I really am just holding onto the intro to these posts at this point, because the Cubs have signed so many in-season pitcher deals that it is just playing on a loop:
The Chicago Cubs are seriously going off on the minor league pitching signings here after the start of the season. Sure, you sometimes see one, but this is entirely different (and I suspect it’s because of the new stateside org roster limits, so the Cubs are smartly filling in new guys when they get a roster chance (as other guys get hurt)).
So, in the last couple weeks, the Cubs have signed big leaguer depth types Julio Teheran and Dan Straily, international pitcher Daniel Missaki, pitching prospect types Nico Zeglin and Mitchell Tyranski, and now they’ve also signed Triple-A/MLB border guy Jake Wong. (UPDATE: And also Carlo Reyes and Aaron Perry!)
So, taking that group of EIGHT in-season minor league pitcher signings and making it NINE:
Kyle McGowin, 32, was actually a reasonably successful big league pitcher as recently as 2021 with the Nationals, and spent part of the 2023 season pitching at Triple-A in the Astros’ organization. He had sprained his UCL at the end of the 2021 season, and did not pitch in 2022. So that 2023 season was basically his injury comeback. He has mostly been a starting pitcher in his career.
Now, further clear of the injury, McGowin had been pitching in independent ball, with the Charleston Dirty Birds of the Atlantic League. He’d made two short but dominant starts before getting the call to the Cubs’ organization.
It’s pretty hard to say what McGowin is at this point in his career, post-injury, and post-working-his-way-back in independent ball. Obviously the Cubs must have been scouting him, and feel he has a chance to be quality depth at Triple-A (I assume) in the months ahead.
Something I haven’t said out loud, but have been thinking about with some of these signings – the guys who are less like prospects and more like true big league depth – is that if you get enough of them, you would be more able to use them freely as actual emergency depth. Why? Because none of these McGowin, Straily, Teheran types are going to be optionable to the minors. So if you bring them up, adding them to the 40-man in the process, you cannot send them back down. You can only DFA and waive, in which case you could lose the depth immediately. That can make a team cautious about when they bring up a fill-in starter, for example.
But if you have SEVERAL of these guys available, then maybe you’re a little less cautious about bringing a guy up for one start – to buy your other starters a rest day, for example – knowing full well that you might DFA him the next day if you have to.
I’m not saying that’s a specific plan for McGowin or any of the others – you’d hope for a great performance – but I couldn’t not mention it as these signings pile up. Especially when the Cubs have that ‘TBD’ listed for Sunday.