MLB insider wants the Cubs to push their chips in on a former Cy Young winner

All signs point to this being the offseason Jed Hoyer gets past his discomfort and finally lands the ace this team so desperately needs. Either by trade or free agency, the Chicago Cubs are expected to add a big-name pitcher to headline the rotation and Cubs insider Bruce Levine wants that pitcher to be right-hander Sandy Alcantara.

The Cubs were connected to Alcantara at the trade deadline this summer, but given the sky-high asking prices for front-end arms and his struggles since returning from Tommy John surgery, the Cubs balked, and the 30-year-old finished out the season with the Miami Marlins, the team he's pitched for since 2018.

Sandy Alcantara is a high-risk, high-reward trade candidate

Not only did Alcantara look much like his old self down the stretch, but he's got a track record that speaks for itself. Over his final eight starts of the year, he pitched to a 2.68 ERA/3.62 FIP, averaging nearly seven innings per outing - that's the type of production that, as Levine pointed out, when paired with Cade Horton, gives Chicago a legitimate 1-2 punch atop the rotation.

Even in his first year removed from Tommy John, the 2022 NL Cy Young winner piled up 174 2/3 innings of work - a total that would have trailed only Matthew Boyd among Cubs pitchers. He's a two-time All-Star and is just a few years removed from that aforementioned dazzling 2022 campaign, when he led the league in WAR, complete games, shutouts, innings and batters faced

The risk is clear: he hasn't been the same pitcher since then (4.73 ERA in 59 starts), but he's definitely got the stuff - and he comes with two years of cost control, a major benefit for a team wary of big-dollar, long-term commitments to pitchers like the Cubs. Hoyer won't like the asking price for any ace-caliber arm that's being floated in trade talks - the question is whether he can push past that and make an aggressive move that will help offset the loss of Kyle Tucker by bolstering the pitching staff.