Paul Sullivan: Cubs — whose streak ends at 10 — feel no urgency to add a starter despite social media madness

ARLINGTON, Texas — Do the Chicago Cubs need another starter? That’s one of the questions facing team President Jed Hoyer after Matthew Boyd’s left meniscus surgery, which followed the season-ending loss of Cade Horton and Justin Steele’s setback in his return from last year’s revision repair surgery on his left elbow. It’s too early for trade rumors to start, but the San Francisco Giants dealt catcher Patrick Bailey to the Cleveland Guardians on Saturday, so pulling off a deal is not impossible.

In this age of tweeting for tweet’s sake, rumors are bound to pop up, including an erroneous report Friday that the Cubs had talks with the New York Mets about Freddy Peralta, which was picked up on mlbtraderumors. com before the team quickly shot it down. The report was retracted in a separate tweet, but that didn’t stop the internet, which never sleeps.

It was picked up by aggregating websites focusing on Cubs news and discussed again Saturday on the team’s flagship radio station, WSCR-AM 670. Views of the original tweet and the retraction reached almost 600,000 as of Saturday night. The tweet worked, even if it was wrong, the story of our times.

The Cubs did not respond to an inquiry Saturday. But with almost three months left until the trade deadline, they probably can count on dealing with more of the same kind of stuff — whether the rumors are valid or not. Either way, the good news is that Boyd’s injury was deemed relatively minor, and he’s already working his way back.