One Part of Cubs' Offseason Plan Needs to Be Modernizing the Bullpen

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They need more velo, more swing and miss, and more depth. Since penny pinching is always a thing this can be done for cheaper than 1 Top FA SP while actually making life easier for the entire staff 

You're also forgetting Hughes. The top five arms going into the season were supposed to be Adbert, Fulmer, Boxberger, Thompson and Hughes. Estrada was hoped to emerge to become a big part of the pen, too. The first five of those guys were all unavailable at the end of the year and Estrada regressed instead of taking the next step.

They should have invested more to start the year. They should have added more than Cuas at the deadline. But they also lost their projected top five relievers at the end of the year - that's much worse than anyone would normally anticipate. 

I don't really see what any of the above has to do with modernization.  You just wish the pen was better, and that's fine, but blaming a lack of modernization betrays a misunderstanding of the actual issues.  The Cubs had the 4th hardest throwing bullpen in baseball this year, this isn't the soft tossing group of like 2019.  They also have plenty of their own Hoffman-esque success stories, such as Merryweather.

The issue is simply that there weren't a ton of resources allocated there last winter or this summer.  Ross was playing a reliever or two short for most of the year.  Like the team did some fun things to modernize Cuas' pitches, and I'm excited for him next year, but overhauling a guy's repertoire takes time and you don't really have time on August 1st.  Cuas should have been the other guy, not the only guy.  Or last winter, if they'd added a $10M arm like Kimbrel or David Robertson instead of a $5M arm like Fulmer, he likely doesn't have those prolonged struggles from the first 3rd of the season as he figures out his new pitches.

4 hours ago, Tim said:

You're also forgetting Hughes. The top five arms going into the season were supposed to be Adbert, Fulmer, Boxberger, Thompson and Hughes. Estrada was hoped to emerge to become a big part of the pen, too. The first five of those guys were all unavailable at the end of the year and Estrada regressed instead of taking the next step.

They should have invested more to start the year. They should have added more than Cuas at the deadline. But they also lost their projected top five relievers at the end of the year - that's much worse than anyone would normally anticipate. 

Addressing the guys you listed there:

Alzolay and Fulmer combined for 121 innings this year. Given the injury histories there, I don’t think it’s fair to say the Cubs couldn’t have anticipated there’d be periods where they weren’t available, and 121 innings is a fair chunk IMO  

Did Thompson regress or was he misevaluated? FIP, xERA, etc. did not love his 2022 performance. 

Hughes (who you are correct, I completely forgot about) had a better 2022 by those metrics than Thompson did, but the advanced numbers still predicted some regression there. Fair to expect he could have eaten many more innings than he did, though. 

Estrada is an intriguing piece, but if you’re relying on him entering a season as a major piece of your bullpen, and not a “it’d be great if this guy performs” type, I think that’s a problem. 

Boxberger is definitely fair to think he would have been able to give the team much more than he did. That felt like a very safe, high floor signing. 

I think we’re mostly on the same page with it, and you articulated it a bit better than I did. Did they have some poor performance and injury bad luck? Absolutely. I’m not disagreeing there. But everyone has that stuff happen, and to your point at the end, if they had invested in the bullpen just a LITTLE BIT more, they would have had more options to cover those innings rather than watching Jose Cuas develop a love/hate relationship with his slider in a must win September game. The Phillies had that investment. The Cubs did not. 

I think the other thing about the bullpen is for as highly visible as the meltdown was last year, it seems to be in a position to fix it fairly painlessly.  I'd look to add two arms: one veteran in FA (ideally on a one year deal) and one via trade (ideally with MiLB options).  For example, something like David Robertson in FA and a trade with Miami (who have a bullpen overloaded with lefties) for AJ Puk.

CL - Alzolay*

SU - Robertson 

SU - Merryweather

MR - Cuas*

MR - Puk*

MR - Leiter

LR - Smyly

LR - Assad*

Guys with a * have minor league options, so if things go sideways they can be sent to Iowa to clean things up.  This scenario has the three stuff monsters (Palencia, Little, Estrada) plus the heroes of the 2022 bullpen (Thompson and Hughes) slated to open at Iowa.  So there *should* be good reinforcements to keep the pen fresh throughout the year.  Then again I thought the reinforcements going into last year were strong and we saw how hard and fast attrition can strike.

13 hours ago, Tim said:

You're also forgetting Hughes. The top five arms going into the season were supposed to be Adbert, Fulmer, Boxberger, Thompson and Hughes. Estrada was hoped to emerge to become a big part of the pen, too. The first five of those guys were all unavailable at the end of the year and Estrada regressed instead of taking the next step.

They should have invested more to start the year. They should have added more than Cuas at the deadline. But they also lost their projected top five relievers at the end of the year - that's much worse than anyone would normally anticipate. 

I agree they should have added more arms, and they also pitched Adbert/Leiter/Merryweather to death from June through August due to the lack of depth and I think those guys just wore down, maybe even Fulmer too.  They just didn't have enough depth.  They need to anticipate injuries will happen through the year and have to the depth to get through it.  I think they did have a bit more bad luck than average with so many guys injured or regress early in the year.

^^ I’m on board for Puk

I didn’t realize the bullpen was 6th in velo (and swstrk%) last year! What they didn’t do was throw strikes (22nd in CS%) and get chases (22nd). That makes Robertson a more interesting FA than I imagined. Nick Martinez, ~35% chase the past two years, may be another trade guy as a better Keegan Thompson 

22 hours ago, Tim said:

You're also forgetting Hughes. The top five arms going into the season were supposed to be Adbert, Fulmer, Boxberger, Thompson and Hughes. Estrada was hoped to emerge to become a big part of the pen, too. The first five of those guys were all unavailable at the end of the year and Estrada regressed instead of taking the next step.

They should have invested more to start the year. They should have added more than Cuas at the deadline. But they also lost their projected top five relievers at the end of the year - that's much worse than anyone would normally anticipate. 

Also,  not sure how much they expected to get from Cody Heuer, as it turned out of course he re-injured himself, but I do recall the timetable for getting him back seemed to be always listed as June or July.  He was throwing 100 mph in the minors before he got re-injured, although the actual  pitching numbers that mattered were not very good.

    I think the bullpen is our weakest link. It needs to be overhauled. What the Cubs are willing to spend on it seems to be the question of the day. Some nights when they came in it was akin to throwing gasoline on a fire. Very hard to watch. Or your starter just threw six innings of no run, 2-hit baseball, and the reliever comes in, walks the bases loaded before he grooves a scorcher down the line, or much worse. We will need some new faces and more importantly arms in the pen in 2024.