This feels like the beginning of something. (Alternative joke intro: I can feel a roster move coming in the air tonight.)
The Chicago Cubs are reportedly signing lefty reliever Genesis Cabrera to a Major League deal. Cabrera, 28, had been with the New York Mets after signing a minor league deal in the offseason. He got in only 7.2 innings of work before the Mets let him go, and he was successful in that time (3.52 ERA, 4.11 FIP).
Not sure if this is a Jorge Lopez situation, where the Mets are letting a decent reliever go because they just feel like it isn’t a fit, or whether they are projecting him poorly going forward. Either way, I’m perfectly happy for the Cubs to take a chance on a guy with a 3.88 career ERA and a 96 mph fastball. You may remember Cabrera best from his days with the Cardinals, when he was a very effective late-inning reliever.
Not that there aren’t warts – there’s a reason he was available this offseason on a minor league deal. His strikeout rate is just 20% over the last few years, which is hardly what you’d want to see from a high-velo reliever, especially when the walk rate is typically near 10%. He was giving up a lot of loud contact with the Mets, too, and struggled at Triple-A. So it’s possible the results this year were a bit of a mirage.
But then, the Cubs are out there signing him to a big league deal, and I trust that they know what they’re doing when evaluating reclamation/fringe types like Genesis Cabrera. That doesn’t mean he’ll definitely be good, but the Cubs get the benefit of the doubt when taking swings like this. My guess is that he’s a guy some in the org have liked for a while, and have wanted a chance to get in the door to tweak X, Y, or Z thing and see if it unlocks another level of performance.
What the big league deal means is that Genesis Cabrera gets a 40-man spot and an active roster spot. So the Cubs will have to clear out someone on the 40-man AND someone on the 26-man. There are some options on the former, but with the latter, it’s a little harder to see who gets squeezed out of the bullpen right now unless somebody is hurt. I suppose it’s possible the Cubs decided they simply prefer Cabrera to Brooks Kriske – the last man in – and it’s just going to be a straight swap on the roster(s).
As for the possibility of going with three lefties in the bullpen, that doesn’t bother me too much, since Cabrera is split-neutral, and Drew Pomeranz and Caleb Thielbar have hardly been used exclusively in match-up duty.
(Super duper unlikely thing, but just to note: if Cabrera does break out and the Cubs want to keep him after this season, I believe he will not quite have enough service time to qualify for free agency, even if he sticks with the Cubs the rest of the way. That means they would be able to retain him for 2026 via arbitration.)
