Both the Yankees and Red Sox have checked in with the Cubs and discussed the potential availability of right-hander Jameson Taillon , USA Today’s Bob Nightengale writes in his weekly Sunday Notes column. The Cubs have yet to determine whether they’ll move any veteran pieces prior to the deadline, per the report. However, Chicago has dropped consecutive games coming out of the All-Star break and now sits 10 back in the NL Central and 4.
5 back in the wild-card chase, so it’d hardly register as a surprise if they were at least getting a feel for the market on some of their potential trade assets. The 32-year-old Taillon (33 in November) is in the second season of a four-year, $68M contract he inked with the Cubs in the 2022-23 offseason. After a very rocky showing last May and June, he’s righted the ship.
Taillon is sitting on a pristine 3.10 ERA (3.81 FIP, 4.
18 SIERA) in 93 innings this season, but his turnaround really dates back to the second half of the ’23 season. Though he finished out his first Cubs season with an ERA just shy of 5.00, that brutal stretch in May/June heavily weighed down his season-long numbers.
Over the past calendar year, Taillon boasts a tidy 3.34 ERA (4.05 FIP, 4.
11 SIERA) with a 21.1% strikeout rate that’s only about a percentage point shy of league-average and an outstanding 5.1% walk rate.
That walk rate is the 11th-lowest among qualified starters in the majors. Taillon is still owed about $6.8M of his 2024 salary as of this writing.
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