HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! Cody Bellinger is back with the Cubs. LET’S GOOOOOO!
What an absolute midnight Jeff Passan bomb!
More details from Passan.
A huge shoutout to Lisa.
And how about our guy Kevin, who gave us this inside scoop earlier on Saturday night.
You just knew that once spring training games were starting that the big Scott Boras free agents were going to be getting anxious. Tom Ricketts, love him or hate him or anywhere in between, was right for publicly calling out Boras earlier this week for not having an actual negotiations with the Cubs and really any team. It was only a matter of time for Bellinger to come back to the Cubs on either a longterm deal or one of these short contracts with opt outs. Unfortunately for Bellinger, the market was not strong for him this offseason and a huge $200 million offer was never on the table for him.
For the Cubs, it’s a huge win. You get your star free agent and hopefully Bellinger proves that 2023 is going to be the norm from him and prove that his injury-plagued seasons were indeed a fluke. We’ve known all along that Bellinger loved his time with the Cubs in 2023 and maybe the two sides work out a longer deal down the road.
There’s really nothing not to like about this deal. The Cubs now have so much more roster flexibility, less to worry about and on paper are better than they were before getting this deal done with Bellinger. For Bellinger, he gets a high AAV and if he does opt out after this season, then that means he had another great year with the Cubs. If he doesn’t, then it’s not like the Cubs get burned on a longterm contract. It’s three years max and either way you hope that one of the other up and coming prospects establishes themselves as a valuable MLB player, who can take over in center or first base.
And hey, if the other Boras clients are feeling the pressure to sign, the Cubs should definitely be offering a similar deal because it just does not appear as though the huge contract offers are coming for Jordan Montgomery, Blake Snell or Matt Chapman.
