build anything in a lab,” deGrom said. “My arm got a little long a few years ago, so trying to shorten up the arm path a little bit and sync up my mechanics really well is what I’ve been trying to do.”
Rather than jump out in the first start of the spring to prove that heartiness, deGrom took his time. It is a long season. He wants to be there in the end. His goal for this year is straightforward: “Make as many starts as I can.” If that means throwing live at-bats a little longer than his teammates, that’s what he’ll do. Ultimately, deGrom is the one who defines his comfort, and he went so long without it that its priority is notable.
So if that means shorter starts early in the season, it won’t surprise anyone. There is no official innings limit on deGrom. The Rangers, though, are going to monitor his usage, and he doesn’t plan to use those limited outings to amp up his velocity. This is about being smart and considering more than raw pitch counts or innings totals.
“I think it’s going to be a monitor of stressful innings versus not,” deGrom said. “You have those games where you go five innings, you have 75 pitches, but you’ve got runners all over the place, so those are stressful. Whereas you cruise and you end up throwing 100 pitches and you had one or two runners. It’s like, OK, those don’t seem to be as stressful. So I think it’s monitoring all of that and just playing it by ear how the season goes.”
That approach carried into deGrom’s spring debut Saturday against the Kansas City Royals. He averaged 97 mph on his fastball, topping out at 98. His slider remained near its previous levels at 90. He flipped in a pair of curveballs for strikes, too, just as a reminder that he’s liable to buckle your knees at any given moment. On 31 pitches, deGrom threw 21 strikes, didn’t allow a baserunner and punched out three, including reigning MVP runner-up Bobby Witt Jr. on a vicious 91.5-mph slider.
On his last batter of the day, deGrom started with a slider well off the plate inducing a swing-and-miss from Tyler Gentry, then followed with a low-and-not-quite-as-outside slider Gentry spit on. When a curveball that was well off the plate was called a strike, deGrom saw an opportunity. This is the art of pitching — of weighing the count, what a hitter has seen, how to take advantage of an umpire’s zone. He dotted a 97.3-mph fastball on the exact horizontal plane as the curveball and elevated it to the top of the strike zone, a nasty bit of sorcery that only a handful of pitchers on the planet can execute at deGrom’s level. Gentry stared at it, plate umpire Pete Talkington punched him out and deGrom strode off the mound, beta test complete.
“It’s always a thing of trusting your stuff,” deGrom said. “It’s one of the hardest things to do in this game, and part of it’s the fear of failure. You throw a pitch at 93 when you could have thrown it at 98 and it’s a homer, you’re like, ‘Why did I do that?’ So that’s the part that gets tough. You still have to go out there and trust your stuff, know that you can locate and change speeds, and still get outs not full tilt the whole time.”
Day by day, deGrom inches closer to that. He’ll get a little extra time, with the likelihood the Rangers will hold him back until the season’s fifth game, just to build in rest before the grind of a new season. He’s ready. It has been too long since he has been on the field regularly, contributing, searching for the best version of himself. It might look a little different. And if it does, that’s a good thing.
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