Does the Cubs front office care about including a lefty in the rotation? I don't know. Last year we had three, Q-Hamels-Lester. But with Darvish-Hendricks-Mills-Alzolay, those are all righties. They may not care, but I was just curious.
I don't. I think each game is self-standing, and whether a lefty or a righty started yesterday has no impact on today.
For much of my youth as a Cubs fan, they didn't successfully develop good young LH starters, but it seemed common premise by Cubs GMs that they wanted a lefty rotation guy. So it seems like for many years they'd try to bring in some experienced low-stuff veteran lefty, most of whom were relatively ineffective.
I wonder this because *IF* Theo does want a veteran low-stuff finesse lefty, I wonder if he might not actually be interested in bringing Quintana back? Not sure anybody in baseball loves Q as much as Theo does. Not necessarily many other teams wanting/needing a 5th starter as badly as Theo does, either, with so few in-house candidates.
Given Covid finances, Q's decline in stuff, Q's health issues over recent years, and given Q's actual lack of success over the last couple of years, I can't imagine there's going to be a huge market demand for what Q supplies. So, maybe Q is a guy who you could sign for a really modest short-term deal to fill the back spot in the rotation?
Theo referenced looking for more "depth" for the rotation, and I think he referenced from outside the organization. Maybe that means Q wouldn't fit with that. But might also be that "depth" is for 6th/7th man type guys. Theo made no specific reference to getting 5th starter from outside the rotation, just "depth". So who knows. Maybe Theo's thought is you add some depth guys, bring in whatever minor league free agents, pitch lab them, and let Ross just choose and let the best man win. Maybe that's Colin Rea, maybe it's Tyson Miller, maybe it's some guy coming back from injury looking for a restart, like Paul Maholm back in the day. Maybe Cory Abbott or Brailyn Marquez end up winning that spot, who knows.
Cubs have had little competition for rotation spots or main starting spots in recent years. "Competition" often means "we don't have anybody good enough to command the spot", so I'm not sure I want to wish for it. But it might be fun, in camp at least, to have some competition and have the fun of hoping some unproven guy is actually decent.