Chicago Cubs: Three huge mistakes that led to this rebuild

The Chicago Cubs have made some awful trades over their run of dominance. They also made some really good ones. The issue is that the bad ones outway the good ones in a lot of ways. Of course, finding a guy like Jake Arrieta in a deal was a franchise-altering move. The problem is that the bad trades made the good trades useless. There have mostly been bad trades once the team was good enough to compete.

Of course, the trade that landed Aroldis Chapman comes to mind. The Cubs sent Gleyber Torres to the New York Yankees in that trade and he has become a very good player. He didn’t have the best season of his career in the shortened 2020 season but the sky is the limit with this guy. The Cubs probably don’t regret this trade because Chapman was an amazing closer for them. When he came in with the lead, more often than not, the game was over. With that said, Torres would be great on the Cubs going into 2021.

The big trade that really hurt the Cubs was the one that saw them acquire Jose Quintana. They sent Eloy Jimenez, Dylan Cease, and two other prospects to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for Quintana. Quintana was mostly either mediocre or bad for the Cubs and the trade is clearly a disaster. Jimenez is now one of the best power hitters in the league with the White Sox and Cease is an up and coming MLB starter. We don’t know if Cease is going to be a star or not yet but we know he would be a massive upgrade for the Cubs right now.

Jorge Soler was sent to the Kansas City Royals in the trade that allowed the Cubs to acquire Wade Davis. He came in to replace Chapman and was okay but Soler became the player we thought he would when he was in Chicago. Hindsight shows us everything in that trade but it is clear that the Cubs weren’t patient enough for him. If they never made some of these trades, they might not be rebuilding.