I am going to set aside for now any additional major conversation about the offseason implications of the Colin Rea signing, in part because we’re going to find out what it means soon enough when the Cubs do or do not make certain other additions. I discussed it over the weekend, and the short version is that I expect this signing moves bullpen and bench moves to the front of the likeliest-to-happen-next line, rather than another rotation addition. Rea is a good and worthy swingman to have, but I have trouble seeing the Cubs commit $5 million to him WHILE ALSO adding another mid-rotation arm AND an impact reliever (which is, in my view, at least as critically needed). You start counting dollars and un-optionable roster spots, and the math becomes difficult.
Instead, I want to talk more about roles and usage.
So, for example, let’s assume that Rea has been signed to compete for the 5th/6th starter job, and will probably swing in and out of the rotation at times, not unlike Javier Assad has, and not unlike Hayden Wesneski did last year. Rea cannot be optioned to the minors, so that’ll give him a de facto leg up in any competition, but it’s also at least conceivable that his addition gives the Cubs more flexibility to listen on someone like Assad if he happens to come up in other trade talks the Cubs are having. After all, Wesneski did.
Thinking of Rea and Assad as similar roster pieces is probably also instructive as to the type of pitcher they both are: Rea, like Assad, uses six pitches consistently, all have pretty standard movement and slightly below-average velocity. He’s much, much more of a command/control guy than anything else, and he nibbles to limit hard contact. A guy who can do that while bouncing back and forth between the rotation and bullpen has a lot of value, because that’s not easy to do.
Assad obviously had more successful results the last couple years than Rea, though Rea was able to do it for more innings (3.44 ERA for Assad over 256.1 IP, 4.40 ERA for Rea over 292.1 IP). Assad is also seven years younger than Rea, so you might buy into a little more of his 2025 projection than Rea’s (and the projection systems do indeed project a touch better performance in 2025 from Assad).
Overall, if that fifth starter spot came down to a competition between these two, I certainly would give the edge to Assad, personally, but let’s be quite clear here: the odds that the competition ACTUALLY comes down to those two are pretty low. First of all, guys get hurt. Second of all, guys like Ben Brown or Jordan Wicks may force a change in the conversation. Third of all, there very well could still be another starter addition.
Also, I have to keep reiterating the thing I keep reiterating: it’s possible the Cubs don’t go with a strict, traditional five-man rotation to open up the season. Not only would the extra off-days allow them to go with a six-man rotation if they wanted, but they also could utilize some of these guys in a “bulk” role, picking up big chunks of middle innings when needed, or following an opener. It’s even possible, albeit less likely with a maximum of 13 pitchers on the roster, that the Cubs implement some planned piggybacks, where guys like Rea and Assad are designed to go only twice through the order (maximum) in tandem with another starter (Matthew Boyd, for example) who is also being restricted to just two times through the order.
Whatever exact version the Cubs employ, you’d also see guys like Brown, Wicks, Caleb Kilian, and Cody Poteet optioned up and down as “starters,” and you may also see non-40-man guys like Brandon Birdsell or Connor Noland or Cade Horton selected periodically for spot starts, then becoming up-down guys, too. All maximizing match-ups and rest.
The more starting pitchers, optionable young arms, and swing guys you have on your roster, the more plausible this kind of approach becomes, and the more success you could have by optimizing rest and match-ups and bursts of usage (and, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out: it’s more economical … ).
It’s something we saw Craig Counsell’s Brewers clubs do for years to great success, pairing a seemingly random group of bulk guys together with the three or four traditional starting pitchers they had. I feel like a week couldn’t go by without the Brewers announcing some surprise guy was going to take a start. It might’ve been a good fit for that day’s game, or it gave other guys needed rest, or whatever. It can feel very ad hoc in the moment, but I’m sure a lot of it was planned out weeks or months in advance, with some flexibility to adjust on the fly. I don’t want to go so far as to suggest the Cubs are explicitly trying to recreate that setup, but they’d be silly not to take advantage of any expertise Counsell might bring to bear in managing that kind of setup.
Rea, himself, was of course a part of that mix in 2023 under Counsell, and then again in 2024 when Pat Murphy very much carried on a similar spirit with his pitcher usage. The Brewers got “starts” from 17(!) different pitchers last year. For the Cubs, that number was just 11, and 134 starts came from just five pitchers (by contrast, the top five Brewers starters took just 109 starts). Some of that was a matter of injury-dictated necessity, but still. Maybe Craig Counsell took a year’s worth of stock in his new organization, played out a year, saw what the Brewers continued to do without him, and he thought, “You know, I would like more bulk guys, please and thanks. Start with that Rea guy. I liked him.”
Also, the Cubs have a familiarity with Rea from his time in the organization back in 2019 and 2020, so maybe they just liked him, too, whatever role he ultimately lands in.
Summing this all up, am I saying I love the Colin Rea signing if it means the Cubs aren’t also going to try to acquire another mid-rotation (or better) arm? No, I am certainly not saying that. I don’t hate the Rea move in isolation, as I think he could be a perfectly useful pitcher to have available, but I don’t love the idea of throttling yourself in the offseason as a means to have to go with an alternative pitching strategy (and that’s *IF* the Cubs are even doing that). I’d much rather the large-market Cubs add a mid-rotation arm to this group, and then adjust on the fly if necessary (or just add the mid-rotation arm and then plan to use some dang openers to optimize, man).
Since we don’t know what the actual budget is, and since I am increasingly soured on the idea that the Cubs are going to spend meaningful dollars from here on the rotation, I just have to wrap my head around how the Cubs can make this work. Thus, this post. I can see it working out reasonably well, but it’ll require some good health, some over-performances, a whole lot of success from the Imanaga-Steele-Taillon trio, and a whole lot of consistently-well-executed adjusting throughout the season.