Recently, I wrote a series of articles headlined “Why haven’t the Cubs signed this guy yet.”
I wrote those articles because I believed the players named could help the Cubs and wouldn’t be too expensive.
And then Jon Lester signed earlier this week with the Nationals. It became clear to me then that the Cubs weren’t going to sign anyone of any significance this offseason, certainly no one for more than $1 million or so. Gordon Wittenmyer summed it up pretty well at NBC Sports Chicago:
Jon Lester is headed to Washington, because the Cubs couldn’t come up with $5 million to counter — and wouldn’t so much as engage the motivated-to-stay clubhouse giant in talks until the Nationals already were well down the road with the best free agent in Cubs history.