Waiting on Pressly, Davis Signs, Ippei Audio, and Other Cubs Bullets

The Oscar crowd definitely seems thin this year, doesn’t it? I guess part of that is the after-effects of the strike and the limits it imposed on the movie slate in 2024, but still. Not more than a handful of the Best Picture nominees are ones I have watched/want to watch.

• If you missed the big rumor(?) last night, the Cubs were reportedly on the “verge” of trading for Astros reliever Ryan Pressly, but that report was quickly countered with one of those “yeah, there are talks and seriousness and such, but he hasn’t decided to waive his no-trade clause yet” things. The complexities in getting a deal like this done are actually a little more layered than usual for a one-year reliever: Pressly is formerly a dominant closer but coming off a relatively down year, he makes $14 million in 2025 in a market that still has a few similar options available at probably a lower price, and he has no-trade rights. Maybe he needs some convincing to accept this trade, but also maybe the Cubs aren’t going to go over-the-top to get it done.
• All that said, I can see at least one big reason why Pressly might want to come to the Cubs: he’d probably step back into the closer’s role in his walk year. With the Astros, he’s setting up Josh Hader, which isn’t a bad thing, but he might want one more year to show he can still close at a top-tier clip. So maybe Pressly’s still mulling a few options and thinking about the life implications, or trying to get some kind of incentive added to the deal, or maybe it’s actually still about the Cubs and Astros (and other clubs) dickering over the exact amount of money the Astros are going to eat. On the right deal, I would certainly want Pressly for the Cubs, but if they’re paying anything close to full freight, the trade price should be negligible. (Or, hey, maybe the Cubs take it all on and get a little something extra thrown in for their trouble!)
• More on the possible trade here at The Athletic from all of the Chicago writers, the Houston writer, and a national writer (clearly a lot of folks at The Athletic are hearing about this one!). Reading the article, you definitely detect the vibe of this being a situation where people seem to EXPECT this trade to happen eventually, but no one is saying it’s definitely going to happen. (The Astros apparently want a chance to re-engage Alex Bregman in talks, and getting Pressly’s deal off the books would help.)
• Jon Heyman adds that there are three teams in pursuit, which The Athletic piece had identified as the Cubs, Blue Jays, and a team out west, and that Pressly has told the Astros he is “disinclined” to go east or west. So that could mean it’s Cubs or bust.
• Robert Murray reports on X that the Angels are signing J.D. Davis to a minor league deal. Davis, 31, had a rough 2024 season, which saw him spend time at all of Triple-A for the Orioles, Triple-A for the A’s, in the bigs with the A’s, and in the bigs with the Yankees, the sum of which was almost all some really ugly numbers at the plate. It seems the Giants were correct in their decision to let him go for termination pay last spring (they paid $1.1 million to make him go away rather than pay the $6.9 million he’d won in arbitration), but it definitely stinks for Davis – he didn’t get that salary (when you go to an arbitration hearing, the salary isn’t fully guaranteed), then he signed with the A’s for just $2.5 million, and then his year was so brutal that he had to settle for a minor league deal this time around. Although Davis plays third base, he did not come up in any rumors connected to the Cubs.
• A candidate-by-candidate look at this year’s Hall of Fame voting results from Jay Jaffe. Good read.
• It’s pretty wild to hear this going down – it’s apparently former Shohei Ohtani interpreter Ippei Mizuhara impersonating Ohtani on a phone call with a bank (audio was first obtained by The Athletic):

OGTA · Mizuhara phone call with bank

• More Tampa Bay Rays stadium drama, with the city now informing the team that the lease agreement doesn’t actually require the city to have the Trop repairs finished by any particular time – only started by a particular time. So it’s possible the roof damage is not actually fixed in time for the start of the 2026 season. Also, work on the new stadium still has started yet either. What a mess.
• Be careful, writer:

Ichiro Suzuki offers to have the only writer that did not vote him into the Baseball Hall of Fame over to his house to "have a drink together and have a good chat" 🤣 pic.twitter.com/FlMzAbEp4R— SNY (@SNYtv) January 23, 2025

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