Chicago Cubs: 3 potential outside-the-box trade partners for Kris Bryant

Chicago Cubs: Detroit Tigers

If there’s a candidate for this year’s Chicago White Sox from last offseason – a team that has a loaded group of young talent close to emerging at the big league level while looking to upgrade the big league club from outside the organization – it might be the Detroit Tigers, who already have brought top pitching prospects Casey Mize and Tarik Skubal up to the majors (though they both struggled in their first taste of the big leagues).

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It could be argued that that Tigers have greater position player needs than third base – they do have Isaac Paredes, acquired from the Cubs back in 2017 along with Jeimer Candelario (who quietly had a very nice season in Motown in 2020) to play third right now. They might be more likely to be interested in catcher Willson Contreras or shortstop Javier Baez.

However, that’s not to say that Bryant couldn’t help them. Though he figures to be an impact major league player somewhere down the road, Paredes, at 21, struggled in his first taste of the big leagues in 2020. If the Tigers decide they want to be in win-now mode for 2021, they might want to take a chance on Bryant and send back a package that would include sending Paredes back to Chicago.

We’d have to believe that for a player of Bryant’s caliber, Mize and Matt Manning would be off the table, but perhaps the southpaw Skubal would be in play? A package centered around Paredes and Skubal would help the Cubs in multiple ways.