3 offseason moves the Chicago Cubs have to make

The Cubs saw their season end on Thursday night and now turn their attention to the 2018 season. Here are some things to address to get back to the World Series.

The Chicago Cubs wound up getting beat pretty soundly by the Los Angeles Dodgers in an elimination game. For most teams, advancing to the National League Championship Series would be a wild success. Most teams aren’t the Cubs, who finally broke the 108-year curse to win the World Series in 2016. Fair or not, the expectations are wildly different for the Cubs. They have a solid roster top to bottom, but changes need to happen get the team back to the World Series.

Basically, the Cubs need to improve this offseason. Money won’t be an issue, Chicago can basically pay whatever they want to whoever they want. They’re a big market team with big TV contracts and the appeal of playing in Chicago and the iconic Wrigley Field.

But will the Cubs be aggressive this season or lay back and save for the loaded 2018 class? Realistically, Chicago can do a little of both. They can re-shape things for 2018 without punting totally and go big for the 2019 season.

Here are three things the Cubs need to do for 2018.

3. Figure out OF Jason Heyward

The Cubs are kind of stuck with Jason Heyward. The 7-year, $184 million contract now seems like a fairly massive miscalculation. Heyward is the fourth highest paid player in all of baseball and that is absolutely crazy, even for a team like the Cubs that can spend freely.

Per fangraphs.com, Heyward is barely above replacement level due in part to his poor offense. Their formula for how much a player should be paid has Heyward pegged at $7.5 million per year. That’s a very wide gap between what he actually is paid. It would be almost impossible to trade Heyward without bringing back an equally bad contract. The only way they could potentially pawn him off to another team would be to attach a young gun with him and the odds would still be low.

There is one potential match that would make sense from the financial angle. The Cubs could approach the Seattle Mariners about a trade for SP Felix Hernandez. This trade may not be likely, but the money is close to equal on both sides for the next two seasons. The Cubs would have to include some other incentive because Heyward has a much longer contract. Hernandez and Heyward are both overpaid and it’s possible Hernandez will never be the ace he used to be. Chicago could be willing to take a chance on squeezing two more good seasons from King Felix. Seattle could view Heyward as a slight upgrade over their current outfield and maybe they could be interested in Kyle Schwarber or Ian Happ to sweeten the deal.

Heyward has two separate opt-out options in his contract. It’s a pretty safe bet he’s not going to voluntarily walk away from the money he has left on the deal. There’s zero incentive for him to do so. He’s not going to get offered near that amount for the years left. It is possible the Cubs could try to buy out Heyward, but that would be a tough pill to swallow for the Cubs. Even with their bottomless pockets, it’s not ideal to pay so much for a player not to be there.