Cubs Contacted Jays About José Soriano After He Was Acquired from Angels

This is one of those stories that has no real value other than providing a little context to the chaos of the trade deadline, but it’s still fun to acknowledge. According to Blue Jays beat writer Mitch Bannon and Twins beat writer Dan Hayes, both of The Athletic, the Cubs and Twins were among the teams that checked in with Toronto to see if they’d be willing to flip José Soriano. One of the more coveted controllable starters moved, Soriano commanded a package headlined by 20-year-old shortstop Arjun Nimmala.

Ranked No. 43 overall and now arguably the Angels’ top prospect, Nimmala is considered a bigger individual haul than anyone the Cubs have in their system. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’d have parted with Josiah Hartshorn, though it’s possible they were willing to move Jefferson Rojas prior to sending him to the Mets for Clay Holmes and Tyron Taylor. This is all conjecture, as the Bannon/Hayes piece offered nothing about the Cubs’ machinations.

They understandably focused on the Twins’ offer of Kaelen Culpepper, their No. 2 prospect and No. 29 overall, and others. That fell short because the Jays wanted No. 6-ranked righty Riley Quick, who is Minnesota’s top pitching prospect. So Jed Hoyer probably would have needed to include Rojas and Jaxon Wiggins or Kaleb Wing just to keep Mark Shapiro on the line. It would have been pretty wild if the Cubs had pulled that off, especially since Soriano effectively replaced Kevin Gausman following his trade to Chicago.

The big difference between Soriano and the starters the Cubs ended up getting is that he’s both much younger and under club control for two more years after this one. And those are arbitration years to boot, so he’s under cheap control. That’s why Hoyer and other execs were willing to part with top prospects.

In the end, this just serves to give us an underwater view of a duck swimming. Most folks only see what is happening on the surface and conflate a lack of news with a lack of activity. The reality is that the days and hours leading up to the deadline are a nonstop flurry of communications, like Brad Pitt in Moneyball but not nearly as quippy.