Ben Brown's (Brief?) Return to the Rotation, and the Cubs' Burgeoning Pitching Depth

[Matthew Trueblood]

With Kyle Hendricks demoted to the Chicago Cubs' bullpen for the foreseeable future, Ben Brown gets what figures to be an abbreviated spot start Thursday against Atlanta. It's a moment that emblemizes the team's sudden surfeit of multi-inning arms, which might only get richer soon.

Image courtesy of © Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports

It's unlikely we'll see Ben Brown pitch even five or six innings in his nominal start Thursday afternoon against the visitors from Atlanta. He's been working out of the bullpen, where his combination of power and arsenal limitations seemed to be pointing toward a late-inning, short-burst role for him in the second half of the season. He's still stretched out enough to give the team three frames or so in the finale of their home series, but he's the tip of the spear in what will be something akin to a bullpen game.

Brown is taking the spot of new multi-inning relief option Kyle Hendricks, though, so we might surmise that Hendricks will be available in that capacity as soon as Thursday, or else throughout the weekend series the team will then play in St. Louis. Though they couldn't be much more different in terms of sheer stuff and stage of their careers, Brown and Hendricks are working in corresponding, almost interchangeable roles, and have been throughout the season. They're part of a growing gallimaufry of options behind entrenched starters Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, and Javier Assad.

Hayden Wesneski is also in that mix, although he looks primed for a long run as a relief-only weapon, given both the team's needs in that area and their plethora of options in the rotation. So, in different but not opposite ways, are both Jordan Wicks and Drew Smyly, out on rehab assignments that could put them back on the active roster within a week. Wicks is the most likely to claim the rotation spot Hendricks is yielding on a full-time basis, but Brown and even Smyly could have something to say about that.

If Steele can get the rust shaken off and settle in as a consistently above-average starter again, the front four in the Cubs rotation looks stable for a while. That gives Craig Counsell an extraordinary amount of flexibility with his bullpen, even if some of that flexibility will be where a manager might prefer the rigidity of surefire, single-inning relief aces.

We don't have to look far into the future to see a pitching staff that has Imanaga, Steele, Taillon, Assad, and Wicks starting, with Héctor Neris and Mark Leiter Jr. anchoring the back end of the bullpen. Trade acquisition Tyson Miller fills another place in the pen, presumably on a semi-permanent basis. That leaves five more roster spots for the pitching staff, and they could almost all be filled by guys who have recent track records as starters and the ability to go more than one inning whenever needed--but none of whom have a track record of getting high-leverage outs in a big-league bullpen. That group would include Wesneski, Brown, Hendricks, and Smyly.

In that scenario, the team wouldn't need to lean on any of Luke Little, Daniel Palencia, Porter Hodge, or José Cuas. They could just use whichever of the group (all of whom are optionable) was fresh and performing well, for a while. Soon, they surely hope, one of Julian Merryweather, Yency Almonte, or Adbert Alzolay will be healthy enough to return, but while they wait, this mix of long relievers and a revolving cast of short middle relievers would be workable.

Whenever any of those three (Almonte and Merryweather feel closer, at the moment, but it's hard to predict the progress each might make) do return, the Cubs probably won't want to be locked in with four long relievers, though. That could mean optioning Wesneski or Brown, but those two have the higher ceilings and better matches of stuff to role for relief work. In short, as soon as one of their high-leverage short relievers returns, it gets difficult to carry Hendricks and Smyly. 

By now, you might have heard the whispers on Cubs Twitter. Hendricks will reach 10 years of big-league service this season--specifically, on June 26. The Cubs owe an extraordinary and wonderful debt to Hendricks, and cutting him before that milestone feels unfathomable, if not unconscionable. At the moment, though, the smart money says he has only that long to linger on the active roster. In the next five weeks, he needs to show something significant, or he'll be designated for assignment at the end of next month.

If you're looking for a date when we might see Cade Horton join the parent club, that's also the timeframe to consider. Not only would waiting until Hendricks comes off the 40-man roster make it easier to add Horton, but pushing his debut back that far would prevent him from becoming arbitration-eligible for the 2027 season. To me, that shouldn't matter, but as a cherry on top of other reasons for waiting to call him up, it works.

Injuries could (and probably will) further disrupt these so-called plans. As things stand, though, the Cubs are getting healthy again, after an early stage of the season during which they didn't have enough available arms to make any truly interesting choices between them. That's changing, and it's an exciting development. Hopefully, it also means they get materially better, with players like Brown, Wicks, Wesneski, and Horton claiming roles they'll fill not just for the balance of 2024, but for years to come--and shutting down opposing offenses more efficiently in the process.

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[Bertz]

I'm really curious to see what this pitching depth does to impact the trade deadline plans.  From two different directions:

- Does Jed forego trading for any SP help?  Particularly after the August waiver deadline got killed, most teams that are going for it add some SP depth at the deadline.  Even if it's a swingman, they add something just to avoid potentially getting caught with their pants down by injuries.  But if two months from now the Cubs are 8 deep (maybe 9 depending on how you feel about Smyly) in the rotation, do you really need to add someone just to add someone?

- Taking it a step further, does Jed trade some of this depth away?  Being on the seller side of the house a lot the last few years, we've seen teams VERY reticent to add plug and play SP to trades.  If Jed were to, for example, offer up Alcantara and Wesneski in a package, that feels like it would get him more or less anyone he could want?  But do you risk trading immediate functional pitching depth in a summer you're competing?  Maybe going back to the question above it's on the table but does force a Sean Manaea/Michael Lorenzen type acquisition to backfill that depth?