This Cubs trade deadline review from ESPN didn’t last a week

The Chicago Cubs' trade deadline approach has already come into question with Michael Soroka landing on the IL after only two innings pitched, and it takes some nuance out of Jeff Passan's review of what the team did. In his deadline post-mortem for ESPN, Passan did use some fair logic to explain what the Cubs did.

"Could their front offices have ignored those realities and gone for broke? Sure. And none of their fans would have minded. For now. But if they lost in October this year and one of the prospects they moved broke out, not only would the deals be seen as failures, but because they would've been made against the advice of analytical models, they would've been of the you-should've-known variety."

Passan lumped the Red Sox and Cubs into the same category, which is ironic, considering Craig Breslow is from the Theo Epstein tree of executives. Breslow and Jed Hoyer had similar approaches to this year's deadline, refusing to move top prospects to address their biggest need--a frontline starting pitcher.

That said, the Cubs aren't at the same point as the Red Sox are. The Red Sox leaned into their youth movement and top prospects when they decided to trade Rafael Devers. Of course, the drama between Devers and Breslow played a large factor as well, but the Red Sox were ready to commit to their young prospects.

ESPN’s full Cubs trade deadline analysis now looks wildly off base

Meanwhile, the Cubs entered the week of the deadline as the best team in baseball with only two guaranteed months of having Kyle Tucker on their roster. Most fans were aware that this was the deadline for the Cubs to go all-in and show a willingness to move their top prospects. There wouldn't have been arms raised by the fanbase if the move backfired.

In light of Soroka landing on the IL, the Cubs are now very much in a position where the fans can point at Jed Hoyer's front office and say, "you should've known" that this was going to be the expected result. Especially when there were concerns over Soroka before the Cubs even made the trade. Making things even worse is that the Cubs are now trying to catch up to the Milwaukee Brewers, and their deadline approach could be the reason why they aren't able to.

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