NEWSLETTER
It does happen from time to time, but it’s pretty rare: today the Cubs landed a reliever with multiple years of big league experience in the *minor league* phase of the Rule 5 Draft. Lefty Conner Menez is now a member of the Cubs organization with no restrictions. It’s as if they just signed him to a new minor league deal, even though he wasn’t actually a free agent available to be signed.
Before we dig in on Menez, we have to note the obvious implications of that opening paragraph: this is a guy whom the Giants knew they might lose, but they didn’t want to use one of their 38 Triple-A protection spots on him. That doesn’t mean they were right, it doesn’t mean their roster wasn’t crowded, it doesn’t mean there weren’t financial considerations. But it does mean that the chances that the Cubs just picked up a major contributor are pretty low.
That said, you get some big Kyle Ryan vibes here, and he contributed at least one really solid season for the Cubs, so you keep an open mind.
Menez, 26, was the Giants’ 14th rounder back in 2016, and a steady climb up through the farm system saw him reach the big leagues just a few years later as a swing guy. He’s seen good results in the big leagues, albeit with mediocre peripherals until this past season:
The short version is that Menez is a soft-tossing lefty who heavily relies on his slider to get a lot of strikeouts, but who has always had a good bit of control trouble. That’s not a surprise when you see him pitch – he’s a crossfire guy, which usually means command is a little harder to come by:
https://twitter.com/SFGiants/status/1153130206686789633
Menez actually faced the Cubs earlier this year and was mowing ’em down, including a bases-loaded Patrick Wisdom opportunity:
Based on the stuff and the way he was rising through the system (he reached Triple-A just two years after he was drafted), I’m going to assume batters don’t pick him up very well, but that his fly ball approach yields a lot of dingers on the rare occasion that he gets squared up. It’s not really the model for a late-inning reliever, but a big league contributor? Sure. Maybe even a swing guy or back-of-the-rotation 6th/7th starter type.
It’s basically like the Cubs made a solid minor league signing today, but it was a guy who wasn’t actually available to be signed.
So why in the world was Menez available in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 Draft? I’ve covered a lot of these, and players like him are not what you see getting taken in this draft. They tend to be waaaaaay more flyer-like than this (for example, the A-ball pitcher with decent stuff but terrible results that the Cubs lost today).
The most logical reason? Menez is out of minor league options. Yeah. That’s a biggie. So, in other words, once he comes up to the big league team, you can’t option him back to the minors without first exposing him to waivers. Thus, a lot less flexibility, and a lot less value in a guy like Menez, who might otherwise be a really attractive up-down guy (you know, precisely how the Giants used him the last three years).
To that end, you would assume the Cubs are tentatively already planning on Menez spending the early part of the year at Iowa while they work with him to max out whatever they believe they can tweak and improve. Then, you’re in a spot where if he gets into a great groove, he could come up and stay up, and you wouldn’t have to worry about the options situation. And if he never quite gets there at Iowa, then nothing was lost anyway.
But again, the lack of roster flexibility for a guy whose realistic ceiling is as a middle reliever or emergency depth starter was probably a huge reason the Giants left him unprotected.
Still, getting a guy who is a coin flip to contribute in the big leagues this year out of the MINOR league phase of the Rule 5 Draft is a pretty great get. Just what I needed for a tiny boost on Day 7 of the lockout.
More from Bryan’s notes this afternoon:
With their first pick, the Cubs select Conner Menez, a left-handed pitcher from the Giants. The lefty actually pitched in the Major Leagues in each of the 2019-2021 seasons. Reminds me a bit of the Brock Stewart selection from 2019. According to Baseball Savant, Menez has a fastball, slider, curveball mix. In the Majors last year, he used the slider 62% of the time, which is pretty unique. I would think Menez is competing in Spring Training for a Triple-A roster spot with recent signees Locke St. John and Stephen Gonsalves. Homegrown guys like Brandon Hughes, Scott Kobos, Bryan Hudson and Brendon Little (if he’s healthy) are in that mix, too.
Interesting note on Menez: he walked just 5 of the first 88 batters he faced this year, most of which were in the Major Leagues. Then, the control wheels fell off. He would walk 27 of his final 186 batters faced (14.5%). Maybe Cubs see a fix there?
