On May 26th, the night Nico Hoerner strained his left hamstring, Dee Strange Gordon signed a minor league deal with the Chicago Cubs. It wasn’t quite a one-for-one move, as Gordon was assigned to Triple-A Iowa, where he remained for the entirety of his Cubs tenure (which ended this afternoon), but there was definitely some relation given the Cubs lack of upper-minors middle infield depth.
But now that Nico Hoerner is back (and, hey, so is Sergio Alcantara), and there’s less of a direct path to playing time in his future, Gordon has opted out of his deal becoming a free agent just as teams look to tweak their rosters for the stretch run.
Infielder Dee Strange-Gordon opted out of his deal with the Chicago Cubs and is now a free agent, source tells ESPN. He’ll latch on with another team in the coming days.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 6, 2021
Gordon hit .233/.270/.310 (54 wRC+) with a 3.3% walk rate and a 17.1% strikeout rate in Iowa this season. Even though the Cubs are no longer in contention, there just won’t likely be a regular or even part-time big league roster spot for him in Chicago anytime soon. I’d rather give every single one of those opportunities to younger, longer-term options like Sergio Alcantara/Nico Hoerner/David Bote (and Ian Happ across the outfield, for that matter) before Gordon. And he likely knows exactly that.
So now, he gets a chance to catch on somewhere else, perhaps where he can be a useful veteran down the stretch. Good luck, goodbye.