Near the end of the 2023 season, Julian Merryweather was a constant fixture in the Cubs training room.

It wasn’t just the typical post-throwing recovery work that a pitcher traditionally receives after an outing. No, his knee was barking so much that he needed the help of the medical staff to help him be available for a team charging for a playoff spot.

“By the end of the year, it was every outing, I’d have to do some sort of treatment on it to get it good enough for the next day,” the right-handed reliever said.

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When the season ended, he figured the winter off and not straining his body each day — he had made a career-high 69 appearances in 2023 — would help him feeling like himself again. After all, this was pain he had been dealing with “my whole career, honestly,” and he had the best year of his career despite it.

Except, that didn’t happen.

As he began pitching last year, his cues felt the same and his delivery felt aligned with where it was in 2023, but the results were far from the same.

“There’s also a popular phrase in pitchers like feel versus real,” Merryweather said. “I was doing the same things, [and] the feel felt the same, but the output was different, right?”

He missed nearly four months with a rib stress fracture in his back but when he was on the field, the velocity on his fastball had dropped from an average of 98.1 mph in 2023 to 96 mph last year. And his slider, which stymied hitters to the tune of a .205 average in 2023, was a pitch opponents looked for, hitting .440 off the pitch and slugging .600.

“He was down in velocity last year,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said earlier in camp. “I think that’s one thing that we have to acknowledge — it’s a real thing for all these guys. And Julian’s kind of operating at the upper end of velocities, too.”

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By September, Merryweather realized he couldn’t just rest and rehab it. Surgery would be the best course of action. The righty underwent a right patellar tendon debridement — “a cleanup, basically.”

The rehab process was three months, but the results — at least initially — have been positive.

“The surgery [has] definitely helped,” Merryweather said. “That’s kind of given me a lot more freedom on the mound to play with my mechanics and get more aggressive in the weight room and build strength that way.

“So, it’s been super helpful just have that kind of taken care of and not have to worry about it.”

That translated onto the field, too. In 5 appearances in Cactus League play (5.1 innings), Merryweather has a 1.69 ERA, a 0.94 WHIP and, arguably most importantly, 7 strikeouts. At his best in 2023, Merryweather was a strikeout machine, punching out 98 in 72 innings.

It’s that kind of performance that could make him a key x-factor in Counsell’s bullpen. This offseason, Jed Hoyer and the Cubs front office brass made it a goal to add volume to their relief corps to avoid some of the bugaboos that plagued them last season when players like Merryweather went down or struggled.

But beyond external additions, pitchers like Merryweather could represent internal options that can raise the profile of that group. A return to 2023 Merryweather would be a welcome to Counsell and the Cubs.

“We have depth for sure this year,” Merryweather said. “A lot of guys Couns can count on and that makes, hopefully, his job easier at the end of the day. [It] makes our jobs easier, [too]. If everyone does their job, everyone’s getting a good amount of rest in between game circumstances.

“But it’s definitely nice to have the kind of group we have, the versatility, the veteran experience, the playoff experience, everything kind of all rolled into one.”