The Chicago Cubs, despite staring down a dwindling free agent marketplace, are still a work in progress when it comes building the team they want to field for the 2025 season.
There’s bullpen work that needs to be done, especially in the area of the closer spot. There are some positional depth questions that need to be answered. In the starting rotation, there would also be the need for at least one more viable veteran addition as added insurance.
Losing Out To The Los Angeles Dodgers
The team has been watching targeted players disappear one by one from the open market. Most recently, the Los Angeles Dodgers snatched up the closer targeted by the Cubs, Tanner Scott, as well as a possible backup option in Kirby Yates.
Ironically, those closer-grabbing moves by the Dodgers may have opened the door for the Cubs acquiring a quality bullpen asset they need.
Many analysts feel that the Dodgers, in need of moving some pieces to accommodate the four incoming stars this season– Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki, Scott, and Yates– may need to move some other talent.
That “other talent,” in this case, could be any one of a handful of Dodger pitching pieces possibly displaced by the team’s big-ticket movements this offseason. The names most mentioned in that conversation have been Ryan Braiser and Dustin May.
The Chicago Cubs Could Target Extra Lefty
However, Andrew Wright of Cubbies Crib believes that southpaw reliever Anthony Banda could be one of those pieces indirectly made available by the Dodgers’ talent grab.
Per Wright:
“Although his career 4.92 ERA might scare some away from Anthony Banda, he just had a career season in 2024 with a 3.08 ERA and 126 ERA+. With lefties Alex Vesia and Tanner Scott now in the Los Angeles bullpen, Banda may be the odd man out as a third left-hander. It is no secret that Chicago has recently struggled to find relievers to get left-handed hitters out, so Banda would fit that role well and give the Cubs another option outside of Luke Little.”
The question when it comes Banda is whether the Dodgers would be willing to deal him.
Last season, the 31-year-old looked to be figuring things out and he had what many see as a breakthrough year with stuff that seemed overpowering at times. Sporting that career 4.92 ERA– and playing for seven different teams in eight big league seasons– it could be said that Banda’s never truly had a full-on successful year in his seven years prior to 2024.
Could/Would The Deal Be Made?
But he definitely turned heads in 2024 in his role as a lefty bullpen arm and won himself a slot in the Dodgers pen. That might make him not so much of an extra accessory, like Braiser and May appear to be.
But, then again, he IS riding on a one-year deal, per his agreement with Los Angeles this offseason to avoid arbitration.
Moving Banda to a team in exchange for a low-level, high-ceiling minor league prospect could be a smart flip. It would be a move similar to the one made with the Cubs last offseason when they dealt Michael Busch, who was majors-ready but had no spot on the loaded Dodgers roster, to Chicago for a pair of very young prospects to help replenish the lower levels of their farm system.
The Cubs certainly shouldn’t pass by an opportunity to add a quality arm to the bullpen, especially a quality left-handed arm. And, with a budget salary of $1 million, the risk would be minimal.
Conflicting reports have surfaced surrounding another Chicago Cubs-Houston Astros trade
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