Cubs Reportedly Showed Interest in a JD Davis Trade Before the Lockout

Hey, it’s a rumor! Kinda! And I’m taking the opportunity for the evening.

Over at the New York Post, Mike Puma writes about how J.D. Davis feels like he’s 60/40 on the way out the door with the Mets. The third baseman/outfielder was long known to be in trade rumors before the lockout began, and in the Mets’ efforts to upgrade the roster elsewhere (and after all their pre-lockout additions), it’s been a pretty decent bet that either he or Jeff McNeil would be dealt.

To that end, here’s the mention that is of interest to us:

The Cubs, Red Sox, Twins and Athletics were among the teams showing some level of interest in Davis before the lockout, according to sources, but it was unclear if the Mets had a match with any of those teams.

To be sure, this is about the PRE-lockout period, but the fact that it’s being reported out of New York tonight tells me that someone with the Mets kinda wanted to re-up this for teams. Kind of like a, hey, don’t forget, we were willing to move Davis and there were some interested teams

We had previously speculated that the Cubs could/should have interest in Davis if the Mets were gonna unload him, but this is the first time that we’ve heard they did, in fact, have interest. For the Cubs, Davis would be an opportunity to add an impact bat, and figure out the rest later.

So far in his career, the 28-year-old has struggled with defense, strikeouts, and health, but otherwise he’s really hit:

(via FanGraphs)

Davis still has three years of arbitration left (projected at $2.7M this year), so I can see why he would be appealing to a team like the Cubs, especially in the newly-minted DH era. I’m all about the Cubs trying to land impact bats any way they can right now, so I’m intrigued. The tricky part is that the Mets aren’t trading Davis for prospects at this point, so they would probably want an equivalent impactful swap – like a swing starter, maybe? – and that’s a bit of a tough fit for the Cubs.

We’ll see if these rumors pick up at all from the Cubs’ perspective, or if this was just a nudge to other teams to come calling on Davis.

written by

Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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