Cubs could create army of lefty aces with shocking deadline blockbuster

Justin Steele. Shota Imanaga. Matthew Boyd.

That triumvirate may not have the name brand recognition of some of the other collections of aces out there — it's pretty freaking hard to compete with Roki Sasaki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Shohei Ohtani, after all — but it's a group that belongs among MLB's best, especially following Boyd's All-Star emergence this season.

The problem? Steele is out for the season with a serious UCL injury.

There's no hard and fast rule that all of your best pitchers need to share the same handedness — indeed, it's probably better if there's some variation in the looks they can offer opposing hitters, especially in a playoff series — but it was a fun quirk that all three of the Cubs' aces were southpaws.

Well, if the Cubs want to change that sentence from past tense to present tense, there's a chance they can do so at the trade deadline for one of the best pitchers in baseball: MacKenzie Gore.

Could Cubs pull off MacKenzie Gore blockbuster at trade deadline?

Last week, my colleague at North Side Baseball, Matthew Trueblood, reported that Gore could be headed to the trade block in the wake of the Washington Nationals' decision to relieve POBO Mike Rizzo and manager Dave Martinez of their duties.

This would be a wildly exciting move for the Cubs to pull off, and a bit of a detour from how Jed Hoyer tends to handle his trade deadline business. However, a trade of this magnitude is hard to imagine pulling off with just a couple of weeks to go until the trade deadline. Trueblood says as such in his article:

"A trade for Gore is a longshot. The Cubs might decide they can't afford to risk as much talent as the trade would demand on one pitcher, or they might simply be outbid. Since the odds have shifted and a deal is at least vaguely possible, though, expect to hear the team and the All-Star southpaw linked in rumors at least a time or two between now and the end of the month."

But... what if, right? If any team is going to make this happen, it's the one that traded Juan Soto for Gore just three fateful years ago.

Now, the Nationals' interim general manager, Mike DeBartolo, almost certainly won't given the kind of authority to trade Gore, a 26-year-old All-Star pitching like a Cy Young contender with two and a half years of team control remaining.

However, Gore is currently at the peak of his value. He's rocking a 3.02 ERA in 110 1/3 innings through the first half of this season, and it's taken him a while to get to this point. As he gets older and closer to free agency, the Nationals, currently 38-58 and 14 games back of the third NL Wild Card, won't be able to demand so much for him.

And that's where this conversation reaches its biggest roadblock. The acquisition cost is going to be massive. Owen Caissie, who is probably going to be dealt at the deadline no matter what, would certainly be one of the headliners.

Then, you'd likely have to throw in another top major-league-ready piece, perhaps someone like Matt Shaw or (much more doubtfully) Moises Ballesteros. And that'd be just the start of the return package to Washington.

Still, with the Cubs' high-profile need for another really good starter well known, it's hard to imagine anyone better than Gore hitting the market by July 31. He, Boyd and Imanaga would look mighty good against anyone in a playoff series this year, and they'd make for one heck of a lefty quartet when Steele returns in 2026.