Signing Matthew Boyd Pushes Cubs to Decision Point About Hayden Wesneski

[Matthew Trueblood]

There are plenty of players below the young righty on the team's 40-man roster, who can be cut to make room for their newest starting pitcher. Still, the arrival nudges them closer to the horns of a dilemma that has been lurking for a while.

Though it was only Monday morning that Cubs fans woke up to concrete news about changes to the team's 2025 starting rotation, there was never much question that such a change was coming. Matthew Boyd slots neatly into (for now) the fourth spot in the team's projected starting staff, pushing everyone but Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, and Jameson Taillon down a rung in the hierarchy. Someone was bound to be brought in to effect that shift, but now it's really happening.

For Hayden Wesneski, that pulls the eventual resolution of many questions about the future a notch closer. It's been a tantalizing but difficult two and a half years in the Cubs organization for Wesneski, whom the team received in a trade for righty reliever Scott Effross at the 2022 trade deadline. He was initially viewed as a starting pitching prospect, but the auditions he got for that job (most notably in the first six weeks of 2023) didn't go well. He still might have upside as a big-league starter, but increasingly, it feels likely that one of these two outcomes will prevail:

1. Wesneski makes a full-time, permanent move to short relief for the Cubs, where his stuff might play up and allow him to blossom into a dominant arm.
2. Wesneski does figure it out as a starter... but it happens elsewhere. The Cubs trade him to a team in need of help in the rotation and with a bit more time to bring along a hurler still feeling for the command and polish required to succeed in long outings and face opposing lineups two or three times.

Earlier this offseason, the team acquired right-handed reliever Eli Morgan from Cleveland, adding him to a mix that already included Porter Hodge, Tyson Miller, Nate Pearson, and other relievers with impressive but inconsistent track records. On the other hand, they non-tendered Adbert Alzolay, and have released hurlers Trey Wingenter and Yency Almonte. There's room for the good version of Wesneski in their projected bullpen, particularly because he can still be optioned to the minor leagues for one more season. Because his four-seam fastball is too straight and is constantly at risk of getting hit hard, he's struggled to both miss bats and limit power when forced to work through opposing lineups more than once. In relief, however, he can lean much harder on his plus sweeper. He has far better career chase, whiff, ground-ball, and strikeout rates in relief, and in 2024, he seemed to figure out the best way forward for himself in that role; he just wasn't actually called upon in it very often.

Specifically, late in the campaign, Wesneski appeared to be getting behind his fastball better, leading to better carry, more velocity, and the ability to miss bats with it. He fanned nine of the 20 batters he faced in the big leagues in September, using mostly the recalibrated heat and that devastating sweeper.

While he does still fit into the team's plans if permanently shifted away from starting, Wesneski might serve them best as a trade piece. There are teams who might see him as a diamond in the rough, figuring they can fix his persistent release-point issues and help him find a fastball that isn't as easy for opponents to square up. Either way, the additions of Morgan and Boyd have forced the team closer to making a decision about Wesneski. If he's going to stay in the organization, he needs to come to spring training ready work in short bursts and avail himself of the 1-2 extra miles per hour he's generally found on his heater there. Otherwise, they should be shopping him, treating him as a valuable but secondary piece in a number of possible trade permutations to get their hands on much-needed upgrades for the lineup or at the higher echelons of their pitching hierarchies.

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[Bertz]

You highlighted Wesneski's stellar September, he was doing that in stints of two innings a pop.  I would love to see Wesneski keep that going as the team's long man.  Not in the "4 innings of low leverage work every week and a half when a starter gets blown out" way but in the way David Ross used Keegan Thompson at his apex.  2-3 innings twice a week on a fairly regular cadence to keep sharp.

And if Boyd is indeed one of two SP additions, I'd still rather see Wesneski in long relief than Assad.  Javier could be trade bait if he's not used directly to acquire that additional SP.

[Matthew Trueblood]

8 hours ago, TomtheBombadil said:

I’m in no rush to trade Wesneski coming off a season that isn’t aesthetically pleasing enough on paper for basics to see any Value. He’s a strong “buy low” candidate for any team, including Cubs. Get him right and someone may give up what the yooths call a “pretty penny” next offseason, or the one after or after that, to move him into the rotation. AfaIct his stuff is similar to but better than Tyson Miller’s, so as you mention there’s easily a place for him 

I'd be wary of selling low, too, but keep in mind: none of the other 29 teams are run by basics. Haha. They aren't seeing the aesthetics; they're seeing that fastball that has remained string-straight through three iterations of his mound position and arm angle. I would guess his trade value will be basically the same a year from now, because I don't think he's got that fastball adjustment in him. I don't like to live by pitch modeling numbers, but he has a 51 Stuff+ on the four-seamer, and ugly numbers via both StuffPro and PitchPro, too. I wouldn't say his stuff is better than Miller's (although the sweeper CAN be) unless he and the Cubs can find a way to get him operating the four-seamer and the sweeper out of the lower arm slot he abandoned a year ago. He's a puzzle. It sure is tough to let go of the upside that comes with hitting 97 and having a plus breaking ball, though. 

[Matthew Trueblood]

8 hours ago, Bertz said:

You highlighted Wesneski's stellar September, he was doing that in stints of two innings a pop.  I would love to see Wesneski keep that going as the team's long man.  Not in the "4 innings of low leverage work every week and a half when a starter gets blown out" way but in the way David Ross used Keegan Thompson at his apex.  2-3 innings twice a week on a fairly regular cadence to keep sharp.

And if Boyd is indeed one of two SP additions, I'd still rather see Wesneski in long relief than Assad.  Javier could be trade bait if he's not used directly to acquire that additional SP.

Definitely intriguing in that role. I want to see the league as a whole, and the Counsell-led Cubs specifically, develop that role more. I do wonder if the future of it is as a second rotation, where you might have three two-inning guys (on the Cubs, it'd probably be Wesneski, Brown, Merryweather, as currently constructed? But you could find three on almost any team) who work on three-game (often four-day) rotations. You could get these guys to like 100 innings apiece that way, without the unpredictability and impediments to routine that are such underrated sources of the performance volatility and injury risk that come with most modern relief work.