Chicago Cubs need more from Jose Quintana; time to make a move?

The Chicago Cubs need more from Jose Quintana – especially this season – and outfielder Mark Zagunis is looking to force his way ono the big league club.

We are officially just two weeks from Opening Day when the Chicago Cubs head to the Lone Star State to take on the Texas Rangers. But until that day comes, plenty of storylines have our attention – both throughout Major League Baseball and down in Arizona as the team continues Cactus League action.

On the South Side of Chicago, two former Cubs prospects, Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease, could make their big league debuts this summer. The former will almost certainly get the call in late April, as the Sox execute a move similar to the one Theo Epstein used to gain an extra year of team control over Kris Bryant back in 2015. What does all this mean?

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That it’s time for Jose Quintana to, at last, silence his critics and get back to pitching at a high level – something he hasn’t done consistently since that mid-2017 trade between the crosstown rivals.

Relations between MLB and the MLBPA could, at least in theory, be showing signs of thawing after the two sides announced an agreement on a number of topics ahead of the 2019 campaign.

These include doing away with the waiver trade deadline – thus instituting a single July 31 deadline moving forward, the creation of an All-Star Game ‘Election Day’ and a couple of roster size changes (effective next season) – with 25-man rosters expanding to 26 players and September’s 40-man big league roster shrinking down to 28.

It’ll be interesting to see how these changes impact the Cubs both in the front office and the dugout. Granted, the roster size changes won’t matter until 2020, but the trade deadline this summer could become far more interesting given it will be teams’ last chances to shore up their respective rosters for the stretch run.

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