Chicago Cubs to Do “Serious Listening” On Offers for Jeff Samardzija at Next Week’s Winter Meetings

While the MLB season may be over, the hot stove action is just firing up and next week’s winter meetings should provide plenty of transaction wire fun. Historically, this is the time of year when trades are struck as all of the teams are together in Orlando and the trades are much easier to concoct. We’ve seen a few big trades already, like the blockbuster that sent Prince Fielder to the Texas Rangers, but one trade we’ve been watching for some time may take another step closer towards getting done.

Since this summer, the Chicago Cubs have been weighing their options with starting pitcher Jeff Samardzija but so far it seems they haven’t been able to settle on one. While Samardzija is the ace of the Cubs staff — not that that’s saying much — the Cubs have been protecting him from trades in the fire sales they’ve been having since the Theo Epstein era began.

But protecting him from trades and holding out for the right one seem to be two different things as the Cubs are reportedly going to be shopping Samardzija next week at the winter meetings.

This seems to indicate that Chicago hasn’t made much progress on signing their ace to a long term deal but shopping him at the meetings isn’t guarantee that a deal will be done. Samardzija is under club control through 2015 which means Chicago won’t be moving him unless they find the right deal.

A long term deal could still be in the cards with Samardzija but that could all change dramatically if someone offers the Cubs a deal they can’t turn away in this rebuilding phase they find themselves in.