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Baseball: How to explain the Chicago Cubs cleaning up on the MLB trade deadline day?

The leaders of the Chicago Cubs have made shocking decisions by swapping their three most famous players in less than 24 hours to clean up the workforce of a rebuilding team.

Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez are three names that have resonated at Wrigley Field for years. The three fan favorites of the Chicago team will no longer wear the colors of the Cubs, however, to the dismay of the supporters who saw them lead the team to a historic victory in the World Series de Major League Baseball (MLB) in 2016 after 108 years of waiting for the city of Illinois. The three players who formed the heart of this team were traded on deadline day, July 31, to the New York Yankees for Rizzo, the San Francisco Giants for Bryant and the New York Mets for Baez.

An inevitable situation

This triple earthquake is a direct result of the Cubs’ disappointing performances in the National League regular season. While Anthony Rizzo’s new team, the NY Yankees, continue to win, the opposite happened for the Cubs between June and July with endless defeats. An infernal spiral that is difficult to escape in a sport as complicated as baseball.

First to NL Central in 2020, 2016 and 2017, qualified for the post-season in 2018, today the North Chicago team is lagging behind to clinch a spot among the teams that will continue to play in October. Even the bookmakers no longer believe in their chances of passing. For comparison, the Cubs’ National League victory odds according to one of the sports betting sites is 1000, well behind that of the favorites, the Los Angeles Dodgers (1.3) or the San Francisco Giants (3.5), the new team of Kris Bryant (figures from August 24, 2021). And inevitably, when a team sees its chances of qualifying in the post-season fly by the end of July, the leaders are already starting to look towards the following season.

After 24 hours of madness who saw Rizzo, Baez and Bryant leave the Cubs, the team’s director of baseball operations, Jed Hoyer, said the choice of destinations for the three players was made according to the chances of these teams to shine in the fall . According to Hoyer, this allows his three stars, all at the end of their contract, to continue to show themselves and to stay in action for several meetings, whereas if they had remained with the Cubs, their season would have been much shorter.

By integrating quickly into their new teams, they will have hope of signing a long-term contract at the end of the season. A boon for their respective sports careers, but also for the finances of the Cubs who will recover enough resources from these transfers to attract new stars to the team to proceed with a great reconstruction.

What future for the Cubs?

However, nothing prevents the Cubs from trying to recover these three players (or some) who will be free agents at the end of the season, once their loan is over. But for that, it would be necessary not only that they enter into the plans for the future of the club, but especially that an agreement can finally be found to renew their contract. The chances of this happening are very slim given that the team has failed to do so in the previous months. As an example, according to the specialized francophone site Passion MLB, Rizzo had turned down a five-year contract extension at the start of the season over a salary offer that fell short of his expectations.

Today, the North Chicago team still has a star player: Willson Contreras. The All-Star receiver (2018 and 2019) is one of the World Series Champions in 2016, and could be the new pillar around which the team will be built for years to come. But as with Rizzo who believed he had secured a trust deal early in the season to stay at the club, the star’s future remains uncertain and there could be a turnaround in the months to come.

Either way, the Cubs have embarked on a rebuilding campaign, to claim their World Series title that they won five years ago now. Today, fans of the metropolitan Illinois club are hoping they won’t have to wait another 108 years to see that dedication happen again.

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