NEWSLETTER
Surprise! Drew Smyly was excellent again yesterday, continuing a trend that has lasted longer than you might realize, and pretty much the entire season.
Against the single best offense against left-handed pitching in MLB, Smyly held the Cardinals to just one run (a flukey Albert Pujols homer that would have left only Wrigley Field) over seven innings in Chicago: 7.0 IP, 4H, 1ER, 2BB, 6Ks.
That performance earns him a 2.35 ERA over his last seven starts and a 3.47 ERA for the season. There was some hard contact throughout the game, and few groundballs, but Smyly got the job done and looked good doing it.
For a back-end of the rotation starter, the Cubs could do a WHOLE lot worse.
Now it remains a question whether the Cubs will at some point waive Smyly in order to save remaining salary and the buyout on his mutual option after the season. He is going to be a free agent, after all.
The longer this goes, though – and after the Keegan Thompson injury, the Kyle Hendricks shutdown, and the Wade Miley setback – the more I think the Cubs might just be content to ride it out through the end of the year. There’s no chance Smyly wants his half of the mutual option at this point, and he might actually be able to get a sizable contract in free agency, beyond what the Cubs want to do. But you never know, and keeping him around at least leaves open the possibility that he decides he’s just really happy with the Cubs, and they find common ground on a short-term extension.
But is that likely? Well, it seems if Smyly had his way, the answer (as of today), would be “Yes.”
“I love pitching here. I love being at Wrigley. I love being a Cub,” Smyly said after Monday’s loss. “They know that. I would love to stay here. I’ve made it clear that I love being on this team.”
According to Sahadev Sharma, Smyly “wanted no part” of being traded at the deadline when those rumors arose a few weeks ago, and this is already the second time he’s been with the Cubs in his career. But neither that nor his comments mean he’s definitely going to return for another season.
Smyly, 33, and the Cubs have a presumably-modest mutual option in place for 2023 (the terms have not been officially disclosed), but like I said above, that’s not likely to be exercised, even if there is mutual interest in a reunion for 2023. Smyly has simply out-pitched a low-dollar, one-year price tag, and should be able to generate significant free agent interest in the offseason.
So if the Cubs wanted to bring him back, they’d have to extend/re-sign him in the offseason, with a rotation that might not (should not?) have as many clearly available opportunities as there were last time around.
Virtual Locks (3): Marcus Stroman, Justin Steele, Kyle Hendricks, Significant Free Agent Addition(?)
Immediate Upside (3): Keegan Thompson, Caleb Kilian, Hayden Wesneski
Depth Starters (3): Adrian Sampson, Javier Assad, Adbert Alzolay
As of today, the Cubs 2023 rotation has just three virtual locks already in-house: Marcus Stroman, Justin Steele, and Kyle Hendricks (hold your comment on Hendricks for a moment). Beyond that, guys like Keegan Thompson, Caleb Kilian, and Hayden Wesneski will be seen as immediate-upside competition for the rotation, who should be given a shot to earn a rotation spot at some point in the year. And beyond that, there’s some legitimate starting depth waiting in the wings, such as Adrian Sampson, Adbert Alzolay, and Javier Assad. Guys will obviously be coordinated among the rotation, the bullpen, and Triple-A.
There’s also free agency, where we expect the Cubs to be aggressive in their pursuit of at least one free agent that joins that group of “virtual locks.”
(And that’s not to mention top pitching prospects like Jordan Wicks, DJ Herz, and Ben Brown who are already pitching at Double-A Tennessee this season and could be in the Triple-A Iowa rotation next year.)
You *always-always-always* need more starting pitching than you think you need, but the truth is *if the Cubs sign or trade for a sure-fire free agent starter,” bringing that group to 4 to start the year, there’s not going to be as much as room as there was this season, even accounting for attrition. Or at least, the available space they DO have might be better used on their younger, up-and-coming arms, of which there are many.
But this discussion isn’t without its caveats.
In an ideal world, the Cubs would likely want to use Drew Smyly next season how I imagine they already HOPE to use Kyle Hendricks — a veteran, back-end of the rotation starter that can be something of a leader who eats innings and occasionally delivers a performance like the one we saw against the Cardinals last night.
Dedicating one rotation/roster spot to a pitcher like that makes sense, but two? That’s a little tougher in a competitive year.
And all of this cuts both ways: Smyly may have a robust market this winter, where he can be guaranteed a larger role somewhere else.
Then again, I don’t know if we can – today – claim that a 33-year-old Kyle Hendricks, coming off an injury that ended his season, is definitely going to be better than a 34-year-old Drew Smyly who’ll be coming off 1.5 solid seasons between the Braves and Cubs. So maybe the future here with Smyly comes down to the outlook on Hendricks (again, that matters for both the Cubs *and* Smyly).
All else equal, I imagine the Cubs would choose Hendricks over Smyly since they already have Hendricks under contract for 2023, but that’s the thing … we don’t (and won’t) know if all else will be equal when the offseason finally rolls around. There might wind up being more reason to be concerned about Hendricks’ future, for example.
*Stray note from Brett: Ever since teams decided not to make a reasonable offer for Drew Smyly at the Trade Deadline, he’s made four starts averaging 6.0 innings per, with a 1.13 ERA and 2.61 FIP. He’s been flat out dominant, and it galls me to no end that teams could not see this coming once he was healthy (well, maybe not THIS good, but when he’d been healthy and starting over the preceding 12 months, he’d been quite good!). How many better starting pitchers wound up being traded at the deadline? Not many!
