Chicago Cubs Potential Free Agent Star Pitching Target Signs Elsewhere

The Chicago Cubs have missed out on a potential free agent target in the rotation.

Troy Taormina-Imagn Images

The Chicago Cubs have missed out on one of their potential free agent targets as one of the dominoes in the pitching market has fallen.

Now, former Houston Astros left-handed starting pitcher Yusei Kikuchi is signing a three-year deal worth $63 million with the Los Angeles Angels as first reported by Jon Heyman of the New York Post.

Kikuchi, 33 years old, picked the right time down the stretch this past season to have the best run of his career.

After the Astros acquired him at the deadline from the Toronto Blue Jays, Kikuchi started 10 games and put up a 2.70 ERA with the highest strikeout per nine ratio of his career and a WHIP below 1.00, something he has never done over a full campaign in six years in the league.

The veteran made a lot of sense for a Cubs team who has been open about the fact they wanted to add to the rotation. Reports indicated Chicago was not going to be in on the top of the market type guys like Blake Snell and Corbin Burnes, so Kikuchi could have been a possibility.

He would have joined a rotation featuring fellow countryman Shota Imanaga - who the team handed a relatively large deal to last offseason - along with extension candidate Justin Steele and Jameson Taillon.

At the number he wound up signing for, it's probably a good thing Kikuchi ended up elsewhere.

While he certainly put up some impressive numbers after arriving to Houston, those were ultimately a fairly significant outlier from anything else he had put up in his career including his first half of 2024 with Toronto.

With a 4.75 ERA during the first half of the year along with a career mark of 4.57 and a career WHIP of 1.344, Kikuchi has never been better than an average starting pitcher both with the Blue Jays and at the start of his MLB career with the Seattle Mariners.

Even in his lone All-Star season in 2021, Kikuchi posted a 4.41 ERA over 29 starts.

A $21 million AAV for a pitcher who really has just put up 10 starts in his career where he looked like he was worth that number is going to be a risk, and it's a risk the Cubs perhaps wisely chose not to make.

Look for Chicago to turn to a more proven option in free agency as Kikuchi is scratched off the list of possible free agent additions to the rotation.