See, The Winter Meetings Were Productive for the Cubs
The Cubs finalized some deals that certainly were discussed over Winter Meetings and made a number of roster moves today.
First, they claimed 25-year old RHP Liam Hendriks off of waivers from the Minnesota Twins. He was a roster casualty with the Phil Hughes signing. While he has done nothing remotely good in 156 innings at the major league level, he's put up at the very least an outstanding 2.99 ERA in the minors over 580.1 IP. Those numbers were good enough to get him on the BA's Twins Top 10 list for 2011(#6) and 2012(#7).His strikeout rates are trending the wrong way and I don't know if that's an arm issue or just more of the Twins pitch-to-contact approach, but certainly seems worth the risk as a possible back-end starter/in-season depth.
The Cubs also signed non-tendered OF Ryan Kalish, formerly of the Boston Red Sox. A 9th round pick in the 2006 draft, Kalish was the 98th rated prospect in baseball before the 2008 season and usually in the middle of the pack of the top 10 Boston prospects lists back then. Injuries though have curtailed his career and he got a minor league deal with a spring training invite from the Cubs. Again, he'll be playing his age 25 season next year so certainly worth a flyer.
To round out the day, they also signed INF Ryan Roberts and C John Baker to minor league deals with spring training invites. Nothing to see there, move along.
And of course yesterday, they traded left-handed hitting OF Brian Bogusevic for right-handed hitting OF Justin Ruggiano. Ruggiano has some decent splits versus lefties (.834 career OPS/.506 SLG), so he'll certainly come in as an occasional short-side platoon-mate for Schierholtz or Sweeney and bench bat and if he plays like he did in 2012 or in the minors, maybe he'll get some more at-bats.
On the minus side, the Braves ended up signing INF Mat Gamel to a minor league deal with a spring training invite, which is a shame as I was hoping the Cubs would give him a chance this spring.
As I hypothesized yesterday and anyone can tell by reading the stories from the last few days, the Cubs will likely sign some type of starting pitcher, maybe Scott Baker, maybe Jason Hammell, maybe someone else in that price range and then probably 1-2 right-handed relievers and there are plenty of those names still out there. Otherwise, the only headling grabbing move anyone should expect is if they end up dealing Jeff Samardzija or sign Masahiro Tanaka. They can always surprise I suppose, but they seem pretty committed to Rizzo, Castro, Baez, Bryant, Soler and Almora and whomever else pushes their way into the conversation.
Certainly not the type of offseason manuevering that will get the casual fan to even remotely acknowledge the Cubs existence and certainly not the type of moves that anyone can hope for more than 70 wins next year, but certainly the type of moves that will allow them to start bringing up the next class and let some of the current guys figure things out at the major league level. I can't say I like all these moves, frankly, they're flat out boring, but I understand the process and understand what they're trying to do.
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