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Where the Cubs bullpen stands two months before Opening Day

3 weeks agoAndy Martinez

Jed Hoyer and the Cubs front office have worked all winter to tackle the bugaboos that plagued their reliever corps in 2024.

It’s led them to a situation with plenty of choices but also a scenario with not a lot of options — minor-league optionable pitchers, that is.

The Cubs have loaded up their pitching depth with intriguing arms and have positioned themselves to have to make difficult roster decisions when the team jets off to Japan for the season opener in two months. It’s a better position to be in than at the beginning of last season when their depth was tested — and the team struggled to meet the demands across the first 81 games of the year.

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“Being self-critical, I feel like that’s something that I didn’t do a good job of last offseason,” Hoyer said at his end-of-season presser in October. “When Adbert [Alzolay] struggled early, when [Héctor] Neris struggled early, when Julian [Merryweather] got hurt, we didn’t have the depth at that point that we needed, and that’s something that I think we’ll certainly look to improve going forward.”

Hoyer and his brass responded by adding seven pitchers with big-league experience — five of which look penciled to be relief options for manager Craig Counsell. In that mix are lefties Caleb Thielbar and Rob Zastryzny and righties Matt Festa, Eli Morgan and Cody Poteet.

But the real headaches that Hoyer, Counsell and the Cubs will face this spring will be centered around the roster and contract situations that will lead to tough verdicts on their final bullpen.

If the Cubs go with a traditional 5-man rotation, it looks like it would currently be Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, Matthew Boyd and Colin Rea. That would leave eight spots in the Cubs bullpen.

Of those eight openings, six players have no minor-league options and would have to be in the Opening Day bullpen or else the Cubs would risk losing them to another team. Righties Tyson Miller, Keegan Thompson, Merryweather and Festa and southpaws Thielbar and Zastryzny are all out of options.

That leaves two spots for a plethora of hurlers.

Javier Assad was one of the Cubs most steady starters in 2024, posting a 3.73 ERA across 147 innings in 29 starts. The Cubs also have stated he’d be in the rotation in 2025, so for purposes of this exercise, we’ll include him as either a swingman (a role he’s had success in the past) or a starter in a 6-man rotation.

The openings in the Cubs’ bullpen reduce to just one.

Porter Hodge emerged as not only a success story for the Cubs’ in-house pitching staff but also their closer, racking up 9 saves in 43 innings with a 1.88 ERA and a 0.88 WHIP. He also has the most saves of any reliever on the Cubs’ 40-man roster after his rookie campaign, illustrating some inexperience that could plague this group.

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That would mean players with minor-league options like Morgan, Nate Pearson, Ben Brown and Luke Little would start the year in Iowa — none of which are easy decisions to make.

Pearson posted a 2.73 ERA in 19 appearances after being acquired at the trade deadline from Toronto. Morgan had a 1.93 ERA in 32 games for Cleveland and was acquired in a trade in the offseason. Brown was on pace to have a breakout rookie campaign (3.58 ERA in 55.1 innings) before an injury ended his season. Little, like Brown, had a solid season (3.46 ERA in 26 innings) before a shoulder injury cut his time short and is a solid lefty option.

That doesn’t include other minor-league optionable players like Caleb Kilian, Poteet, Jack Neely, Daniel Palencia, Ethan Roberts and Gavin Hollowell. Nor does it factor in non-roster invitees like Phil Bickford, Brooks Kriske or Ben Heller.

Of course, it’s January and penciling in a bullpen or roster right now is a bit premature. Injuries, poor performances in the Cactus League, trades or DFA’s can create more openings for arms with options. But it paints an early picture of a roster jigsaw that the Cubs will have to solve.

If anything, they’ll take solace in the fact that — on paper, at least — the depth that hamstrung them in 2024 can be avoided this season.

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