Cubs Promote Righty Innings-Eater Chris Flexen, Who's Hard to Figure Out

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Orlando Ramirez-Imagn Images

As first reported by ESPN's Jesse Rogers on Wednesday morning, league sources confirmed that the Chicago Cubs will add righthander Chris Flexen to both their 40-man roster and their active 26-man slate. The move keeps Flexen from being able to elect free agency and seek another deal, although it's not necessarily the case that the team expects Flexen to pitch important innings or stick around for very long.

Rather, with Javier Assad having suffered a setback in his recovery from an oblique strain first suffered during spring training; Justin Steele out for the year after reconstructive elbow surgery; and Ben Brown showing only an inconsistent capacity to provide length and command the ball the way a big-league starter must, Flexen will come in to deliver some volume for as long as it makes sense. Assad moves to the 60-day injured list as part of this call-up, while recently recalled southpaw Tom Cosgrove was optioned to Triple-A Iowa. 

The Cubs had six days off in April, but Tuesday was the first of nine straight days on which they'll play a game. It was also the beginning of a softer stretch of the schedule, which the team might use to stretch their starting rotation a bit and rest their top relievers a bit. Accelerating roster churn over the last week or so has seen the team bring in and/or call up Cosgrove, Drew Pomeranz, and now Flexen. They called up Gavin Hollowell, only to option him almost immediately back to Iowa. Pomeranz, Flexen, Brad Keller and Julian Merryweather are all veterans who can't be sent to the minors without being made available to the other 29 teams, and it's unlikely the team will hold onto any of them if they have to come off the active roster for non-injury reasons, so bringing in Cosgrove was an important step; he's one more optionable arm (along with Ethan Roberts, Jack Neely, Hollowell, Nate Pearson, and Luke Little) who can be swapped into those roster vacancies when they arise. The Cubs have the ability to send Daniel Palencia to Iowa, should they choose, but further churn seems almost inevitable, either way.

Though he might last just a week or so on the roster, Flexen could soak up a handful of low-leverage innings for the team, and his performance in Iowa (a 1.16 ERA in five starts) made it worth taking a closer look at what he's doing.

As has been reported elsewhere, Flexen has lowered his arm slot a bit this spring. That's a noteworthy change, not just because most arm slot changes carry at least some alteration in the shape of a hurler's pitches, but because Flexen was notable mainly for his sky-high overhand delivery over the previous few years. The funnier thing, though, is to notice the unique relationship between his flavors of fastball and breaking stuff—which changed this year, because of several small changes to the pitches themselves and the elimination of one key offering in the set.

Here are the yearly averages for horizontal and vertical movement on each of Flexen's pitches. I've drawn connecting lines to show the relationships between the components of his arsenal for 2023 (green), 2024 (red), and 2025 (blue).

Firstly, after developing a sweeper last year, Flexen is back to using exclusively a vertical slider this season. In conjunction with his big, slow curveball and a cutter with an unusual amount of glove-side movement, that has left Flexen with a very weird set of breaking balls. It's extremely uncommon to see a pitcher with a cutter that moves more horizontally than their slider. Usually, if you have that kind of natural movement on the cutter, the slider naturally steers at least that far. The resulting concavity of the overall outline of his pitch mix above is very, very rare.

Flexen has also achieved a bit more fade on his changeup and worked in a sinker more often this year. Those tweaks make sense, given the slightly lower slot. They combine to give him a six-pitch mix (four-seamer, cutter, slider, curve, change, sinker), and although his heater is still lackluster, some of the other offerings really play up after his change of angle and mix. The cutter, in particular, is an average pitch that plays up because of his command of it.

In all likelihood, Flexen will have a relatively short and forgettable Cubs tenure. They continue the difficult work of navigating a season that began in mid-March and has already seen their ace go down for the duration, though, and thus, getting and saving a few innings with moves like calling up Flexen is important. After him, they might turn to Tyson Miller, who is nearing readiness to return from his own spring injury. At some point soon, they'll give Cade Horton at least a spot start in the majors. They might check in with still-available free agents Spencer Turnbull and/or Rich Hill, among others. They'll continue looking for opportunities to land players like Pomeranz and Cosgrove, to bolster their stable of fallback options. Flexen is just the next in a parade of pitchers who will be called upon to help them get to October—and hopefully, to have sufficient pitching depth to sustain a deep postseason run when they do.

View full article