Will Ben Brown and Cade Horton Be Part of the Bullpen Solution for the 2024 Cubs?

The Cubs didn't ultimately decide to move on from David Ross until they realized they had a real chance to get Craig Counsell as his replacement. For many fans and neutral observers, though, the Rubicon was really crossed during the late stages of the season, when Ross responded to some late-season call-ups by letting young players waste away on the bench.

"We're not developing players right now," Ross said in mid-September, when asked whether Pete Crow-Armstrong would play regularly after his arrival from Triple-A Iowa. The underlying mentality--that the priority was winning games down the stretch, not giving Crow-Armstrong time to learn and adjust to big-league pitching--was sound, but it was so woefully incomplete as to be counterproductive. A good manager develops players and pursues the playoffs at the same time. They're not insecure or uncomfortable with complexity. They think in pages, rather than paragraphs or simple sentences, and they know how to juggle torches and chew gum at the same time.

One of the reasons why the Brewers have cruised past the Cubs more often than not over the last half-decade is that Counsell is that kind of multi-track mind. He's always been better at balancing the competing interests and contradictory tasks that fall to a manager of a team trying to be good both in the present and in the future. To take one example, along with longtime pitching coach Chris Hook, Counsell masterfully onboarded and utilized some young Brewers hurlers during his tenure there--including by having some starting pitching prospects work, first, as relievers.

Counsell is far from the inventor of this developmental stratagem. It's almost as old as the professional game, and Earl Weaver popularized it during his long run of success with the Orioles in the 1970s. In Weaver's book, Weaver on Strategy, he gives this as his Eighth Law: "The best place for a rookie pitcher is in long relief." He believed in easing guys with starter upside into the mix as penmen.

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If you have a good club, the prime objective is to win the pennant, and a manager doesn't experiment with kids. Not only is this first year a learning process for the pitcher, it's a learning process for the manager. The manager doesn't know what the pitcher can do in the majors. He has an idea and makes judgments about his talent, but a manager must see the pitcher in game conditions. When the manager puts a rookie into a game and the rookie comes through a few times, the manager begins evaluating,

Rhetorically, that's not far from what Ross said in September. In practice, though, Weaver was being more open-minded, and more proactive. He made his evaluations by giving players a chance to sink or to swim, and he trusted the Baltimore higher-ups to put talented people under his charge so that he wasn't placing that probationary opportunity in undeserving places.

Counsell's way of working in the likes of Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes was different than what Weaver did with guys like Dennis Martinez and Scott McGregor, because the game is far different now. In 2018, Burnes made 30 appearances with the Brewers, and 20 of them last three outs or fewer. That still leaves 10, and he did stretch out to as many as three innings, but in short, Counsell and the Brewers brought up a highly-touted pitching prospect to work mostly in short relief, as a means of apprenticing with the parent club. 

Woodruff worked as much more of a true long man that year, even making four spot starts along the way. These weren't any kind of capitulation on promising arms. Using them in relief was just a convenient way to kill two birds with one stone: deepening the team's bullpen, and giving Counsell and Hook much more thorough and intimate knowledge of both hurlers than they'd have had before. A team fortunate enough to develop a surfeit of good pitchers should let some of them reach the majors in relief, as a means of managing growth and dispersing opportunities, and because it's the best way to leverage that extremely valuable strength.

Let's talk, then, about Ben Brown and Cade Horton. The Cubs view both as starting pitchers, in the long run. If the team has a successful winter, though, neither will be in line for starts any time in the first half in Chicago. Maybe the highest short-term use of them is to promote them to the big-league bullpen and lend the club that depth and swing-and-miss that would otherwise be in deficit without some significant external investment.

Is bringing these two top pitching prospects up to buttress the bullpen the right way to address the team's reliever needs going into 2024? Or should they take the plunge and pay for someone like Josh Hader or Robert Stephenson? Let's weigh the options together.

Interested in learning more about the Chicago Cubs' top prospects? Check out our comprehensive top prospects list that includes up-to-date stats, articles and videos about every prospect, scouting reports, and more!