Chicago Cubs: A cold free agent market; Jon Jay could return?

The Hot Stove market for the Chicago Cubs and the rest of baseball has a cold one. With 15 of the Top 20 free agents still available it’s hard to understand how we got to this point.

The Chicago Cubs signed Tyler Chatwood early on and the free agent season was underway–except that it wasn’t. The Cubs have signed a handful of pitchers since then, and only one of those (Brandon Morrow) was in the top 20. What has kept all of these big names from signing? Is it the amount of money or years that they want? Or maybe next year’s class look more enticing than this one. Whatever the case may be, there are a lot of big league players without a home and spring training is creeping up fast.

While the Cubs have focused mainly on pitching, they’ve not signed any position players in FA. One that was a favorite of last year was Jon Jay, and he’s still without a place to play. As the market gets closer to the end, is it possible he’d take a discount to sign with the Cubs? And even if he would, do the Cubs even need him? While he’ll filled a void last season, the Cubs are hoping not to have that this season with Albert Almora, Ian Happ and Kyle Schwarber to patrol the outfield.

A couple of days ago we ran a post–a hot take–on why Carl Edwards should begin the season in Iowa. Surprisingly, the feedback on it wasn’t what we expected it to be. Now, our William Chase looks at what DID go right for Edwards and why he needs to be on this roster from day one. He struggled at times but also threw a big league-high in innings pitched and pitches thrown. With another year under his belt, Chase thinks he’s destined for good things in 2018.

These and other stories that you might have missed:

‘A cold free agent market for Cubs, MLB‘ – Cubbies Crib

‘Could Jon Jay take a discount to return?’ – Cubbies Crib

‘A lot did go right for Edwards in 2017’ – Cubbies Crib

‘Brewers reportedly make offer to Darvish’ – MLB.com

‘Indians’ Miller hopes to avoid ‘big fight’ over pace-of-play’ – ESPN

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