Chicago Cubs: Trade grades for a surprisingly quiet deadline

Cubs, Mets could only get together on a relatively minor deal in the end

Mychal Givens felt like a good secondary piece to what could’ve been a blockbuster trade that sent Willson Contreras to the Mets for a massive haul of prospects, but for one reason or another, such a trade never materialized, and instead Givens on his own was sent to New York on his own at the buzzer in a somewhat underwhelming end to a surprising and strange day.

That’s not to knock Givens, who was excellent with the Cubs, who didn’t allow a run from June 14 until his trade and had a K/9 of 11.3, but as a rental, a Givens trade was more procedural than anything else. In return, the Cubs got Single-A reliever Saul Gonzalez, a mountainous righty standing at 6’8.

Gonzalez sits in the low-90’s, hitting up to 95 with a slider offering as well. The numbers for Gonzalez were very good, striking out 27.6 percent of the batters he faced and walking just 6.7% of them while working to the tune of a 2.81 ERA.

Gonzalez is already 22 so he likely won’t be in Single-A much longer, and perhaps with his tall stature there may some more projectability. It is somewhat surprising the Cubs couldn’t get a little bit more for Givens, but you can only expect so much in exchange for a rental righty reliever.

Grade: B-

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While this trade deadline will understandably have the questions surrounding what happened with Contreras and Happ, the front office seemed to do pretty well in the trades they did make. We probably won’t know what to make of the Contreras and Happ situations until the offseason, but that’s a conversation for another day.