Yoan Moncada ——-> Red Sox
The Cuban defector goes to the Sox on a $30m deal. The Cubs continued to scout him despite being under the CBA signing limit penalty, hoping for the slim chance that he’d sign after July when their probation ends. The Red Sox burned their own signing bridges with the deal and are now due for the same penalty next year, as well as having to pay an additional $30m in luxury tax. Moncada got paid, but trust MLB to find a system that seems even dumber on its face than instituting an international draft.
Theo interview
Theo was on 670 The Score over the weekend, and CCO has the transcript. There was lots of boilerplate that we could have guessed at ourselves, but an interesting quote on Castillo:
He’ll either be one of three catchers on the roster or having this kind of depth can be really useful in case there is an injury and stranger things have happened that he could find himself back in to a really prominent role on this team. Or, we’re always open to the possibility of a trade to put him in a good position to go out and have a leading role on a club and also benefit the organization. We’re not opposed to three catchers because that last roster spot gives us versatility then Joe [Maddon] can do plenty of things in-game with those catchers.
I’ll still be shocked if he isn’t traded, but at least the FO is trying to sell other teams that they could keep him. It’s not like they’re going to give Castillo extra PAs at 1b.
Betting on yourself, and losing
According to this piece from Gordo, the Cubs offered Travis Wood an extension somewhere around 4/24 following his second solid season with the Cubs in 2013. Wood bet on himself, and now has a nontrivial chance of losing the last starting spot in a competition with Edwin Jackson. Whoops.
Quick hits
- Matt Eddy of Baseball America compared the Cubs current clownboatload of prospects to similar past prospect classes. All of them save the Royals (heh) gave at least 50-60 WAR of value. Squee.
- Sahadev Sharma of BP wrote a three-part breakdown of the Cubs minor league system over at Vine Line.
- The Greek God of Walks has joined the Cubs front office
- Tsuyoshi Wada is dealing with some hamstring soreness. Not a good sign for his chances to sneak into the 5th starter competition.
- In case anyone thought this wouldn’t be the case, Hector Rondon is still the closer and Jon Lester will be the opening day starter.
- The Cubs will wear a #14 patch this year to honor Ernie Banks.
Fantasy Baseball reminder
Just a reminder about the OV FLB League for lazy folks that I posted about a few weeks back. We have 5-6 people who have expressed interest and could use more. I’m still looking into details for the league setup.