Cubs Reportedly Among Most Active Teams in Reliever Market
The Cubs are “one of the most active teams in the industry on bullpen arms” according to MLB Network’s Jon Morosi, and that tracks with what we’ve believed for a long time about their offseason plans. Exactly how that will end up playing out obviously remains to be seen, but they just signed injury-plagued starter Matthew Boyd and traded for reliever Eli Morgan a few days ago. While neither pitcher looks like a big addition on paper, these are mildly aggressive gambits that could signal a series of moves yet to come.
While Boyd’s strong finish elevated him to coveted status among free-agent pitchers the Cubs can’t count on him to provide 100+ innings in a season. On one hand, that means they must maintain plenty of depth in the rotation and long relief. On the other, they already have several options for those roles and may well need to part with at least one in order to balance out the staff.
Morgan is coming off an excellent season in Cleveland but was getting squeezed by several other high-leverage relievers, hence the Guardians’ willingness to part with him. A multi-inning reliever with reverse career splits, the 28-year-old is under control for three more years and should help to solidify the middle of the ‘pen at a fairly low cost. The only issue is that his 21st-percentile fastball velocity and below-average whiff/strikeout rates do nothing to improve the dynamism of a unit that could stand to improve in those areas.
We’ve talked a lot over the years about the Cubs’ league-worst rotation velocity, but their bullpen sat 26th in MLB at just 93.5 mph last season. Though they managed to finish 10th in strikeout rate (24.2%) and 12th in swinging-strike rate (11.8%), having a little more margin for error sure would help. Nowhere is that more evident than in a 39% hard-hit rate that was higher than all but six other teams. The Cubs were also worse than all but seven teams with a 9.9% walk rate.
Just getting guys who throw hard isn’t much use if they can’t find the plate and/or they find too many barrels, so Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins need to be discerning in their pursuits. Finding short-term value in one of Jordan Romano or Kyle Finnegan would be a good place to start, and I still think there’s at least one big trade that will see the Cubs swap prospects and/or current MLB pitchers for a rotation piece.
Whatever they end up doing, I suspect they want to do a better job of having the bullpen pretty well set at an earlier point than in the past to give Craig Counsell more time to assess the group as a whole.