Cubs sign Daniel Descalso

Last week, published reports indicated the Cubs were in pursuit of free-agent infielder Daniel Descalso, who played for the Diamondbacks in 2018.

Now, it appears that is close to reality:

When it’s tweeted by Ken Rosenthal, you can be reasonably certain that any such deal is pretty much going to happen. Jon Heyman says the deal is done:

Descalso is coming off a career year with the D-backs in which he hit .238/.353/.436 with 13 home runs in 349 at-bats. Those numbers helped him post 1.1 bWAR. He played all the infield positions except shortstop, as well as some left field. He’s also pitched several times, meaning the Cubs have another mop-up position player to pitch in a blowout.

Descalso has played shortstop in the past, but not on any significant basis since 2016. It’s most likely that he would be part of a platoon at second base with Ben Zobrist while Addison Russell is on suspension and Javier Baez plays shortstop. Presuming Russell returns to the team and isn’t traded, Descalso then becomes kind of a super-sub.

Depending on the price of this signing, it’s probably a good deal. It also probably means David Bote, who plays some of the same positions Descalso does, starts the year at Triple-A Iowa. And lastly, it likely means the Cubs won’t pursue Troy Tulowitzki, although you never know.

When this signing is complete, the Cubs will have 37 players on the 40-man roster. As always, we await further developments.