The Cubs currently have eight free agents and a few more will hit the open market in the coming days because of team options not being picked up or buyouts from the final year of a contract. For a few other players, they’ll opt-in to the rest of their deals with the Cubs and in turn the Cubs will indeed pick up a few players’ options.
This past week Yu Darvish had the chance to opt-out and become a free agent, but we pretty much knew he wasn’t going anywhere after the 2019 season.
And of course, Jason Heyward won’t be opting out either. He’ll have four years left on his deal worth $86 million. He has a partial no-trade clause this next year.
Here are players expected to have their options picked up by the Cubs.
Jose Quintana: $10.5 million
Anthony Rizzo: $14.5 million
Right-handed pitcher Kendall Graveman, who didn’t pitch for the Cubs in 2019 after having Tommy John surgery in 2018, has a $3 million team option for 2020 that the Cubs will probably pick up, but at this point it’s not 100% certain. Graveman could be an inexpensive option to battle for a fifth starter’s role next season.
And here are the players the Cubs are expected to decline team options.
David Phelps: $5 million
Brandon Morrow: $12 million
Derek Holland: $6.5 million
Tony Barnette: $3 million
The Cubs will have to buyout Holland and Morrow’s options. That’ll cost $500k and $3 million, respectively.
And the Cubs made an announcement on Quintana and Holland Saturday night.
Here are the Cubs players who are already free agents.
Xavier Cedeno, Ben Zobrist, Nick Castellanos, Pedro Strop, Steve Cishek, Brandon Kintzler, Jonathan Lucroy, Cole Hamels
The Cubs will also decide if they want to offer Cole Hamels a qualifying offer, which will be worth about $17.8 million.
That figure comes from the average of the top 125 salaries in MLB for 2019. You can read all about the implications of teams offering qualifying offers and what happens when they sign a player who declined a qualifying offer from their previous team here.
Later in November the Cubs will also make decisions to tender or non-tender contracts to other players on their 40-man roster. Addison Russell is a prime candidate to be non-tendered, which would immediately make him a free agent.
