Cubs' Steele Gets Bonus For Top-5 Cy Young Finish
Blake Snell may have won the National League Cy Young, but Chicago Cubs starting pitcher Justin Steele did a little winning himself on Tuesday.
His prize? One million dollars, per the Chicago Tribune.
While Snell deservedly ran away with the award — he received 28 of the 30 first-place votes — Steele ended up finishing fifth with 32 points. That included him appearing on 17 of the 30 ballots, with one second-place vote.
Because Steele finished in the Top 5 of Cy Young voting and he played in 2023 as a pre-arbitration player, he gets $1 million from MLB’s pre-arbitration bonus pool.
Steele, who was in his third season in the Majors last season, exploded for what was by far the best season of his career. He led the Cubs in wins, going 16-5 with a 3.06 ERA. He threw a career-high 173.1 innings, striking out a career-high 176 and walking 36. He earned his first All-Star Game bid and he led the National League in home runs allowed per nine innings at 0.7
He now enters his first year of salary arbitration with a career record of 24-16 with a 3.30 ERA with 361 strikeouts and 113 walks.
Steele made the minimum for a three-year veteran in 2023, which was $740,000. Earlier this year, MLB Trade Rumors estimated that Steele could get as much as $4.1 million in his first arbitration season.
The Cubs and Steele have to come to terms on a contract for 2024 by mid-January or they will have to provide figures to an independent arbiter and make their case at a hearing in February in Arizona. Teams like to avoid these hearings as it tends to make it harder to re-sign players the closer they get to free agency.
Steele’s 2023 — plus his bonus — gives him a solid case going into his hearing, if he and the Cubs get that far.
