7 prospects the Chicago Cubs should target in a trade at the deadline

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If the Chicago Cubs continue to fall out of the race by dropping games to the Washington Nationals, one of the youngest (and worst) teams in the league, then it’s time to look at the prospects that may grab their attention.

We’ve written a couple of these pieces this year. We had one back in May when the Cubs looked like they’d definitely be sellers, we had another in June when they looked like they may turn it around and be buyers, and finally, we had one earlier this month when they looked like they might be sellers again.

The difference between this article and those articles is twofold:

We won’t be excluding division rivals from this piece. The Cincinnati Reds are an incredible team that could use a little bit of veteran leadership and therefore their players appear on this list not once, but twice.
Rather than focusing on a prospect package or even a specific trade of a Cubs player (or package) for an opposing package, this article will do a deep dive on seven particular prospects that the Cubs should target if they have the ability to get.

As I’ve said in every trade article so far this year, the 2023 Chicago Cubs team doesn’t feel far away from being a contender and therefore every single one of these prospects will at least have the possibility of making their debut in the 2024 season. With that being said, let’s dive into the first prospect the Cubs should target if they become sellers in the next couple of weeks.

Noelvi Marte SS Cincinnati Reds

Noelvi Marte has been a top prospect for years at this point and he’s still just 21 years old. He’s been on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects list prior to every season starting in 2020 and he now finds himself as the number 1 6 prospect in all of baseball according to MLB.com.

He’s playing in AAA Louisville at the moment and this season, across three levels, he’s hitting .282/.346/.452 with eight homers and 13 stolen bases. That combination of speed and power combined with a 55-grade arm tells me that we could play him at the hot corner which is a definite need and he could be the starter there on Opening Day of 2024.

You may look at Marte and say that the Reds would have no interest in moving such a player. I’d point you toward the Reds' current infield which includes Matt McClain, Jonathan India, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, and the most exciting player in baseball, Elly De La Cruz. That means they have four guys (five if you add Marte to the list) to occupy second base, third base, shortstop, and DH. Even if you make the argument that Encarnacion-Strand should be at first base and displace the veteran leadership of Joey Votto, that’s still more players than they have room for.

Beyond that, this is a logical possibility as the Reds traded their own ace, Luis Castillo, to the Seattle Mariners last season for Marte, Edwin Arroyo (#24 prospect in baseball), and two additional pieces. Now, Castillo wasn’t a rental and that additional time certainly impacted the value of the return the Reds received for him, but Marcus Stroman and Cody Bellinger appear to be far and away the biggest difference-makers that will hit the trade market this summer and therefore they may garner that level of return.

As much as I’d hate to lose the rest of the season from Bellinger or Stroman, it would ease the pain to have six years of controllability from a player like Marte.

Christian Encarnacion-Strand 3B Cincinnati Reds

This player may seem like the more likely of the Reds' prospects to be dealt in a trade as he’s not in the top 20 of overall prospects in baseball. However, he may have just become untouchable as he’s now made his way onto the major league roster and will be helping the big league team immediately (along with his absolutely massive season so far at AAA).

Trade logic changes over time.

In the past, the Cubs were able to acquire Addison Russell, a top-five prospect in baseball that would make his MLB debut less than a year later along with another top-100 prospect in Billy McKinney and “a 25-year-old pitcher with big league experience” in Dan Strailey.

The Cubs traded an MLB-ready top-10 shortstop prospect of their own for a rental of Aroldis Chapman in the 2016 season.

That being said, teams have shifted their thinking and they now recognize the value to having young cost-controlled (cheap) talent that they don’t have to worry about leaving for six seasons and therefore a lot of teams are more willing to trade a teenager that is a top-prospect rather than a top-100 prospect that is knocking on the door of the majors. They’d rather risk a player becoming a star on another team than risk losing a major league contributor in the near term and that makes players like CES extremely costly.

If the Cubs were to pull him in a deal they’d be getting a guy that hit .331/.405/.637 with 20 homers and 21 doubles in 67 games at AAA this season playing a combination of third base and first base. The Cubs need power in the lineup and any level of production from first/third base so he’d be an ideal fit.

Jordan Westburg 3B Baltimore Orioles

This is a similar player to Encarnacion-Strand in that he’s already made his major league debut, thus potentially making him cost-prohibitive. That being said, he’s a player that has significant pop while playing third base, and the Orioles are a team in a divisional and wildcard race that has a need for the positions that the Cubs have available to deal.

This season at AAA Westburg hit .295/.372/.567 with 18 homers and 15 doubles prior to getting the call to the major leagues. Finding a guy that can hit for average, hit for power, and play a solid third base with a 55-grade arm and 55 fielding grade from MLB.com is rare and it’s even more rare to find that guy that can help impact a major league squad immediately.

The Orioles are in a position that isn’t that dissimilar from the Reds in that they have more infielders than they have spots for. They certainly wouldn’t want to deal Westburg, but the nature of the MLB trade deadline is that you have to give in order to get, and whether they’d be getting an ace on the mound to anchor their rotation or a gold-glove, five-tool centerfielder they’d likely be getting the better end of this deal anyway (especially if it led to a deep playoff run).

