Many of us — perhaps you! — hope the Cubs will still reunite with lefthander Andrew Chafin, who’s still unsigned only about three weeks away from the beginning of spring games.
In case that doesn’t happen, though, the Cubs might already have in camp, on a minor-league deal, a lefthander who could be “the next Chafin.” One thing Jed Hoyer has been quite good at during his tenure as Cubs President of Baseball Operations is finding undervalued relievers and getting good value out of them.
Roenis Elias could be the next such reliever. Originally signed in 2011 out of Cuba by the Mariners, Elias had a couple of middling years as a starter for Seattle in 2014 and 2015 and was then traded to the Red Sox for, among others, former Cub Wade Miley.