Why the Cubs Were Smart to Not Invest in Pitching

Starting pitching, or pitching as a whole has been a big void for the Chicago Cubs over the past three seasons. This last off-season, the Cubs added to their dilemma by trading their best arm, letting their best reliever walk (to date, Jeremy Jeffries hasn’t signed a deal and could return), and lost multiple starters to free agency.

This has led many to question the Cubs motives in terms of adding starting pitching. They’ve, thus far, searched the bottom of the talent bucket (at face level anyways) to add multiple pieces that would battle for fifth spots on last place teams. The Shelby Miller’s and Trevor Williams’s of the world don’t excite fans the way signing Jon Lester did back in 2015.

But while many have called for the Cubs to get in the deep end of the pitching market, it might be the smartest thing that they haven’t.

I’m not talking about because of where the Cubs are at, on a competitive scale. I’m suggesting it is smart for actual baseball reasons.

The 2021 season is going to present a number of challenges. The first, how to navigate a season where allowed attendance will likely change. Players will go from playing in front of 10,000 to 30,000 to 0 and back to 8,000 within 10 days. While it “shouldn’t” effect a professional, changes in atmosphere absolutely changes how a player sees a game. But this isn’t just how pitching will be affected, that is the team as a whole.

The biggest issue will be moving from a 60-game season to a 162-game campaign. A change from a world where the most innings pitched was 84 (Lance Lynn, Tex) to the expectation of throwing more than 200.

It is always a delicate thing when a pitcher comes off a season of limited innings and pitches, to a full blown season. Stretching pitchers out for a full season will be a struggle of biology and a weird delicate plan. More teams will use more pitching than ever in 2021.

The NL Central isn’t exactly a juggernaut division. The talent pool is very limited, so much so that PECOTA figures the best team is likely a winning streak above .500. It will likely come down to those teams with the most pitching depth that end up competing in 2021, and for once that isn’t just an idioism that everyone says.

In a division that lacks feared teams, someone that will be able to spot start several players at any time will have an added advantage. This is part of the allure PECOTA has with the Milwaukee Brewers. Craig Counsell already limits his starters innings and plays the bullpen game early. They will have an advantage as they don’t rely on their rotation to throw 100 pitches a game or 200 innings a season. Asking a pitcher to do that, in 2021, after a pandemic shortened 2020, is asking for failure.

This is why I’m not harping on the Cubs to aggressively look for high-quality starting pitching. I’d be willing to bet each rotation spot after the #2 spot, will average around $15 million in 2021. A smart team will toss an average of $5m at three separate pitchers as opposed to the whole $15m at one guy.

It seems like, so far, that is the Cubs plan. They intend on spending $1m-$5m on a number of guys. They would all round out what appears to be a 10+ man rotation.

• Kyle Hendricks
• Zach Davies
• Alec Mills
• Advert Alzolay
• Trevor Williams
• Shelby Miller
• Braylin Marquez
• Kohl Stewart
• Tyson Miller
• Duane Underwood Jr.
• More signings to come in the next two weeks…

No one fears facing the Cubs rotation, but they will have several MLB-level pitchers eating up a ton of quality innings. This, while talent-wise doesn’t give them an advantage, it does provide a depth advantage that not all teams will have.

Knowing the Cubs – and all MLB teams – will shutdown several pitchers for extended time this season (more so than normal), tossing the money the Dodgers did at Trevor Bauer seems like a worse idea than it ever has before. Knowing that you will likely rest every pitcher in your rotation for at least two weeks makes spending a considerable amount of money on any pitcher this off-season a fool’s game.

So yeah, it would have been nice to see the Cubs land a big free agent or trade for another legit starter, it just doesn’t make sense in what 2021 will be.