David Ross signs two-year, $5 million deal with Chicago Cubs

The Chicago Cubs continued to make moves early Friday afternoon as they agreed on a two-year deal worth $5 million with veteran catcher David Ross, according to Ken Rosenthal on Twitter.

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Ross, 37, isn’t necessarily the kind of catcher you want on a team looking to contend considering how poor he has been in the batters box over the last two seasons. In his final year with the Red Sox, the soon to be 38-year-old Ross recorded seven home runs with 15 RBIs on a dismal batting line of .184/.260/.368.

This deal was obviously made to make recently-acquired Jon Lester feel more at home since these two spent a decent amount of time with Boston between 2013 and 2014. As of right now, the Cubs have three catchers on the 25-man roster with Miguel Montero, Welington Castillo and now Ross, not to mention the recently-claimed Ryan Lavarnway.

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There was a rumor swirling around the Winter Meetings not too long ago that the Cubs were listening to offers for their primary catcher after reportedly meeting with Ross’ agent.

It’s obvious that Castillo is the odd-man out between the three, so teams who were rumored to be interested before should be calling both Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer with trade proposals in hopes of landing him before teams report to camps in February. Interested parties could include the likes of the Colorado Rockies and other clubs looking to upgrade behind the dish at a relatively-low price tag.

It’ll definitely be interesting to see who steps up and what they’ll be offering to acquire the man known as ‘Beef Castle’. Castillo is coming off a year in which he slugged a career-high 13 home runs and drove in 46 runs but managed to strikeout 102 times with a .237/.296/.389 average – a lines that dropped when compared to his 2013 total.

Chicago may not be making San Diego Padres-like moves, but they’re proving that they are ready to, at the very least, contend in 2015. We’ll just have to see if this deal will backfire on the team or work out in their favor.