Tom Ricketts gave the green light and the Cubs made two major signings

Dec 7, 2022 - 2:30 PM

For those of you who kept saying to Cubs management, “Do something!”, the Cubs absolutely did something Tuesday.

Two somethings, in fact, signing Cody Bellinger to a one-year deal (with a 2024 mutual option) and Jameson Taillon to a four-year contract (and thanks to Josh for covering that when news broke very late Tuesday evening).

Based on the poll results in those links as of this writing, both of those signings were very well received. There’s risk in the Bellinger signing, of course, because of his down years since 2019. My feeling is that a lot of the bad performance is injury-related and if Bellinger is healthy, he could put up good offensive numbers for the Cubs. Even if not, he’ll play elite defense in center field and the team desperately needed that.

As for Taillon, I detailed a lot of his history in this article, including his two Tommy John surgeries. He’s been healthy since the second one and did not miss a start over the last two years with the Yankees. It’s my feeling that he’ll pitch better in the NL Central than he did in the AL East. One thing about Taillon — he throws strikes and doesn’t walk guys. In 100 starts (550 innings) since 2018, Taillon’s walk rate is 2.1 per nine innings, which is excellent. He’s got a good repertoire of pitches and throws a 94 mile per hour fastball on average:

Statcast

The Cubs are significantly improved by both of these signings.

We’ll have more here on the Cubs estimated payroll soon, but a quick number posted by The Deputy Mayor of Rush Street last night has the Cubs 2023 payroll at about $182 million after these two signings. That should leave about $50 million of room below the luxury tax, which should be enough to sign one of the three top shortstops still on the market and perhaps a catcher as well. Remember that Jason Heyward’s $22 million comes off the books after 2023, so even if the Cubs get close to the luxury tax this year, they’ll have more room in 2024.

Good work so far by Jed Hoyer & Co. Let’s hope we hear of more signings today.

Also Wednesday, we will learn the name of the winner of this year’s Frick Award from the Hall of Fame, honoring a longtime baseball broadcaster, and Pat Hughes is one of the finalists. I’m rooting for him.

This year’s Rule 5 Draft will take place today at 4 p.m. CT. You can follow along with it on a live audio stream at MLB.com. Here’s a preview of what could happen in today’s proceedings.

And, as always, we await developments.