Breaking Down and Building Out the Cubs Bullpen After the Ryan Brasier Trade

Ryan Brasier brings the Cubs bullpen pleasingly close to full. They can only carry 13 pitchers at a time during the season, so depending on whether they use five or six starters in the rotation, they could have seven or eight relievers on the roster on any given day. For now, let's assume they stick with five regular starters, in Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, Matthew Boyd, and Colin Rea. Given those assumptions, who would fill in the remainder of the pitching staff?

We know that the 8th and 9th innings will be patrolled by Porter Hodge and the recently acquired Ryan Pressly, respectively. There might be days when Pressly gets more than three outs or when Hodge slides back and takes the save, based on usage and matchups, but however you rank them, those two are the team's relief aces.

Brasier, Tyson Miller and Caleb Thielbar are just as locked into their jobs as Pressly, and arguably even more so than Hodge. The Cubs have spent money on each of the aged veterans this winter, and neither can be optioned to the minors; neither can Miller. That means five spots in the pen can be written in with ink. The team also proactively chose to keep Julian Merryweather, another out-of-options relief arm, so we can call it six. That leaves just two slots for:

• Long reliever: Javier Assad
• Long reliever: Ben Brown
• Long reliever: Cody Poteet
• Long reliever: Jordan Wicks
• Long reliever: Caleb Kilian
• Long reliever: Nate Pearson
• Middle reliever: Eli Morgan
• Middle reliever: Luke Little
• Middle reliever: Jack Neely
• Middle reliever: Daniel Palencia
• Middle reliever: Ethan Roberts
• Middle reliever: Gavin Hollowell
• Middle reliever: Keegan Thompson

That's 12 names for two jobs, and it only includes pitchers already on the 40-man roster, which means it leaves out top prospects Cade Horton and Brandon Birdsell, plus minor-league signees Brad Keller, Ben Heller, Trevor Richards, Phil Bickford, Brooks Kriske, and Brandon Hughes. Those guys coming to camp on minor-league deals pitched a combined 144 2/3 innings in the majors last year—not over their careers, just in 2024. Right now, you could say that none of them are in the top 10 for any spot on the roster. That's how much depth the Cubs have amassed.

Of the gaudy list above, the only pitcher out of options is the bottom one, Thompson. Thus, if the Cubs don't make a trade that consolidates their pitching this month or next, they could start their season with Triple-A Iowa's pitching staff stuffed to the gills with MLB-quality arms—even accounting for an injury or two. We should assume they will, but for now, let's pick out the two arms who seem most likely to make it. Clearly, those are Morgan and Pearson, two guys the team has acquired in the last seven months and who spent virtually all of 2024 in the big leagues.

That leaves us with a projected group of:

• Closer: Pressly
• Setup: Hodge
• Setup: Brasier
• Setup: Miller
• Setup: Thielbar
• Middle relief: Merryweather
• Middle relief: Morgan
• Long relief: Pearson

Injuries are sure to shake up the Etch-a-Sketch, but barring them, it's hard to envision a roster without any of these names on it unless one of them has an awful spring.

This would give the I-Cubs a rotation of Horton, Birdsell, Brown, Assad, Wicks and Poteet to begin the season, with Little, Neely, Palencia, Roberts and Hollowell headlining the bullpen. In this scenario, it's hard to imagine that Keller and one or two of the minor-league reliever signees wouldn't opt out of their deals and go looking for better opportunities, but if it comes to that, the Cubs will gladly take it.

It's much more likely that they make a couple of trades in the next month, for any of several possible reasons. It's also possible that Merryweather either gets hurt again or pitches so poorly in spring training that they elect to cut bait with him. For now, however, pitching depth has emerged as an extraordinary strength for this team, and the Cubs could be set up better to weather the long season than they have been in any season in recent memory.