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Chicago Cubs: 10 pitchers to target at the trade deadline: #1 – Sonny Gray
If the Cubs are looking at all to spend up with available salary after trading certain players should it come to fruition, a nice piece to help bolster the starting rotation would be Cincinnati’s Sonny Gray. Gray currently has a 3.65 ERA in 66 innings pitched this season, which is actually slightly above his career 3.54 ERA. He is 77-68 for his career with a 21.9 WAR, earning All-Star honors and top 10 in Cy Young voting twice in 2015 and 2019, respectively.
Gray will not reach free agency until 2024, set to earn $10,200,000 in 2022 and has a $12,000,000 club option for 2023. Not a bad price to pay for a pitcher whose career ERA is better than league average. He currently boasts a 29.7 strikeout percentage in 2021, to go along with a 30.6 percent mark in 2020 and 29 percent on the nose in 2019.
The Cubs can definitely use a pitcher of Gray’s caliber. Determining the Cubs’ aggressiveness to go after certain players as buyers will all depend on how much they sell off first. Hopefully, much like what would be a Jose Berrios situation, I could see a route Hoyer takes where he sells off the guys he’s looking to trade for younger talent, then come back and surprise us nicely and buy what he can with the salary saved.