The Cubs got it right with Alex Bregman

Quite a night for Chicago sports Saturday, so Oleg and I did a live Bears postgame - Cubs Bregman news RECRAP.

When the Cubs traded Owen Caissie and two other minor leaguers to the Marlins last week to finally land an impact starting pitcher in Edward Cabrera, it was a welcome move. But given Jed Hoyer's history of doing one bold thing and then not following it up with anything, I was convinced it was the end of the meaningful additions.

There was a glimmer of hope that because the Cubs didn't need to spend real free agent money on the starting pitcher, just prospects and $4M for Edward's first season, that they'd have money left over that they could use to sign one of the four big bats still left on the market.

They had been linked to varying degrees of interest with all four, Alex Bregman, Bo Bichette, and their old outfielders Kyle Tucker and Cody Bellinger.

The infielders, Bregman and Bichette made the most sense. The Cubs have a right fielder, their old one, Seiya Suzuki, and it's incredible the amount of angst that some have about his defense. We are still making a big deal about the ball he dropped against the Barves in 2023? I thought we agreed that he did it on purpose to get David Ross fired. He just took one for the team and the fanbase.

Besides, having Seiya in right opens up DH at bats for Moises Ballesteros, and if you don't like watching that lumpy kid rake baseballs, there's something wrong with you.

The Cubs made a haphazard attempt to sign Bregman last year, when it made even more sense, and for a guy who seems to gleefully eat shit to cover for ownership and the inept business dealings of Crane Kenney, Jed was really pissed off at the press gaggle in spring training last year where he had to explain why his offer for Bregman didn't match Boston's in length, value or flexibility. Bregman was a player he clearly wanted, and somebody his players really wanted him to get.

Two big hurdles were in way of the Cubs adding any of the four, both of them self-inflicted by ownership. The Cubs were $32 million under the lowest level of luxury tax, and signing any of them would likely push them over it. We've been over and over how that first level is no big deal, especially if you weren't over it the year before, but the Cubs act like it's a sparking third rail. And the other self-impediment was the Cubs strange refusal to offer deferred money in contracts.

(They claim that giving option buyouts in player deals is deferring money, and they do that all the time, but sorry, it's not the same thing.)

It seems apparent that Jed's offer to Bregman last year was hampered by the luxury tax situation at the time. The Cubs had barely gone over the lowest level in 2024 and were tax payers in 2025. Signing Bregman would have meant they would almost certainly be over last year again, and then this year. That shouldn't stop a big market team, but you know how the Cubs are.

And then, while all of us were angsting our way through the first three quarters of that incredible Bears' playoff win over the Packers, the Cubs did do a signing.