David Bote signs multi-year extension with Cubs

All the cool kids seem to be signing long-term deals with their current franchises, avoiding free agency.

Today, it was a Cubs player’s turn, and not the Cubs player you expected:

This part makes this even more interesting:

We don’t have numbers yet, but assuming this doesn’t include Bote’s 2019 pre-arb contract, that’s a five-year deal that could be a seven-year contract if the options are exercised. It means the Cubs are quite confident that Bote is going to become a key contributor over the next few years.

David Bote has played in 78 major-league games and is hitting .246/.327/.410 in 223 plate appearances, with six home runs. That, of course, includes this home run that you can never see enough:

I’ll have more on this later including updating this post with contract numbers when they are available.

But my first reaction — and maybe this is only a hot take, but it’s the first thing I thought of — this might spell the end of Addison Russell’s tenure as a Cub.

More to come. The game preview that would usually post at 4 p.m. CT today will instead post at 4:30 p.m. CT.

UPDATE: Here are the numbers, quite reasonable: