The Chicago Cubs are once again linked to starting pitcher Rick Porcello of the Detroit Tigers. George Ofman tweeted a few days; “now that Miggy has won the MVP, will the Tigers deal Rick Procello to the Cubs? Told there is a little smoke here”.
The Cubs have been linked to Porcello for about a year now. Manly when the Tigers and Cubs were discussing starting pitcher Matt Garza. Porcello was one of the names being mentioned to come over in a trade for Garza. But as you know, the trade didn’t happened and the Tigers went to play B Anibal Sanchez.
Since Porcello’s rookie season, his stats have gone down and made him a likely trade candidate. The Tigers haven’t found a trade partner yet, but it seems like Porcello will be traded this Winter.
As a Tiger, Porcello is 48-42 with a 4.55 era, 384 strikeouts and has walked 180 in 691.2 innings. He does not walk much, but he is a contact pitcher. That can have it’s ups and downs as a MLB pitcher. As I said before, his stats do not look great. However, he’ll only be 24 on December 27th and the Cubs can wait for him. Porcello can be a project and the Cubs can take their time on him.
I had a trade proposal (all speculation on my part):
Cubs get:
SP Rick Porcello
Tigers get:
RP Carlos Marmol
6 million
Cubs’ reasoning: The Cubs want to trade Marmol and have been trying for a while now. They want to move on from Marmol and by this trade, they’ll be able to. Porcello will come in and be inserted into the starting rotation right away. Porcello can then work on his stuff each and every game.
Tigers’ reasoning: The Tigers seem like the want to trade Porcello as soon as they can. They will get a valuable RP for a season at 3.8 million. They do need arms and a closer. Their closer for the past few seasons (Jose Valverde) is expected to find another team through free agency. Also, Porcello is going to cost too much money via arbitration and the Tigers don’t want to pay him.
The Cubs and Tigers could make the trade bigger too. The Tigers have had interest in 2B Darwin Barney and the Cubs like 3B Nick Castellanos. I don’t know if the Cubs can land Castellanos as he was nearly listed “untouchable” a few months ago. He’ll cost too much to obtain and I don’t even know if the Tigers would even trade him.
The Winter Meetings is about 3 weeks away and maybe we will hear more about Porcello leading up to the meetings, plus other trade candidates.
I don’t think Marmol would be enough to get Porcello. As you said, his numbers are not great, but he is still real young and learning to pitch. I don’t know if he would pan out at Wrigley or not. I get a Jason Marquis like feel with Porcello. Not bad, not great.