Chicago Cubs: Kris Bryant will be traded to one of these five teams

With his service time grievance settled, Cubs slugger Kris Bryant may very well be on the move. Here are the top trade partners for the former NL MVP.

When I’ve been waiting a long while for something and it’s finally settled, I usually look over to my wife and she knows what’s coming. A line from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, when Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee have done the impossible, destroying the One Ring in the fiery chasm whence it came.

“It’s finished. It’s done.”

So I was pretty disheartened that I got the news Wednesday morning about Kris Bryant losing his service time grievance while A) I was at the office and B) she was out of town at a trade show and not able to text. Thus, I muttered the line to myself and kept working.

But now that it’s said and done and we know the Chicago Cubs will control their former Rookie of the Year and MVP through the 2021 campaign, all sorts of new questions come to mind – namely where he’ll be playing come Opening Day.

There’s a definite chance Theo Epstein can’t find a deal to his liking and decides to hold onto Bryant and see how the season goes. Then, he could cast his line into the water again ahead of the July trade deadline and try to get a team in contention to meet his asking price with visions of hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy in October.

Based on everything we’ve heard, it seems like more of a ‘when’ rather than an ‘if’ when it comes to a Bryant trade. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the likeliest trade partners in a hypothetical trade.