Chicago Cubs: What Jake Arrieta might have meant to the 2018 team

Chicago Cubs: Freeing up a chunk of cap space

Jake Arrieta signed a three-year deal with Philly for $75 million. Compare this to the $126 million spent on Darvish and $38 million on Chatwood, and the Cubs are saving big bucks. With the $51 million they could’ve saved from Darvish, we may have seen the Cubs make a bigger splash at the trade deadline.

With much more cap space, Chicago would have been much more in the mix (and probably pulled off a deal) for guys like Zach Britton, Chris Archer, J.A. Happ, and maybe even a bat like Manny Machado.

The Cubs have definitely made the best of the situation by adding Jesse Chavez, Cole Hamels, Brandon Kintzler, Jorge De La Rosa and Daniel Murphy on the cheap. All of these additions (minus Kintzler) have been incredible surprises for the team, but I think we call all agree that having the ability to add another lockdown arm at the deadline would improve this team even more.