The other thing that the Orioles have is the ability to fill out the remainder of a trade package and the fact that they don’t play in the NL Central. While inter-division trades happen, they’re rare and I think I can speak for every Cubs fan when I say that trading Stroman would hurt, but watching him shutout the Cubs in September on his way to the playoffs for a division rival while Chicago inches closer to a 90-loss season would hurt much more.

Curtis Mead 3B and Kyle Manzardo 1B Tampa Bay Rays

These two go against what I’ve been saying about the three previous players on the list. This Cubs roster needs power and considering they’re not going to get it from the four players locked up through 2026 (Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Nico Hoerner, and Dansby Swanson), they’re going to have to look to their corner infielders and DH to get it.

Neither Curtis Mead nor Kyle Manzardo are known for their power and they’re both definitely average first guys. That being said, they’re really good at hitting for average. In 2022 Mead hit .298/.390/.532 and this season he’s hitting .286/.348/.457. In 2022 Manzardo hit .327/.426/.617 and he’s struggled a bit this year to the tune of .238/.342/.442.

There is absolutely a benefit to having guys in the lineup that can clear the bases with a single swing, and the 2016 Cubs won the World Series on the backs of what felt like an entire roster of guys that could do that.

However, there’s also a lot to be said about looking at your roster and recognizing where your strengths and weaknesses are, and trying to maximize those strengths. If this trade happened, the Cubs may not have someone on the 2024 team that could hit more than 30 home runs in a season (pending Christopher Morel’s development).

That being said, they’d have a roster full of guys that could make a bad inning worse by stringing together hits, having good at-bats, and chasing pitchers out of their starts earlier than opposing teams would prefer.

Would the Rays deal both of these guys? Maybe not. Maybe they’d look for someone like Shohei Ohtani if they were to deal both of them and maybe even infielder Junior Caminero. Something that it seems like no one is talking about though is the fact that if the Cubs were to deal Bellinger and Stroman in the same deal they could create a value similar to Shohei’s. Neither is as good as Ohtani individually, and they take up two spots on a roster rather than the one that he does, but that could be a positive as much as a negative. If Ohtani gets hurt, you lose a pitcher and a hitter. If Stroman gets hurt and you still have Bellinger that’s still valuable.

If the Cubs considered putting Bellinger and Stroman in the same deal and ate some of their remaining salary, a team like the Rays may be willing to pay what would amount to a king’s ransom in today’s trade values and it would be something that could provide the Cubs with players that could contribute in a major way in 2024.

Jasson Dominguez OF New York Yankees

This is the best player on the list. Don’t worry about the numbers, don’t worry about the fact that he’s in AA right now, don’t worry about anything. Jason Dominguez is known in some circles as “The Martian” due to his other-worldly tools and while those tools haven’t exploded quite yet, he is on the precipice.

He’s a five-tool centerfielder that has legitimate 30/30 potential and can not only provide power but also speed in a Cubs lineup as soon as the 2024 season even if he opens the season in AAA Iowa.

I won’t hide from the numbers. This season he’s hitting .217/.358/.372 at AA. That’s not good. In fact, that’s bad. He’s still stealing an insane number of bases with 25 already and he’s hitting for some power with 11 homers, but there’s a lot to be desired here. Last season across three levels he hit .273/.376/.461 with 37 stolen bases and 16 home runs. Luis Robert is a player that struggled in the minors until one day he didn’t. If the Cubs could steal that level of production for a rental that would be massive.

This deal would not be for a guy that could instantly join the Cubs at the major league level and make a difference. It would be for a guy that is a little bit more of a project, but it would be for a guy that has legitimate star potential.

Trading for him could push Suzuki to DH and allow him to focus solely on getting the ball off of the ground with the bat and give the Cubs three gold-glove caliber defenders in the outfield with Happ and Dominguez in the corners and Pete Crow-Armstrong in center.

Much like every other player on this list, the Yankees do not want to deal Dominguez. In fact, they may slap an untouchable tag on him. But if they want to see Stroman or Bellinger change into a different shade of pinstripes they may have to pony up and send the Martian to the North Side.

Ronny Mauricio SS New York Mets

This is a player that may not have made the list until MLB Trade Rumors posted a piece on prospects yesterday and referred to Mauricio as "Baez-ian." Now, they were referencing his ”abysmal discipline,” but that’s not the point.

Mauricio has Elly De La Cruz-type exit velocities (a max of 115.8 mph this season) and he has put together a slash line of .299/.344/.512 with 14 homers and 14 stolen bases at the AAA level. He’s a major league-ready player on a team that is incentivized in a major way to buy buy buy and get into the playoffs.

If the Cubs see Mauricio as a potential third baseman then they have the ability to pair him with Christopher Morel to form a middle of the lineup that is as likely to strike out a combined six times in a game as they are to combine for four home runs.

Mauricio is the opposite of the Manzardo/Mead combination we discussed earlier. He’s not going to be a guy that will hit .300 at the major league level. He’s not a guy that will have an OBP over .350. But he is a guy with star power that has the ability to be the face of a franchise in the same way that Jasson Dominguez does at a different (potentially more premium) position.

If the Cubs are able to steal Mauricio then they have the ability to make Mets fans groan next season when they trot out Pete Crow-Armstrong and Mauricio in their lineups and the Mets don’t have either of the trade pieces they received in return for their roster anymore.

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