NEWSLETTER
Here’s your morning fun read as you ready yourself for the Cubs Convention or the blizzard or both, as the case may be.
Over at The Athletic, Patrick Mooney writes about how the Cubs managed to pull off the Shota Imanaga signing, and how it came to be that he was in Chicago for several weeks before we even heard a thing.
It turns out that, because Imanaga’s agency, Octagon, has an office in Chicago and a network that extends all throughout the area, it made sense for this to kind of be a hub for Imanaga’s free agency. So, as we heard earlier in the ESPN report, Imanaga settled in around Christmastime out by O’Hare, and that became the base of operations for the rest of his free agency.
The crazy thing, though? Imanaga felt very comfortable in the Chicagoland area … but the Cubs weren’t yet expressing significant interest. He told Mooney, via an interpreter, that he was half-joking around at that point in the process that he hoped the Cubs would make him an offer because he liked the area so much, but he thought they were out of the picture!
If anything underscores just how patient, careful, methodical, and eager for a good deal this front office is, it’s probably that anecdote right there.
The Cubs had been in contact with Imanaga’s representatives throughout his free agency, of course, but it wasn’t until very late in the process that they actually came on strong, did the full-court-press thing, and put together a deal that could work for both sides. It’s not exactly the picture I had in my head of how this all would’ve played out, especially once we heard that Imanaga had been in Chicago for weeks. But, in hindsight, it sounds exactly like how they want to operate, especially given the “deal” they wound up getting.
Give the story a read. I think by the end, you’ll probably wind up where I am: thinking about how the Cubs front office might be proceeding in other free agent pursuits, and how little we might know about the timing of when they actually want to try to close a deal. With Imanaga, there was always a deadline looming, and the Cubs probably knew they’d have a chance to step on the gas late in the process. With other free agents, what is that “deadline”? What timing will the Cubs wait for? If they are super patient, and if Scott Boras is super patient, is it assured that there are still many more weeks to go?
