Chicago Cubs: Paying players to play for other teams

The Chicago Cubs should avoid paying players to play for other teams. That makes sense and sounds simple enough. But many pundits and Cubs fans are clamoring for the front office to get rid of players that will require the team to do precisely that.

The Cubs current front office of Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer had traded away players before in which they were required to pay part of the salary of the player being traded away. But neither of those players were ones that Theo and Jed personally acquired.

One of the first things that Theo and Jed had to do when they took over the Cubs is figure out what to do with a disgruntled Carlos Zambrano. They ended up trading Zambrano away to the Florida Marlins.

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However, that trade was financially complicated. The Cubs had to agree to pay $15 million of the $18 million Zambrano was owed for the 2012 season. Zambrano had also lost $3 million for being put on the disqualified list when he left the ballpark early and said that he was retiring before the season was over. In order to get Zambrano to waive his no-trade clause, the Cubs agreed to pay him back $2.4 million of the $3 million he lost for that incident.

In 2013 the rebuilding Cubs no longer had a roster spot for Alfonso Soriano. So the Cubs traded Soriano back to the New York Yankees. As part of the trade, the Cubs agreed to pay $17.7 million of his remaining $24.4 million salary.

One possibility is a swap of bad contracts. The Cubs had a semi-successful bad contract swap in 2009 when they traded outfielder Milton Bradley for starting pitcher Carlos Silva.

Switch-hitting Bradley was supposed to bring balance to a mostly right-handed hitting lineup. But after fitting in with a unique clubhouse in Texas, Bradley never did fit in with the Cubs. In 2010 Silva nearly pitched himself into the All-Star game in the first half of the season. But he did not pitch anywhere near as well in the second half of the season.

Aside from a trade of Chatwood for Russell Martin it’s difficult to see a place where there would be a bad contract out there that might fit the Cubs needs. Martin could have filled the role of the veteran backup catcher for the Cubs.  Chatwood could have been a buy-low starting pitcher with a lot of potential upside for the Toronto Blue Jays. However, Martin has since been traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Cubs are currently facing many questions in the bullpen. Fans and pundits alike are calling for the Cubs to sign some free agent relievers to bolster the bullpen. But the Cubs already have a full bullpen. If the Cubs add to their bullpen, what are they going to do with pitchers such as Chatwood, Brian Duensing and Brandon Kintzler?

Kintzler enacted his one-year player option that pays him $5 million after the Cubs declined his $10 million team option. Duensing signed a two-year, $7 million deal last offseason. So he has one year left at $3.5 million.

If the Cubs release these pitchers, they will have to pay them their full salaries. That’s what the Cubs had to do with Edwin Jackson in 2015.

That leaves making the kind of trades where the Cubs agree to pay part or most of their salary. If they do that, not only will the Cubs be paying their own players more than ever before in team history; the Cubs will also be paying players to play for other teams. And don’t forget, the Cubs would still need to turn right around and pay the player who is going to replace the player with the bad contract. At that point, you have to ask yourself if the Cubs would be improving what they put out on the field.

If Chatwood is as wild as he was last year, the Cubs might have to just dump him one way or another. Either way, it will cost the Cubs millions of dollars in wasted salary to do so. But if Chatwood can salvage his Cubs career by contributing in the bullpen and perhaps being starting pitching depth, the Cubs will get at least some value out of the $25.5 million remaining on his contract.

As bad as we feel about Duensing’s 2018, don’t forget how good we felt about his 2017. If Duensing gets healthy and pitches like its 2017 again, the $3.5 million he earns next season will feel like as much of a bargain as we thought it was going to be when he originally resigned with the Cubs last offseason.

Kintzler didn’t pitch well after he was traded to the Cubs last year. Again, we felt this way about Justin Wilson after his trade to the Cubs in the 2017 season. Wilson recovered to be one of the most dependable arms for the Cubs bullpen in 2018. Like Wilson, Kintzler had a substantial history of success before his trade to the Cubs. So perhaps Kintzler is due for a similar bounce-back type of season.

We saw some glimpses in 2018 of the player we thought Heyward be might when he originally signed a free agent contract with the Cubs. For a significant stretch of the season, he was hitting third in batting order and even hit a walk-off grand slam.

It’s likely that Heyward will never be as good as we all hoped he was going to be when he first signed with the Cubs. But if the Cubs pay more than half a $100 million for him to play on another team that probably is a poor use of the budget.

Its not as if Heyward doesn’t contribute at all. His offense has been valuable at times. His defense is valuable. His leadership already helped the Cubs win the World Series.

There are rare occasions where even this front office has deemed it necessary to pay a player to play for another team. The Cubs might find themselves at that point with Chatwood this coming season. But if at all possible you want to avoid doing that. I suspect that is part of the reason the additions to the bullpen that some are clamoring for haven’t happened this offseason. Chatwood, Duensing and Kintzler are going to be given every opportunity to fill those roster spots. Heyward will in all likelihood finish out his contract in a Cub uniform. These players are more valuable to the team as Cubs than in another team’s uniform.