The 2025 season has been a major success so far for the Chicago Cubs, even if some things haven’t gone according to plan.
At 35-21, the Cubs have the National League’s second-best record and are three games up on the St. Louis Cardinals in the NL Central. The offense, led by Kyle Tucker, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Seiya Suzuki, has been the toast of Major League Baseball so far.
However, the pitching staff has question marks galore. The starting rotation has been decimated by injury, but the bullpen is just shaky, no matter who is healthy from week to week.
Given the Cubs’ struggle to navigate close games, one baseball writer believes Chicago could go after a reliever having a great season on an awful team.
On Wednesday, Ryan O’Rourke of FanSided named the Colorado Rockies’ Jake Bird as a hypothetical trade target for the Cubs, two months in advance of the Jul. 31 deadline.
“Next year will be just Bird’s first in arbitration, meaning the Rockies don’t necessarily have to trade him. Given that he’s currently in his age-29 season and Colorado isn’t particularly close to competing, though, acquiring him, in theory, wouldn’t be all too difficult for the Cubs,” O’Rourke wrote.
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“(Cubs president of baseball operations) Jed Hoyer has emphasized that he’s not likely to make any serious moves until closer to the deadline, but Bird will be a name to monitor throughout the summer.”
Bird, 29, has by far the best ERA of his career this season at 1.67. His ERA+ of 277 is also a major outlier, but that metric was above 100 (league average) in each of his past two seasons as well.
There’s certainly no guarantee that Bird would continue to excel in a more pressurized environment, but most pitchers do better away from Coors Field. Perhaps the Cubs will give him the chance to test his mettle later this year.
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