3 off-the-wall Chicago Cubs trade deadline possibilities

Chicago Cubs: A Kris Bryant trade with the Houston Astros

Most of the teams we’ve seen loosely rumored to have interest in Kris Bryant have been located out east, including the New York Mets, Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals. But there’s one team that has to be interested given the amount of time the Chicago Cubs slugger has spent in the outfield this season: the Houston Astros.

The team has definitely felt the loss of George Springer more than they’d hoped to and Bryant would immediately remedy their lack of offense in the outfield. Like the Cubs, Houston faces an impending loss of their star shortstop in Carlos Correa – so adding some firepower in hopes of making one more run with him could prove enticing.

Bryant is enjoying the best season of his career through the first two months, smacking 15 doubles, 11 home runs and tallying a .405 OBP en route to an OPS north of 1.000. He’s been near-twice as valuable as the league average player to this point and, as I’ve said before, he’d be hard-pressed to raise his trade value any higher at this point.

In the same way a trade for Scherzer would tell fans the front office is going for it, a Bryant trade will send the exact opposite message: the rebuild is on and you need to come to terms with the closing of the most successful chapter in Chicago Cubs history. One thing’s for sure: no matter which way the team goes, the next two months are going to be quite a ride.