Over the last few months, even those of us who were formerly big believers in the need to trade Ian Happ or Seiya Suzuki to vault the Chicago Cubs forward have come to our senses. Suzuki's lack of durability and defensive value remain daunting, in certain ways, but he stayed healthy enough to show how good he can be down the stretch in 2024—including demonstrating a highly valuable capacity for hitting like himself when assigned full-time DH duties. Many hitters buckle and degrade in that role, and the fact that Suzuki didn't was almost as important a positive indicator as the fact that he stayed in the lineup for the final few months.
Meanwhile, Happ overcame a slow start to put up a season that is becoming very typical, but no less impressive from repetition. He's an increasingly well-rounded, balanced hitter who added the consistent ability to drive the ball from the right side to his game this year. He's also a very good defender, albeit at one of the easiest positions on the field. Most importantly, with some public reporting and a pinch of private digging, it's become clear that neither Suzuki nor Happ is especially inclined to waive the no-trade clauses wired into their respective contracts. They have some measure of self-determination, and neither player is excited by the prospect of leaving. The Cubs might just have to move bravely down the narrow path they've left themselves, rather than trying to hack out a new, wider one.
The idea of trading Suzuki or Happ was never about their insufficiency, per se, but about the team's unfortunate lack of other easy paths to improvement. With Dansby Swanson locked in at shortstop, Nico Hoerner at second, and an array of young players in whom the team is trying hard to find a homegrown star, there just aren't a lot of obvious alternatives to such a trade, if you start from the premise that the team needs a superstar. Cody Bellinger opting back into his deal only seems to have brought that circumstance into sharper focus.
Still, I had largely let the notion drop. However, two podcasts full of thoughtful baseball people worth your respectful attention—Hittin' Season, a Phillies podcast that has been around in various incarnations for over a decade; and Five and Dive, the flagship of the Baseball Prospectus podcast network—have specifically mentioned Happ as a trade target or candidate over the last few weeks. It's that time of year. We all look around the league and pine after players on certain teams, or idly imagine others being moved from their current one to create a more interesting or aesthetically pleasing alignment of talent, but we're often misinformed about teams outside our own sphere. Much though I want it to, a Taylor Ward trade is unlikely to materialize this winter. Maybe those podcasters are off the mark, and I am about Ward, too.
Then again, though: We all sometimes get overconfident when working with seemingly valuable but incomplete information. Yes, Happ and Suzuki have no-trade clauses, and yes, they both seem happy with the team. Happ, in particular, seems eager to stay put. Might we be misreading that, though? Or might Happ be more flexible than we think—easier to induce than he seems? I'm not suggesting that any of the people who discussed it in public forums recently have inside information or have better reason to think that's true than we do. But sometimes, we get so used to a familiar idea that we start to think of each day that passes as another datum to prove it. That's not really how such things work. If others see the inherent logic of a Happ trade or imagine making a pitch that might convince him to waive his no-trade clause, maybe we should take that more seriously than is our impulse.
If he were to be amenable to a trade, it wouldn't automatically become advisable, at this stage. It would have to be part of a coordinated double-move, because the last thing the Cubs would want would be to trade him, then find themselves unable to sign someone clearly better. The idea of moving him would be to acquire either a similar player at a position of more pressing need—maybe a swap of Happ for Seattle's Luis Castillo?—or young talent that could then feed and fuel the team's existing pipeline, but it would have to plainly facilitate either the signing of a marquee starting pitcher or the arrival of a big bat with some indisputable leg up on Happ. There are only a few such hitters available, and since we can be pretty sure Juan Soto isn't coming to the North Side, it quickly starts to seem like there are zero.
Again, as the hot stove earns its name, rumors will sometimes warm up without good reason, and we should be careful not to put undue stock into them. Still, there are versions of a Happ trade—one to the Phillies, for example, that might bring back one of their very good young starters, or something that netted the Cubs Garrett Crochet in a three-way deal—worth keeping an open mind to, and while the odds of it seem tiny, the logic of exploring it has not completely dissolved since the summer.
