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The Chicago Cubs have decided their first move after the All-Star break would be to bolster their pitching rotation. Before the second-half of the season starts back up on Friday, the Cubs made a blockbuster deal with the Chicago White Sox, trading for pitcher Jose Quintana, according to the White Sox official Twitter.
#WhiteSox have acquired OF Eloy Jiménez, RHP Dylan Cease, 1B Matt Rose & INF Bryant Flete from the Cubs in exchange for LHP José Quintana.
The deal will immediately strengthen the Cubs pitching rotation, but it certainly came at a cost. According to Baseball America’s midseason rankings, OF Eloy Jimenez is currently the No. 5 prospect in baseball. Even still, the Cubs needed to add some firepower to their pitching rotation if they wanted to truly make a push at another World Series title, and they’ve now done just that.
Let’s take a look at the Cubs updated potential pitching rotation, and how it will look once Quintana is with the Cubs and the rest of the group gets healthy.
- Jake Arrieta
- Jose Quintana
- Jon Lester
- Kyle Hendricks
- John Lackey
Lackey will likely be the fifth and final starter, and the top three pitchers could wind up changing in terms of their order. This also means that Eddie Butler and Mike Montgomery should be pushed to the bullpen and will serve as spot starters more than likely.
The addition of Quintana should be big for the Cubs, even though the 28-year-old lefty has struggled at times this season. He currently has a career-worst ERA of 4.49 with a record of 4-8. Obviously, part of that can be attributed to the fact that the White Sox currently have the worst record in the American League at 38-49. But a change of scenery will almost certainly be a good thing for Quintana.
As for the Cubs, they head into the second half of the season with a 43-45 record and are 7.5 games back of the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central. It wasn’t all bad for the Cubs in terms of their pitching this year, as they had allowed the eighth-fewest earned runs (358) to this point in the season. It’ll be interesting to see if the Cubs can get hot for the home stretch of the season and potentially push for a repeat, and also to monitor if Quintana can right the ship and revert to his old form with his new team.