The "Other" 2015 Draftees on the 2026 Cubs Matter, Too

The 2015 MLB Draft is well represented on the 2026 Cubs roster. Famously, the Cubs have the top two picks from that draft, in Dansby Swanson and Alex Bregman, and they have their own top-10 pick (Ian Happ, who went 9th). Scott Kingery is in Triple-A. (Ok, that one is a stretch.)

In addition to three top-10 picks, though, they have two arms from the 2015 draft with lesser-known names in their bullpen. Tyler Ferguson and Trent Thornton have both had very positive numbers with the Cubs so far, but as the deadline approaches, can the Cubs rely on either of these arms in a playoff race?

Let’s start with Ferguson. The Cubs sent cash to the Athletics for Ferguson in May after he had been optioned to Triple-A to start the 2026 season. He was a useful member of the A’s bullpen in 2024; he had a 30% strikeout rate and was reliable when it mattered most. When covering innings 7-9 (which was his primary role), he held opponents to a .500 OPS and just 12 runs in 38 1/3 innings that year. In fact, over the last two seasons, Ferguson has been quite a bit better than average in medium- and high-leverage situations. Oddly enough, his problem has been low-leverage situations.

Ferguson was at his best in 2024 throwing fastballs 74% of the time, but mixing between four-seamers, sinkers, and cutters. In 2025, he lost 1+ mph on his fastballs and his strikeout rate dropped to 22%, while his walk rate climbed to almost 14%. Ferguson has always had a hard time getting lefties out. His loss of effectiveness on the fastball turned him into a platoon reliever who doesn't get a ton of ground balls or strikeouts and has a high walk rate—a pretty rough combination, which makes it easy to understand why the A’s sold him to the Cubs. The Cubs were desperate in their search for healthy arms and saw a rebound in velocity from Ferguson.

Ferguson is obviously due for regression from his 0% walk rate. Can he survive it? His strikeout rate is back to 30%, largely on the back of a new sweeper that he's been throwing. Per Ferguson, he changed his grip and it seems to have made a difference, as he's getting more horizontal movement on the pitch. He's thrown it 20 times since he came back from the minors on June 24, and outside of the home run to Jordan Walker on July 5, opponents are 0-6 with 4 strikeouts against the pitch. Even though the shape has been inconsistent as he gets comfortable with the new grip, he's getting a 60% chase rate on the sweeper. The emergence of the sweeper has made his fastball more effective, too. He has allowed just 2 singles off fastballs since his return from Iowa. 

Much like Jacob Webb, Ferguson is still experimenting with his pitch mix, especially against left-handed hitters. He's only thrown 17 total pitches to lefties since June 24, but he's thrown more sweepers than changeups in his search for a secondary pitch he can trust against them. Ferguson looks to be back where he was when he was an effective platoon arm for the A’s, but if he can find results against lefties with his new sweeper, he could be more than just a matchup guy for Craig Counsell. That would be an unconventional path to success, but this is the Cubs bullpen. Unconventional paths are the convention.

One round ahead of Ferguson in 2015, Trent Thornton went to the Astros. Thornton reached Double-A in his first full season, before being traded to the Blue Jays after the 2018 season. He made the Jays roster out of spring training and made 29 starts in 2019, leading the team in starts. Injuries limited him and moved him to a bullpen role, where he was less effective, before being traded to Seattle in 2023. After lowering his arm slot, he was solid in the bullpen for a couple seasons, but was non-tendered after tearing his Achilles last July. Less than a year later, Thornton has a 2.63 ERA over 27 1/3 innings, a pretty remarkable comeback. 

Much like Ferguson, Thornton is trying to rebound and find the success of his 2024 season, where he had a 26% strikeout rate and a 6.5% walk rate and limited hard contact at a pretty high level. Unlike Ferguson, he doesn’t look like the same pitcher with a new wrinkle; he looks like a completely different pitcher. His arm angle is now at 46°, up from 35° in 2024 and closer to what it was with the Blue Jays. The good news is that he's getting more ground balls than ever before. The bad news is that his strikeout and walk rates are the lowest and highest of his career, respectively. 

The decrease in swing-and-miss is evident in both of Thornton’s breaking offerings and his four-seam fastball. Looking at Thornton’s fastball, he has traded swing-and-miss for weak contact and ground balls. With the higher arm slot, Thornton’s whiff rate on the four-seamer is back to the mid-teens, where it was before he lowered his slot. His ground-ball rate of 50% on the four-seamer is far higher than ever in his career, though. Batters’ average launch angle on his fastball is 8°. Last season was the only other time he has been below 17°. Due to putting the ball on the ground, the four-seamer grades out higher per run value than any other season in his career. 

Thornton’s curveball has a paltry 5% whiff rate this year, the first time in his career it's been below 20%. He's spinning the ball less from his higher arm slot and has lost 2.5 inches of total movement on it. Batters have not yet swung and missed on a curveball in the zone this season. His whiff rate has also dropped on his slider/cutter, but only against lefties. Thornton has had more luck against lefties with both the sweeper and the cutter than he has with the curve, but he's still throwing the curve 32% of the time against lefties. Therein lies the problem; the same problem that plagues multiple pitchers in this Cubs bullpen. How do we get a lefty bat out?

Before the season, Matt Trueblood postulated that Thornton may be adding a kick-change to his arsenal. If there is truth to this conspiracy, we haven’t yet seen it, as Thornton has not thrown a single changeup this year. As Matt explains in that article, changeups are a difficult pitch for a supinator like Thornton to throw, and if we haven’t seen it yet, it's probably not coming. Without that pitch (or recapturing the lost movement on his curveball), he looks like another Cubs pen arm who needs to be hidden from lefties.

The reality is that both of these 2015 draftees are likely capped in terms of what value they can provide to the 2026 Cubs. Both are nearing their 33rd birthdays and are unlikely to change much or suddenly become good at getting lefties out. Especially in a Murphy’s Law season like the Cubs arms are having, however, these veteran arms filling their role well is sorely needed, for however long it lasts.