The first real jolt of the offseason belongs to Boston, not Chicago.
The Red Sox have signed former Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Jake Bauers to a four-year, $56 million contract, a move that gives the Brewers their first major World Series casualty and sends an early message that the market is already starting to move before the MLB lockout in December.
Bauers had been extended the qualifying offer by Milwaukee at the start of free agency, but there was a clear sense he was headed elsewhere for a bigger payday in 2027. Brewers manager Pat Murphy seemed to know it, too, joking with Bauers literally seconds after Milwaukee won the World Series last month that the veteran slugger should remember how special his time in Milwaukee was. It was a strange line in the moment, but Murphy’s read turned out to be right.
The only part he missed was the destination. Bauers ended up with the Red Sox, not the New York Yankees as Murphy had joked.
Jake Bauers wasn’t an obvious Cubs target, but his contract still matters in Chicago. On paper, he had the kind of profile the Cubs could use this winter.
Pitching remains the top priority, but Chicago is also staring at the possibility of losing a good chunk of power with the expected departures of Seiya Suzuki, Ian Happ, and Michael Conforto. Bauers, a left-handed hitter, put 18 of his 26 home runs in 2026 against right-handed pitching, which fits the kind of bat the Cubs should be chasing.
Still, he was never a clean match for Jed Hoyer and company. Bauers was positioned to cash in after turning his Brewers stint into a success story, and that makes him more of a reminder than a realistic Cubs target.
Ideally, Chicago should be hunting for a hitter in the same kind of buy-low lane Milwaukee found when it dealt for Bauers before the 2024 season. That approach is no guarantee, but it does say something about the level of hitter the Cubs may have to pursue this winter.
The bigger takeaway is the timing. Between Evan Phillips’ deal with the Atlanta Braves on Thursday and now Bauers landing with Boston, the pre-lockout frenzy appears to be kicking in. The Cubs, though, still haven’t shown much urgency this month, and that could leave them in a tricky spot as December gets closer.
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For a team that finally has a true centerpiece in place, the rest of the offseason has felt awfully quiet. The Cubs have not made a major splash yet, and that leaves the spotlight squarely on how they plan to support a player who just delivered 10.6 fWAR and changed the scale of expectations around the organization. With Crow-Armstrong in his prime and the bar now set higher than ever, the pressure is on the front office to show that this breakthrough season is the start of something bigger, not the peak. [Read more 🡒]