Chicago Cubs: The Quintana trade was even worse than we thought

The Chicago Cubs are winners of five straight and are now in first place. They deserve credit for the way they have battled this year with a chip on their shoulder. It would have been easy to throw in the towel after the way the first few days of the season went.

With that said, you can’t help but notice how much better this team would be if they didn’t make the worst trade in franchise history a few years ago. The Jose Quintana trade is looking worse and worse every single day.

The Chicago Cubs would love to take back that trade that they made in 2017.

Of course, you can understand where their heart was in 2017 when they traded Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for Jose Quintana. It was the Cubs giving up their number one prospect and their number one pitching prospect for a cost-controlled starter that had flashes of brilliance with the White Sox.

The problem started to loom when Quintana wasn’t very good for the Cubs. All of his success came on a White Sox team that didn’t have high expectations. Now, the White Sox are elite and this trade has a lot to do with it.

Eloy Jimenez is currently hurt but he is one of, if not their best hitter. He went into the season with the expectation of hitting 40 home runs and driving in 100 runs. That would look really nice in the Cubs lineup right now. They lost the trade on Jimenez alone. He has Silver Sluggers and potentially MVPs in his future. When he gets healthy, the White Sox are legitimately a World Series team.

Another reason the White Sox are a World Series team is the play of Dylan Cease. Like most young pitchers, it took him about 30 starts to really find his game. He always had nasty stuff but finding his command was the issue. Now, he has his command and he has been brilliant. The better he gets, the worse this trade looks. As mentioned before, they lost the trade on Jimenez alone so Cease turning the corner makes it an absolute fleecing.

They are lucky that they hit on Adbert Alzolay. He is the first pitcher they have developed from scratch in a very long time. All of the pitchers that contributed to the 2016 World Series were either free agents or from trades. Cease would be great at the top of the Cubs rotation right now with his 2.98 ERA and 1.3 WAR. Hopefully, the Cubs are able to keep winning so people start to move on from this horrible deal.