{"id":458501,"date":"2025-12-03T07:16:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T07:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/458501\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T07:16:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T07:16:14","slug":"cubs-listed-as-potential-fit-for-precisely-zero-top-25-trade-candidates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/458501\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubs Listed as Potential Fit for Precisely Zero Top-25 Trade Candidates &#8211;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If recent predictions from ESPN\u2019s top baseball writers carry any weight, it doesn\u2019t look like the Cubs are expected to do much on the trade front. Though Jeff Passan and Kiley McDaniel listed as many as eight team fits for each of their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/47166190\/mlb-offseason-2025-2026-trade-candidate-player-rankings-skubal-marte-buxton-peralta\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">top 25 trade candidates<\/a> this offseason, the Cubs did not appear a single time. Not for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/skubata01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.cubsinsider.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-02_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tarik Skubal<\/a> (No. 1), not for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/buxtoby01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.cubsinsider.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-02_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Byron Buxton<\/a> (5), not for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/ryanjo04.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.cubsinsider.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-02_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Joe Ryan<\/a> (6), not for Mackenzie Gore (9), and not for any of the others who\u2019ve been linked to the North Side in some manner over the last few days, weeks, and months.<\/p>\n<p>To be fair, most of the players on this list are given less than a 50% chance to be moved during the offseason, and some (Skubal, No. 4 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/g\/greenhu01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.cubsinsider.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-02_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Hunter Greene<\/a>) are five times less likely. But when you look at the higher possibilities of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bubickr01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.cubsinsider.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-02_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Kris Bubic<\/a> (No. 14, 30%), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/cabreed02.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.cubsinsider.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-02_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Edward Cabrera<\/a> (18, 40%), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kellemi03.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.cubsinsider.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-02_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Mitch Keller<\/a> (19, 60%), and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/a\/alcansa01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.cubsinsider.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-02_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Sandy Alcantara<\/a> (22, 30%), and you see nary a word about the Cubs\u2026well.<\/p>\n<p>And hey, maybe Passan and McDaniel just forgot about the Cubs when they were putting this piece together. Or maybe they believe the organization\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cubsinsider.com\/2025\/11\/20\/cubs-could-trade-from-thinning-farm-system-rather-than-sign-big-free-agents\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">relatively thin farm system<\/a>, one that has been dropping in estimation of late, means the front office won\u2019t have the onions to make the kind of play it\u2019ll take to pry any of these targets loose. I tend to believe otherwise, as Jed Hoyer knows he\u2019ll have to make deals if payroll is indeed restricted to the extent that some fear.<\/p>\n<p>We should start to get a clearer picture of where they and other teams stand once the Winter Meetings begin next week.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If recent predictions from ESPN\u2019s top baseball writers carry any weight, it doesn\u2019t look like the Cubs are&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,7625,7626,60931],"class_list":{"0":"post-458501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cubs-news","10":"tag-cubs-rumors","11":"tag-cubs-trades"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115654412566690262","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}