Why A Chicago Cubs-Anthony Rizzo Reunion Isn’t Likely

The Cubs badly need a first baseman, and old friend Anthony Rizzo is expected to opt out of his contract. A perfect recipe for a reunion with his former team?

Probably not.

Rizzo currently has a year left on the two-year, $32 million deal he signed with the Yankees before the 2022 season. The Cubs traded him to New York at the July 2021 deadline. Rizzo has not officially opted out yet, but the expectation is that he will.

This is based on a report from Jim Bowden of The Athletic on October 24. Any official news of an opt-out likely will not come until after the World Series is over. Assuming that Bowden is correct, the natural follow-up question is whether Rizzo would go back to Chicago.

On the surface, it makes sense that he would at least consider it. First, they have not had consistency at first base since he was traded. Second, there’s incredible history for him there. Rizzo is one of the most beloved Cubs players in franchise history.

But there are a few reasons Cubs fans should not get their hopes up.

To begin with, the Yankees are not ready to let him go just yet. Manager Aaron Boone made his case on New York radio Thursday.

“He’s been everything we could have hoped for,” Boone told The Michael Kay Show. “He’s been an amazing person in our clubhouse. An amazing teammate, an amazing leader, very productive on the field. I think very much cut out to play for our team, for the Yankees. I think he handles all that goes with playing here as one of the premium players and leaders so well.

“So yeah, I would love to have him back, of course.”

The Yankees have a $192 million payroll projected for next year, according to Roster Resource, and though they won the AL East with 99 wins this year, they were swept by the Astros in the ALCS. Expectations for the Yankees were too high for the front office or the fanbase to accept standing pat going into next season.

Rizzo, 33, is still productive. He batted just .224 last year but hit 32 home runs and 21 doubles, good for an .817 OPS on the season. In this year’s playoffs, he had a .958 OPS in the division series and 1.021 in the pennant round. It makes sense that the Yankees would campaign for Rizzo to stay in New York.

But if he does not, a return to the Cubs is not guaranteed. Rizzo was traded in the first place because the two sides never successfully agreed on a contract extension that would have kept him there. The Cubs had him on a team-friendly seven year, $41 million deal through 2021, and he repeatedly expressed a desire to stay in Chicago. That didn’t happen when there was clear opportunity.

It does not help that there might be some lingering bad blood. Shortly after the 2021 trade deadline, team president Jed Hoyer gave an account of how negotiations went that didn’t jive with Rizzo’s memory.

“The extensions that we offered these guys will hold up exceptionally well, historically, against the open market,” Hoyer said at the time. “I don’t know why guys didn’t want to sign. I don’t know why guys didn’t want to even counteroffer, often times. I don’t know.

“Because every one of these guys would say they wanted to stay in Chicago, ‘we wanted to be a Cub,’ but then we would sit down and do negotiations, that wasn’t how they acted.”

But when Rizzo was asked about Hoyer’s remarks by radio host David Kaplan, he had a different view of those negotiations.

“Why say that? Sounds like a bad breakup and the person’s saying they’re fine when they’re not fine,” he said. “I know it comes down to a business and you want your cake and you want to eat it too. That’s just kind of how it seems. I think it can all speak for itself that there’s a common denominator that no one signed. Whoever wants to dig into that, can.

“But I just think that we had such great memories there to come out on air and say that, doesn’t really make sense but it is what it is.”

That was in August 2021, though, just a few days after Rizzo had been traded. It’s very possible that he no longer feels as strongly. It’s possible, too, that as he enters into what will probably be the last few years of his already successful career, a homecoming is appealing.

Keep in mind, however, that Rizzo has already gone the team-friendly deal route. He spent almost all of his Cubs career on that $41 million contract. During their previous negotiations, the highest the team went was reported to be around $70 million. At this stage in his career, Rizzo is not going to get a long-term deal, but he can certainly earn plenty per year on short-term, high-AAV contracts.

Ultimately, unless Rizzo decides to get sentimental or the Cubs do a better job of offering him what he’s asking for, fans in Wrigleyville should not be pinning their hopes on seeing no. 44 manning first base again. The good news for them is that there are other options.

As for Rizzo, the free agent market this winter for first baseman is not terribly deep. That should afford him plenty of opportunity to at least explore options. Given his extensive postseason experience, he would undoubtedly be appealing to a lot of teams on the rise in 2023. And generally, a left-handed power bat at first base is on nearly every team’s wish list.