Is the Matthew Boyd deal a sign of things to come or a new normal for the Cubs?

Paying nearly $30 million to a pitcher who made eight starts last season feels like a stretch. But it's actually right in line with the preseason contract projections for Matt Boyd, who will join Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon and Shota Imanaga in the Chicago Cubs starting rotation next year.

With rumors swirling around the likes of Javier Assad and Jordan Wicks, the Boyd signing could be one of two things. 1) It's a harsh reality that the Cubs have to push their chips in on bounceback candidates instead of pursuing top-end talent, hoping for best-case scenarios. 2) This signing foreshadows moves to come, both via free agency and trade.

The team was never going to be serious about the top of the market, headlined by Corbin Burnes and Blake Snell, the latter of which recently signed with the Dodgers. The draft pick compensation attached to guys like Max Fried, Sean Manaea, Nick Pivetta and Luis Severino wipes out another tier of the free-agent market because the Cubs have shown a reluctance to give up those picks in the past.

Matthew Boyd works for the Cubs - but only as part of a larger offseason strategy

That drops us down to the next level of pitchers - the Frankie Montas, Matthew Boyd, Andrew Heaney tier. Montas outperformed projections in a big way, signing a two-year deal with the Mets, but it's clear once you get to these guys there is no such thing as a sure thing. Boyd was lights-out in the postseason this fall with Cleveland (1 ER in 11.2 IP) and the metrics suggested a big bounce-back post-Tommy John surgery, but we're still talking about a guy who hasn't pitched 100 innings in a single season in five years.

If this is the rotation addition the Cubs had in mind this winter, it's a huge gamble. But if Boyd is a piece of a larger puzzle and Hoyer pulls off a trade for a legitimate rotation piece and he slides down to the #5 spot in the rotation with young arms as depth behind him in case of injury, it becomes a far more palatable course of action for a team with so much riding on 2025.

Given the lack of confidence in the front office shared by much of a frustrated fan base, I'd wager most folks fall into bucket #1. But given it's just Dec. 1, I think there's much more to come from Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins and, by the end of the offseason, the Boyd signing will be viewed in a much different light.