Tampa Bay Rays Trade Isaac Paredes to Chicago Cubs

Isaac Paredes is headed to The Windy City.

The 25-year-old Mexican professional baseball third baseman and MLB All-Star is being traded by the Tampa Bay Rays to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for Christopher Morel, a 25-year-old Dominican fellow third baseman, per ESPN.

Isaac Paredes The Cubs are also sending two prospects — pitchers Ty Johnson and Hunter Bigge — to the Rays in the deal, sources told ESPN.

Paredes immediately will step in as the Cubs’ starting third baseman, as the team has been searching for an answer at that position since moving on from Kris Bryant in 2021.

Morel has played there this season with varying degrees of improvement on defense, but his offensive output stalled somewhat after a promising first two years of his career.

After hitting .247 with 26 homers last season, Morel is hitting .199 with a team leading 18 home runs this season.

Paredes, who is hitting .247 with 16 home runs and 19 doubles this season, was originally signed by the Cubs but never played for them as he was traded to the Detroit Tigers in a 2017 deadline deal.

Both players are under team control for several more seasons before reaching free agency.

Bigge just made his MLB debut this month after being drafted in the 12th round in 2019. Johnson was taken in the 15th round of the 2023 draft and has been pitching at the Class-A level this season.

Both teams are in transition mode. The Rays have made several deals ahead of the trade deadline, shipping out reliever Jason Adam on Sunday as well as Randy Arozarena and Zach Eflin earlier in the week.

The Cubs, who began Sunday in last place in the NL Central, acquired reliever Nate Pearson on Saturday, vowing to rework their roster with future years in mind.

Yandy Díaz Helps Team Extend the Tampa Bays Rays Season-Opening Win Streak to 11

Yandy Díaz and his Tampa Bay Rays teammates are inching closer to Major League Baseball history.

The Cuban-born professional baseball infielder and his Rays team members have run their season-opening win streak to 11 games, moving closer to history by defeating the Boston Red Sox 7-2 on Tuesday night.

Yandy DíazDíaz and Brandon Lowe hit back-to-back solo shots with two out in the fifth inning. Lowe extended his homer streak to four straight games.

Isaac Paredes and Josh Lowe also connected for the Rays, and Shane McClanahan (3-0) struck out nine while pitching five-plus innings of one-run ball.

“This team is having a lot of fun right now, we’re doing what we need to do every single night,” Josh Lowe said in his postgame, on-field interview. “We’re just going to keep it rolling as long as we can.”

The 1987 Milwaukee Brewers and the 1982 Atlanta Braves share the MLB record for the best start to a season at 13-0. The Rays are closing in.

“We’re just getting good pitches to hit. That’s all, really,” Josh Lowe said. “We’ve all worked really hard to get to this point that we’re at right now. We’re keeping it simple, and staying within ourselves. … We’re doing our job.”

The four homers brought Tampa Bay’s total to 29, matching the major league record through 11 games set by the 2000 St. Louis Cardinals. It was the Rays’ third four-homer game of the young season.

“It’s unbelievable. Everyone kind of wrote us off about our offense,” McClanahan said. “But we believe in these guys, and they are showing why we believe in them. It’s been awesome.”

Boston’s Alex Cora has watched his club produce just three runs in this series, and that was after the Rays posted back-to-back shutouts of the Oakland Athletics. But the manager has been impressed with Tampa Bay’s offense, as well.

“They’re playing good baseball right now. They did a few things offensively that they have cleaned up compared to last year, their approach is a lot different,” Cora said. “They’re putting good swings on good pitches and hitting the ball out of the ballpark.”