Mr. Hoyer, in the Conservatory, With the Candelario-Stick

The Cubs made it clear that they’re buyers on Monday afternoon, acquiring third baseman Jeimer Candelario from the Nationals for shortstop Kevin Made and pitcher DJ Herz.

What a difference a week makes! After losing the opener of a four-game series to the Cardinals just over a week ago, the Cubs stood at 45–51, and it seemed more likely that they would be sellers than buyers come deadline time. An eight-game winning streak later, off the backs of the hated Cardinals and the moribund White Sox, changed that calculus; even a Sunday loss to break the streak wasn’t enough to banish the idea that the NL Central was there for the taking. After all, four games in the standings isn’t that wide a chasm, and with the fourth-best run differential in the National League, there’s at least one legitimate reason to think the Cubs have deserved better than their .500 record this year. The Pirates have faded, the Cardinals wouldn’t be trading off talent if even they thought they had a miracle in them, and neither of the Reds or Brewers are likely to take big steps forward.

Candelario had a wonderful bounceback season for Washington. Whatever was in the water at Comerica Park last year that made every player in Detroit suddenly not know which side of the bat to hold appears to have filtered out of his system, with his .258/.342/.481 triple-slash with 16 homers and 30 doubles looking a lot like the 2021 season that was thought at the time to be his breakout campaign. Last year, it took all of six months for Candelario to go from one of the hotter names in baseball to being non-tendered. Settling for a one-year, $5 million contract to re-establish his value, he has done just that and will head to free agency in a much stronger position than last time.

The Cubs only get to rent his services, but they’ll be happy to have them. While the hot corner hasn’t exactly been a tire fire in Chicago, it’s certainly been one of the less happy positions for the team, with a combined line of .234/.319/.412. There hasn’t been a stable starter there this season, with the hot corner manned by a combination of Patrick Wisdom, Nick Madrigal, and Miles Mastrobuoni. Wisdom has impressive enough secondary skills to be a plus offensive player despite a sub-Mendoza line batting average, but he’s also stretched as a third baseman defensively and is best suited as a four-corner role player who can hit more than the occasional homer and maybe come off the bench when he’s not starting. Mastrobuoni is pure utility material, and Madrigal would likely need to find some kind of Captain America-esque Super Soldier Serum to be a five-homer hitter. You’d be nuts to confuse Candelario with José Ramírez or Alex Bregman, but he’s a legitimate B+ starter at third you can stuff in the lineup every day without having to worry about a defensive caddy or some kind of exploitable platoon split.

In return, the Cubs give up two legitimate prospects, though neither stood in the upper echelons of the team’s farm system. In our prospect rankings (which went live for the Cubs just a few weeks ago, so you should really check them out), Herz ranked 19th in the system, and Made was 22nd. Both players have some real upside for the Nats, but it’s not at all like trading Hayden Wesneski or Kevin Alcántara, let alone someone like the just-promoted (to Triple-A) Pete Crow-Armstrong.

The ZiPS projections don’t really go against the scouting community on this one, pegging Made as 1.5-WAR-ish shortstop at his peak with lines in the .250/.330/.360 range. The computer does still have hope that Herz can tame his command issues and gives him a good shot at being an acceptable fourth/fifth starter at some point. A bullpen conversion might help with the control, though I’m not overly hopeful that a changeup specialist with iffy command and unimpressive velocity will be all that scary in the late innings. For now, Made and Herz slot in at 12th and 18th, respectively, in Washington’s system.

For the Nats, signing Candelario was always about hoping to flip him at the deadline after a comeback season, and that’s just what they did. Whether the return for playing him at third for a year was worth not looking at Jake Alu when healthy or any other candidate that could plausibly be part of the next good team in Washington, we’ll have to wait a few years to find out. For the Cubs, ZiPS now has them as the best rest-of-season team in the NL Central by a very slight margin, though it’s close enough that they may simply run out of pages on the calendar.