Cubs to Sign Starting Pitcher Colin Rea, and the Temperature is Rising Under Jed Hoyer

[Matthew Trueblood]

Starting pitching depth is never a bad thing, right? Wrong. And we're about to find out if this is one of those times.

Image courtesy of © John Hefti-Imagn Images

Let's start with the basics: the Cubs have agreed to a one-year, $5-million deal with Colin Rea, a veteran right-handed starter who has been both a recent member of the Cubs organization and a recent member of a Craig Counsell-managed starting rotation. The deal was reported by MLB Trade Rumors's Steve Adams.

 

Rea, 34, had a solid 4.29 ERA in 167 2/3 innings pitched for the Brewers in 2024, and also pitched extensively for them in 2023, Counsell's final year with the team. He's a fine backend starter, who blossomed into a bit more for a prolonged stretch in early 2024. However, by the end of the season, he was out of Milwaukee's rotation and essentially out of their pitching plans for their playoff series against the Mets.

Let's get this much out of the way: Rea is a great story, a great teammate, and a fine rubber arm for the back end of the rotation or a long relief role. He reinvented himself at Driveline, turning from a fringe big-leaguer and Triple-A journeyman into a hurler who missed few bats but also pounded the strike zone and managed not to give up undue amounts of power over about 300 innings for the 2023 and 2024 Brewers. His deep arsenal—six legitimate pitches, including three flavors of fastball and a solid sweeper—keeps hitters off-balance and generates a good amount of non-damaging (though not strictly weak) contact.

Rea is, then, a fine addition to the very back end of a rotation group. He can touch 95 miles per hour, and he can take the ball pretty much any time you ask him to, and he can turn the lineup card over at least once without running into a brick wall. If Rea is your sixth or seventh option, you're not doing too badly. Ditto, of course, for Javier Assad. The problem is, right now, the Cubs have too much "not bad" and not enough "actually good" on their roster, including and especially on the pitching side.

So, this move doesn't deserve instant criticism. It does, however, raise the pressure and sharpen the team's position. It now feels less likely that they can bring this offseason to a satisfactory close. The compensation fans can embrace, for now, is that the ways in which they still can do that might have just gotten more interesting. Rea cost $5 million for 2025, though since there's a club option for 2026 involved, some of that money might be slightly deferred, in the form of a buyout on that option. He's not going to stop them from signing anyone they really should be interested in, because they still have $40 million or so left to spend after adding him. Bringing in Rea also makes Assad (and Jordan Wicks, and Cade Horton, and Brandon Birdsell, and Caleb Kilian) more expendable.

We know that the Cubs are still trying to upgrade this roster via trade. That could still happen in one of a few ways, including by dealing for San Diego's Dylan Cease. If parting with one of those younger starters helps secure Cease, and then Cease joins Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, Matthew Boyd and Rea in the team's starting mix, then this deal will have been worth it. That feels far-fetched, though. At this point, any starting rotation upgrade other than Roki Sasaki does, because Rea is an awfully expensive spare piece, and that's what he'd be if any starter other than Sasaki were added to this group.

That doesn't mean they're out of good ways to spend their money and make their moves. They can and should still take an active interest not only in Tanner Scott or Jeff Hoffman, on the pitching side, but any of a handful of hitters to round out a slightly undermanned positional corps. I observed yesterday (when the team acquired righty Matt Festa and stuffed him onto a 40-man roster now fat with 24 pitchers) that it felt like the team still needed to make a big move that would realign their talent from here. That only feels truer after the signing of Rea, which will require them to designate another player for assignment and make room on the roster. If they do that, then having brought Rea in to stabilize the pitching staff with viable volume at a low price will look very wise. If they don't, this will mark the moment when they clearly began lowering their sights in an unacceptable way.

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