{"id":511801,"date":"2026-01-08T19:39:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T19:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/511801\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T19:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T19:39:11","slug":"cubs-justin-steele-agree-to-2026-deal-avoiding-arbitration-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/511801\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubs, Justin Steele agree to 2026 deal, avoiding arbitration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">There were only two Cubs who were arbitration-eligible, Justin Steele and Javier Assad, before today\u2019s deadline for players and teams to avoid having to exchange figures for an arb hearing. The trade for Edward Cabrera adds one more player to that list.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">One of the three has now avoided arbitration:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Steele made $6.55 million in 2025 and, as you know, missed all but four starts last year due to Tommy John surgery. He likely misses a month or two of this year as well.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2025\/10\/projected-arbitration-salaries-for-2026.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MLB Trade Rumors projected<\/a> Steele to make the same amount in 2026, so this $6.775 million figure is just slightly above that, and seems reasonable. If Steele had pitched a full year in 2025 and done as well as he did in 2024, he\u2019d likely have had a salary of $12 million (or possibly more) for 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Here\u2019s hoping Steele comes back strong, even if it\u2019s for only part of 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">I will post info on the two other arb-eligible Cubs when it\u2019s available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were only two Cubs who were arbitration-eligible, Justin Steele and Javier Assad, before today\u2019s deadline for players&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,7407,4245,161,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-511801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-chicago-cubs-news","12":"tag-chicagocubs","13":"tag-cubs","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115861177422194763","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511801","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=511801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}