What Role Best Suits New Cubs Pitcher Eli Morgan?

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In adding a nice extra piece to his bullpen, Jed Hoyer took an important step forward. Now, the question is where to put that piece, amid the puzzle he's working on.

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On Wednesday, the Chicago Cubs made the first of what I imagine will be multiple moves in order to bolster their big-league bullpen. While the team has had success in playing off upside or nabbing reclamation types, this season demonstrated that there’s a certain amount of reliability needed from the jump. Enter Eli Morgan. 

Matt Trueblood’s rapid writeup on the move features two important things. The first is a breakdown of Morgan’s skill set, including his arsenal and his penchant for recording outs without overpowering stuff. The second, though, is a present depth chart in various leverage situations. Matt sorted Morgan as a lock for medium leverage situations. That got my wheels turning as to what Morgan’s ultimate role with the Cubs could look like.

This is primarily due to the fact that Morgan spent 2024 almost exclusively in low-leverage opportunities. Of his 42 innings this year, 31 2/3 of them came in such situations. Compare that to nine innings in medium-leverage spots and just 1 1/3 in high-leverage opportunities. It’s difficult to compare samples across the three, given the massive disparity in volume, but Morgan was most effective in medium leverage, based on numbers alone.

Therein, he pitched to a 1.94 FIP & 0.78 WHIP, while stranding 57.1 percent of baserunners. He walked only one hitter in those nine innings and surrendered his lowest rate of hard contact in any of the three situations, at a mere 7.4 percent. In low-leverage situations, he ran a 3.45 FIP and 0.92 WHIP. It strains credulity to throw in the rest of the numbers, given the already imperfect comparison we’re making here, so I’m not going to include those. Nor the high-leverage stuff. The point is, Morgan showed he had the chops to hang in medium-leverage situations, even if he was being deployed primarily in those of the low-leverage variety in the deeper, better Cleveland pen.

So with the Cubs, should we expect something similar?

In 2024, Cub pitchers ranked third in Major League Baseball in low-leverage ERA (2.31), 17th in K% (23.0), and 11th in BB% (7.8). They were also able to minimize hard contact (30.1 Hard%) and, as such, able to maintain a strong LOB%, at 89.5 percent (5th). Interestingly, the Cubs performed nearly identically across the board in medium leverage situations. They were 11th in ERA (4.17), 23rd in K% (21.6), and 10th in BB% (7.5), with very similar Hard% (30.2) & LOB% (71.4). Either would largely appear to be able to fall directly into Morgan’s wheelhouse. His ability to minimize quality contact and strand runners makes him an asset in exactly those situations. He walks noticeably fewer opponents than the average reliever.

At the same time, one naturally wonders if an acquisition from a bullpen as dominant as Cleveland’s could end up with an expanded role with a group that doesn’t run quite as deep. After all, the Cubs sat 20th in high-leverage ERA and featured the league’s second-highest walk rate in such situations (11.5%). If we expand Morgan’s high leverage experience to his career splits (23.2 IP), it looks pretty interesting. It features a .229 opposing average and a 1.06 WHIP that is his best individual figure among the three scenarios for his 265 career innings. Of course, it also features a strand rate of -23.3 percent, a 6.34 FIP, and a 29.4 Hard%.

Which is why it’s open-and-shut as to Morgan’s role. An exercise such as this – as in discussing bullpen construction – might seem silly when the calendar hasn’t even flipped to December yet. But Morgan’s skill set is extremely clear, as is his role. This is a move pursued in the name of stability. The Cubs clearly have a desire to get reliable pieces in, rather than relying heavily on their previous strategy of “throwing some names at the wall and seeing what sticks.” 

We shouldn’t expect to see Eli Morgan in high-leverage situations, regardless of what his Cleveland relief corps pedigree might tempt us to think. But there’s a certain stability he’ll bring here that will allow the Cubs to get to those high-leverage spots more efficiently. Of course, who those high-leverage arms will be is part of the mystery of the 2025 bullpen for the time being.

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