We know one of tomorrow’s two roster additions, as the 26-man roster expands to 28: pitcher Shane Greene is going to be coming up from Iowa.
That, per Jesse Rogers:
It’s still TBD on the position player who’ll be coming up, but as we discussed this morning, I don’t think it’ll be Pete Crow-Armstrong right away. Likely just a little more bench depth. Maybe P.J. Higgins as a third catcher? A power bat off the bench? We’ll see soon enough. (UPDATE: It’s the power off the bench option – Alexander Canario(!).)
As for the Greene addition, lots of thoughts:
This was my guess all along, given that the Cubs have a double-header tomorrow and were going to need a fill-in starter either tomorrow or early next week. Greene is on proper rest for a start tomorrow, which was likely not an accident or coincidence of timing.
Just because Greene is getting the call up tomorrow, that does not necessarily mean he will stay up permanently. More on that in a moment.
Greene, 34, was a very good reliever from 2017 to 2020 with the Tigers and Braves, before falling way off the last two years. He did not sign a deal in the offseason, and instead signed a minor league deal with the Cubs in late June. From there, he was working in the pitch lab in Arizona, apparently very impressively, and wound up at Triple-A Iowa.
… where he has been starting. Not just “starting games to get innings,” but actual full-on, stretched-out-to-70+ pitches starting. He’s gotten great results two, posting a 2.16 ERA over 5 starts, with a 3.77 FIP. I don’t think you could realistically expect that kind of performance in a big league start, but a couple competent times through the order? Four or five innings to keep the team in the game? That sure seems plausible, which is pretty wild given Greene’s long tenure as a reliever. How do you go from that, to really seeming to lose it, to turning 34 and then becoming a competitive starter? I guess we’ll see if that can really happen.
Well, if he starts. I am obviously making an assumption here, but, depending on how Game One goes, it’s conceivable that the Cubs would “start” someone else in Game Two, and Greene would get bulk innings somewhere in the middle of the game. My guess is he starts, though, and the Cubs look to get four or five innings out of him.
What happens after tomorrow is a pretty good question. Because Greene has a long history of success in a big league bullpen, you might assume that he’ll just stay up after tomorrow in relief. But, again, he has been starting this year, and his last two seasons as a reliever were really quite bad. I just wouldn’t bet on anything right now, and it might depend entirely on how he looks in the game. Maybe the Cubs decide they want him to stay up in long relief. Maybe the Cubs decide they want to try to quickly convert him to single-inning duty. Maybe the Cubs decide they want to reduce the load on the other starting pitchers and go with a six-man rotation for a couple weeks.
Whatever the Cubs decided to do, the important point here is that Greene cannot be optioned back to the minors. So if the Cubs, for whatever reason, don’t want him on the roster after tomorrow, they’ll have to DFA him and send him through waivers. Hopefully he looks incredible against the Reds, and the Cubs are left with a difficult decision about how to manage the roster. You’d love to be faced with that kind of tough decision.
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