The Chicago Cubs left San Diego empty-handed, then turned the page on the same afternoon the season officially ended for them.
Swept in two games by the Padres in the National League Wild Card Series, Chicago was eliminated and San Diego moved on to face the Milwaukee Brewers in the Division Series.
Hours after that exit, the club made official a signing it had been working toward since June: 17-year-old Cuban shortstop Rodelvis Santiesteban.
Francys Romero of Beisbol FR was first to report that the deal is now on the books. The bonus is modest by international standards, $20,000 plus a scholarship, the kind of figure that signals a developmental bet rather than a headline prospect.
CiberCuba had already written in June that Santiesteban was expected to sign with the Cubs, so the announcement on October 2 was less a surprise than a formality delayed until the club’s postseason run was over.
Santiesteban left Cuba in June 2024 and trained in Punta Cana under Jorge Luis Toca at GT Baseball Academy. Scouts who have seen him describe a contact-oriented hitter with the athleticism to handle more than one position.
His 60-yard dash has been timed at 6.3 seconds, quick enough to suggest real speed on the bases and in the outfield, even if the rest of the profile is still unfinished.
He is the 26th Cuba-born player to sign in the current 2025-26 international period, another name in a pipeline that has become a regular source of low-cost talent for major league clubs.
The timing makes the contrast sharper. Chicago finished the regular season 89-73, second in the National League Central and the second wild-card team.
That was enough to reach October, and not enough to survive it. The Padres won the opener 8-0 on Tuesday at Petco Park, then closed the series 4-1 on Wednesday. Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado set the tone early; Chicago never found a sustained answer.
Pete Crow-Armstrong struck out in a loud Petco in the first game, and Nico Hoerner flew out early in the second as the series slipped away. Manager Craig Counsell’s club was overmatched in a best-of-three that never felt close.
Signing a teenager for $20,000 will not change that result, and nobody in the organization is pretending it will.
International deals of this size are about inventory: a body in the Dominican complex, a chance to see whether the bat and the speed hold up against better pitching, and a scholarship attached so the player has something if baseball does not work out.
For a front office led by Jed Hoyer, the day after an early October exit is when that work resumes in public. The wild-card series is over. The next long project, for at least one 17-year-old out of Cuba, is just starting.
