After the trade deadline, Cubs are going for it — while White Sox are holding auditions for 2024 – The Denver Post

Major League Baseball’s trade deadline ended at 5 p.m. Tuesday with the Chicago Cubs and White Sox going in opposite directions.

One man’s white flag is another man’s white pocket square. The Cubs went from potential sellers to buyers with a late-July push to the .500 mark, while the Sox unofficially ended their much-heralded window of contention by becoming sellers.

We won’t know for a few months whether the Sox’s decision to unload several pitchers and slugger Jake Burger while keeping Tim Anderson and Dylan Cease was a good sign for ’24, or whether the Cubs’ decision to keep Cody Bellinger and Marcus Stroman and acquire Jeimer Candelario while designating Trey Mancini for assignment means they’re playoff worthy in ’23.

But after a couple of months of speculation, fueled by two underachieving teams trying to contend in bad divisions, the Cubs and Sox can now go back to their regularly scheduled seasons, already in progress.

Cubs President Jed Hoyer can have a restful night of sleep after tossing the turning the last month over which way to go with his up-and-down-and-up team, and Sox general manager Rick Hahn can have that drink and cigar he spoke about last week after dealing Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López to the Los Angeles Angels for two prospects.

As Cubs manager David Ross confirmed Monday, Hoyer wound up keeping Bellinger, the presumptive National League Player of the Month for July, who would’ve commanded two or more quality prospects in any deadline deal. Hoyer admitted there was a period where it looked like they would be sellers. They were seven games under .500 and 8 1/2 games back on July 18, trailing the Washington Nationals 3-0 before winning 17-3.

“Things were probably going in that direction,” he said. “The biggest focus we had was about waiting and letting it play out, not short-changing the process by making a decision too early.”

He pointed to the comeback win over the White Sox on July 26 and Mike Tauchman’s sensational, walk-off, game-saving catch on Friday in St. Louis as moments it became clear he would keep the nucleus together.

Stroman, the other half of the trade bait duo, also will remain a Cub for the rest of the season, and perhaps beyond ’23.

Stroman left the clubhouse Monday without talking to the media after allowing six runs in three innings in a 6-5 loss to the Reds, which boosted his ERA to a hefty 9.00 since June 25. After igniting controversy in June by tweeting that the Cubs wouldn’t talk to him about an extension, which suggested he’d be opting out of the final year of his three-year, $71 million deal to get a bigger contract on the open market, Stroman has done a 180-degree plunge on the mound.

Is Stroman OK physically?

“What I’d say is everybody is deraling with stuff, and he’s not outside of that,” Ross said, adding that “some of those things can equate to mechanical flaws.”

Ross later said it was not the blister issue from last month. Asked if Stroman was in the right head space, Ross said: “I think he’s in the right head space. He usually comes in with a good attitude, puts his work in. I haven’t seen any change in that.”

Many Cubs fans upset with Hoyer in June over not giving Stroman an extension might now be concerned that Stroman’s $25 million salary in ’24, combined with his recent struggles, would make the veteran think twice about opting out for more money. That presumably would leave Hoyer with less money to spend next winter, when re-signing Bellinger should be the Cubs’ primary focus.

“Belli knows how we feel about him, that’s for sure,” Hoyer said. “We’ve loved having him here. I don’t comment on negotiations in season, but he knows how we feel. He’s been wonderful and been a really good fit.”

Hahn made the easy call last week to jettison Lucas Giolito, who was leaving as a free agent, and dump Lance Lynn and Joe Kelly, the two most overpaid pitchers on the roster. He made a more gutsy one Tuesday by sending the beloved Burger to the Miami Marlins for two prospects.

By giving up on a player who never gave up on himself despite devastating setbacks, Hahn made a business decision void of any sentiment, which is how most GMs should act. Nevertheless, his Q-rating dropped even further on the South Side, which seems almost impossible.

Hahn said on a Zoom call Tuesday that “anyone who knows his story” can appreciate Burger’s resilience and have “empathy” for his journey.

“Everyone in baseball should root for this kid,” he said.

In Chicago, they already did. But Hahn said: “At the end of the day it was strictly a baseball deal.”

The Sox had plenty of right-handed power, he noted, and needed young left-handed pitching down the road, which he believes he got in prospect Jake Eder. Left unsaid was Hahn couldn’t deal Yoán Moncada’s bloated contract, Burger was ill-suited to play second and Eloy Jiménez will need most of the DH at-bats next year.

At the start of the rebuild in 2017, Hahn said in spring training that Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf “mentions his age to me in a fair amount of these conversations, usually prefaced by, ‘How long, given my age?’”

Reinsdorf was 81 at the time. He’s 87 now, and no closer to winning another World Series than he was at the end of 2016. Hahn executed the game plan so well during the first five seasons that T-shirts were made and sold saying “In Hahn We Trust.” The Sox won 93 games in 2021 and the future looked bright, even with the forced marriage of manager Tony La Russa. But it began to fall apart in 2022 in what would be the final year of the La Russa reboot, and completely went off the rails under Pedro Grifol in ’23, forcing Hahn to retrench.

Hahn has the good fortune of working for someone willing to let him fix what he and Ken Williams broke, much to the dismay of Sox fans. Hopefully they’ll get it right with the next plan. Reinsdorf is not getting any younger.

With two months left in the season, the Cubs are going for it and the Sox are holding auditions for ‘24. It’s not exactly what many predicted in spring training, but here we are.

No turning back now.

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