NEWSLETTER
In the same interview that gave us good news on the Cubs chances of landing Dansby Swanson (it sure sounds like they’re the favorites), Jesse Rogers gave us some *extremely* frustrating intel.
The title says it all, but I’ll restate it here: The Chicago Cubs offered Christian Vázquez the same deal he ultimately signed with the Minnesota Twins (3 years, $30M), but Vázquez CHOSE the Twins over the Cubs. That stings. Bad.
Now, for the sake of clarity, Rogers did say the Cubs were pushing to add a club option onto the end of the deal (i.e. after the third year), which technically tilts the offer in the Twins’ favor a bit. But Rogers was very clear that the option was not the deciding factor here. Vázquez looked at two nearly-identical offers, one from the Cubs and one from the Twins, and actually chose to play in Minnesota.
So why is that so disappointing? Well, let’s start by stating the obvious: Christian Vázquez is a good baseball player at a position of extreme need for the Cubs in a market without any NEARLY as good options remaining (unless the Cubs want to dig into the trade market, and I don’t think they do). Whiffing on him SUCKS. It sucks even more, however, that they weren’t willing to go over the top to get a deal done. This isn’t anything CLOSE to losing out on Jose Abreu, who had multiple 3-years offers at premium AAVs from contenders. This is just $10M a year for a very good player, who ultimately accepted an identical offer from the freakin’ Twins.
Just think about the implicit assessment of the Cubs league-wide.
It seems likely that Vázquez thought he had a better shot at winning with the Twins than the Cubs. And that’s just brutal, no matter how true it may be. MAYBE you can make an argument that he was worried Miguel Amaya might eventually dethrone him (being the primary starter was reportedly very important to him). But I just really doubt that, personally.
No, at the end of the day this is a perfect encapsulation of everything we currently fear about this Cubs front office: They will stick to their valuation no matter what. Even if just a bit more might help them, you know, actually land a player they really need. It’s their terms or nothing. And guess what? More often than not this offseason, it’s been nothing.
