The Chicago Cubs have received a lot of flak for their bullpen strategy, but the Cubs themselves are happy with it.
Chief baseball officer Jed Hoyer and manager Craig Counsell have both been hit with criticism regarding Chicago’s ‘pen in 2024, but that won’t lead to changes next season, according to a new report from Sahadev Sharma and Patrick Mooney of The Athletic.
“Rather than acknowledge they got it all wrong with their Opening Day bullpen, the Cubs are more likely to point at this midseason turnaround as proof of concept and continue searching for bounce-back relievers and low-cost additions,” Sharma and Mooney said on Monday. “That would mean not making a blockbuster trade offer for Mason Miller and avoiding the next Josh Hader-level contract. It’s possible the Cubs won’t have a set closer at the start of next season.”
Sharma and Mooney also quoted Counsell in their piece to provide an in-house perspective on Chicago’s bullpen.
“Similar to what I said this spring, one thing you always prepare for is bullpens change year to year,” Counsell said, per Sharma and Mooney. “Who our personnel is will dictate how we think about it, for sure. Right now, I think we’re in the mode of just creating good options for our relievers, (assembling) a lot of arms that we can consider. Since — whatever day you want to pick, the middle of May — that’s the mode we’ve been in. It’s just trying to bring more options to the table.”
“Whether it be through development or some guys we’ve acquired, I think we’re in a pretty good place there. We ran into some injuries with a bunch of young pitchers, unfortunately. But they’ll be back, so we should have a good number of options. And then how that all plays out, it’s way too early to start figuring that out.”
Doing more of the same is an interesting strategy for a team that has completely fallen short of expectations in 2024, especially from the perspective of a general manager in Jed Hoyer who will be fighting for his job over the next year.
Time will tell whether Counsell’s and Hoyer’s strategy reaps rewards for the Cubs, who must bounce back in 2025 to earn back the attention and optimism of their fan base.
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