NEWS: Cubs Sign Right-Handed Reliever Jacob Webb to One-Year Contract

[Jason Ross]

Image courtesy of Arianna Grainey-Imagn Images

On Tuesday, the Chicago Cubs agreed to a contract with right handed reliever Jacob Webb, formerly of the Texas Rangers. The contact, as reported by Patrick Mooney, is a one-year deal with an option for 2027. 

Jacob Webb had a successful 2025 season with the Texas Rangers, as the 32-year old posted a 3.00 ERA over 66 innings. Webb features a fastball that sits around 93-mph while featuring a changeup and a sweeper. The reliever saw his K% drop from around 24% to 21% last year but still gets a lot of weak contact and forces hitters to get under the ball. One thing the pitcher does well; he gets pop-outs, inducing 21 of them last season.

Webb did a great job of limiting damage across all three of his offerings last season, with xwOBA's on his three major offerings all under the .300 level with a .291 on the fastball, a .265 on his changeup, and a .257 on his sweeper. Because of his changeup, Webb actually had reverse splits last year, limiting lefties to a .243 wOBA in total (and has a better wOBA against LHH over his career). 

While the team has not added a "major" reliever to their bullpen, the Cubs have added a handful of useful arms between Phil Maton, Hoby Milner, Caleb Thielbar and now Jacob Webb to help stabilize their pen. Webb likely won't settle into a back-end role, but could help to stabilize the middle-innings and could give the Cubs more match-up-options with his reverse splits.

As well, Webb represents another contract that should not break the bank at $1,500,000, allowing the Cubs the flexibility this offseason on who or what their "big additions" could be. Tatsuya Imai or Alex Bregman both remain more-than-in-play from a salary standpoint after this contract.

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What do you think of the addition of Jacob Webb? Do you think he will help bring stability into the middle-innings? Sound off in the comments below!

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[Bertz]

Babe hold all my calls a new Eli Morgan just dropped 

Cromulent 7th inning guy, appears to be a legitimate soft contact artist.  Curious if there are any pitch design changes to try and coax out more swing and miss or if he's just a matchup guy with that changeup.

[Jason Ross]

6 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Babe hold all my calls a new Eli Morgan just dropped 

Cromulent 7th inning guy, appears to be a legitimate soft contact artist.  Curious if there are any pitch design changes to try and coax out more swing and miss or if he's just a matchup guy with that changeup.

Yep! This is another one of those "guys who just get outs" that you can drop into the 6th/7th inning mix. Nothing special, but another cheap contract that allows you to remain flexible financially for whatever else you want to do.

Feels like equally a move you'd be hard pressed to be excited about or upset about. 

[Jason Ross]

Also, another incredibly cheap contract. Either the Cubs are just not spending anything at all this off-season or they're saving this money for something specific and expensive.

[Bertz]

Pretty obvious opportunity for positive regression

Interesting that he walked a ton of guys in '23 and '24.  Because he throws plenty of strikes.  Definitely feels like there's some low hanging fruit in terms of 2 strike approach or sequencing or something like that.  Only question is if you can get more K's while keeping the soft contact or if it's an either/or thing.

Also interesting to me that they're adding a guy whose best case scenario is Mark Leiter after already adding two traditional lefties.

[Bertz]

Great stuff here.  tl;dr is more fastballs at the top of the zone and change out his sweeper for a more traditional slider

[Jason Ross]

18 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Great stuff here.  tl;dr is more fastballs at the top of the zone and change out his sweeper for a more traditional slider

Makes perfect sense too. The Cubs love fastballs up and did some good work with sliders last year. And they love some pronation.