Drew Smyly Keeps Getting Away With This. Can He Get Away From the Cubs?

[Matthew Trueblood]

The sub-.500 Cubs jettisoned one expensive and unwanted reliever Tuesday. Could they try to shed another, in the hope of sneaking underneath the luxury tax threshold after all?

Image courtesy of © Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

In their series-opening win over the Tigers at Wrigley Field Tuesday night, the Cubs turned the eighth inning over to an unlikely setup man: Drew Smyly. With a two-run lead, it was a medium-leverage appearance, rather than an exceptionally high one, but it still marked an unusual usage for the veteran southpaw. Smyly had only entered with the Cubs in the lead in the eighth or later and holding a lead of fewer than four runs one other time this year--in mid-June, when he tried to rescue the team from a Colten Brewer meltdown in San Francisco but failed, giving up the game.

This time, working with a clean inning, Smyly mowed down the Tigers. He allowed a single and loosed a wild pitch, but he ended up with three strikeouts and a relatively worry-free 15-pitch frame. That brought Smyly's ERA for the season down to 2.88. In 50 innings spread across 38 relief appearances, Smyly has been a fairly valuable reliever.

It's not quite clear how. His FIP is a much less encouraging 4.68. He's only struck out 20.8% of opposing batters, and he's walked 8.2% of them. Of the 180 pitchers who have made at least 30 relief appearances this year, Smyly ranks 142nd in strikeout rate and 138th in SO%-BB%. Some pitchers without a great strikeout rate or overall command profile have similarly solid ERAs, and fully earn them. The Tigers' Tyler Holton has a strikeout rate right in line with Smyly's, but doesn't walk people. The Athletics' Scott Alexander has similar strikeout and walk rates, but keeps the ball on the ground exceptionally well and keeps the ball in the park twice as well as Smyly does.

That doesn't quite mean that Smyly is just a luck monster, though. Famously, he throws a unique pitch mix, with a sinker that acts much more like a four-seam fastball--in fact, that has trended that direction in an especially notable way this year, departing from last season to hold more of a vertical shape--and a curveball that has funky, fadeaway action for right-handed batters. He's designed, when pitching at his best, to induce some weak and unthreatening contact.

Because the various third pitches he's attempted to add over the years have failed to blossom into real weapons, Smyly's value is confined to short or medium-length relief, but as long as that's his role, he does have the stuff to keep hitters off-balance and induce a good amount of weak contact. Hitters hit a lot of lazy fly balls and pop-ups against him, and interestingly, they rarely get jammed--which can lead to the flares that land just beyond the infield for frustrating hits. Note the absence of balls in shallow center field, here. He's not letting hitters use the big part of the field against him.

The .248 BABIP opponents have run against him this year probably isn't sustainable, but Smyly's expected numbers suggest that he's tapped into something real. Last year, after his belated move to the bullpen, he racked up strikeouts, but he also issued more walks and ran into more hard contact. After offseason work at Driveline that has effected a change in his fastball movement, he's earning more batted balls that are automatic outs, or nearly so.

Since moving to the pen last year, Smyly's actual opponent batting average is .221. His expected one is just .224. Opponents' expected .384 slugging average is a tad higher than their expected .381 mark. The gaps are wider if you lock in on this season, because there aren't as many strikeouts on which expected production is .000, but he's genuinely controlled contact well.

That said, there have been a fistful of batted balls like these that found gloves for him this season.

Smyly's true talent level is not a 2.88 ERA, but it probably is below 4.00. He's a wily veteran, and has shown fairly impressive stamina and availability since his on-the-fly moves to the pen. Were I running a team in contention and in need of relief help, I would be eager to snag him for the middle of a bullpen hierarchy.

Teams tend to be more circumspect about relievers without high-end velocity than I am, though--especially when they don't have great strikeout rates. They're also wary of taking on salary, even late in the season, and Smyly comes with a not-insignificant salary obligation. He's making $8.5 million this year, and because of the buyout on an option for 2025, he counts for $9.5 million against the competitive-balance tax figure for the Cubs.

In among those numbers lives an opportunity, though. The Cubs should, at the very least, waive Smyly and see if any team wants to claim him. If anyone did, within the next few days, the Cubs could save almost $2 million in calculated salary, especially if they're able to replace Smyly with a player already being paid as a big-leaguer while on the injured list, like Jordan Wicks. It might not get them beneath the luxury-tax threshold, but then again, it might. We don't really know where they stand, and it seems like it will be very close, either way.

Meanwhile, a team not worried about the tax threshold taking on Smyly would owe him about $200,000 less the rest of the way than the Cubs would effectively dump if he were claimed. That makes him fractionally easier to claim, for a team like the Twins, Red Sox, Royals, or Phillies.

It's possible Smyly has already been waived, and not claimed. We might well not have heard about that, if it happened. If he were to be waived and go unclaimed, unlike Héctor Neris, he should stick around for the balance of the season. He's been better than Neris, is more versatile, has been part of the organization longer, and comes with a mutual option for 2025 that might actually hold some appeal for the Cubs. 

If they haven't already done so, though, the Cubs should certainly give waiving Smyly a shot. They could yet end up as non-payors of the luxury tax for 2024, which would come with some small ancillary benefits, and if nothing else, Smyly might appreciate a chance to land with a team who might make a run in October. He's an unorthodox bullpen success story, but not a smoke-and-mirrors one--or at least, in addition to the smoke and mirrors, there's also a little bit of real magic.

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[Bertz]

I would definitely waive Smyly.  I'm much closer to an xFIP absolutist than most, but we're 300 innings into Smyly's Cubs career and he's outperforming his FIP/xFIP by half a run.  The margin for error isn't huge as we saw when he was getting hammered last summer, but I think there's some legitimate soft contact skills there, though his 2.88 ERA clearly has a healthy amount of luck baked in.

That said I'm less interested in him and his merits and more interested in the roster spot.  The need isn't as dire after Neris got cut, but I think what sets up the team best for 2025 is evaluating as many young pitchers as possible.  Wicks, Kilian, Keegan Thompson, and Daniel Palencia are all guys who could really stand to get some MLB time pretty soon here (in that order IMO). 

Roster expansion will open up a spot, and Ethan Roberts can and likely will get sent down soon.  So it's not a travesty if the team lets Smyly play out the string.  But it feels like the full court press on getting interesting Iowa arms some MLB innings is the most appropriate play right now.