We have been told that Daniel Palencia is officially coming back on Friday. His 100 mph fastball and hard-to-hit slider will be a welcome addition to the bullpen – assuming he can maintain his control. This is great news to everyone except one person – the player about to lose his spot.
So far this season, the Cubs have done what they could to avoid making really tough decisions. Most often, they have sent any player with minor league options (typically Javier Assad) down to Iowa to make room on the major league team. There have been a bunch of players who have been DFA’d, but these have typically only been pitchers who were brought in for very short time periods when injuries had decimated the staff.
The one recent exception was the DFA of Luke Little, a formerly high regarded prospect who was unable to put it together, and is now with the Royals organization.
But with another quality outing on Tuesday (relieving Kevin Gausman when he had to go out with left-hand issues), I just don’t see how they can send Assad down to Iowa. He kept the Cubs in a game they would later win, as well as saving the rest of the bullpen.
In addition, the Cubs used up one of their remaining moves to add a player to the 40-man roster off of waivers. With the Dansby Swanson injury, they desperately needed another player in the organization who can play shortstop, so they grabbed Gabriel Arias off waivers from the Mets. To make room on the 40-man roster, the put Phil Maton on the 60-day disabled list. Maton could theoretically make it back this season but I would highly doubt it.
Now, there is one other move they could make to free up a 40-man roster spot, allowing them to option Assad to Iowa and activate Palencia. If they really like Arias, they could DFA Owen Miller, who was the man brought up to back up Nico Hoerner at shortstop. But if that was their intention, I don’t know why they wouldn’t have just made that move. It looks like neither Arias nor Miller have minor league options, so one of them will need to be DFA’d.
But, if the Cubs decide to keep Assad in the majors, they need to make a very tough decision about who will be released, as no one else has minor league options.
The most likely choice would be Aaron Civale. He was picked up on waivers a few weeks ago to provide some long relief, and he has been excellent. He has a 2.25 ERA and 1.25 WHIP in 16 innings over 8 appearances, with a 23.2% K rate and 7.2% walk rate. He only averages about 91 mph on his fastball, but his cutter and curveball, which he uses the most often, have been effective – even before coming to the Cubs.
If the Cubs want to keep Civale, the choice gets even tougher. There is the guy with great results, but terrible peripherals. And then the guy with terrible results, but a great history, who is also left-handed.
When I suggested Trent Thornton might be a candidate to be DFA’d a friend and fellow Cubs fans told me there’s no way the Cubs would release him. I’ve documented in several posts just how lucky Thornton has been this season, including a tweet that he had the 4th highest difference between his ERA and his FIP (now down to 6th after yesterday) for pitchers with at least 30 innings this season. I guess FIP does not account for wind, as Jake Rogers would have touched him for a 2-run home run if not for a strong wind holding the ball in the park.
Some of Thornton’s other number are also problematic. While his WHIP of 1.09 is very good, his K% at 14.4% is well below the MLB average of 22.1%, while his BB% of 9.8% is worse than the MLB average of 8.9%. The good news is that his HR/9 which was once high, has dropped to 0.92, as he has not allowed a home run in his last 23 appearances. This was after allowing 4 home runs in his first 15 games.
A high home run rate has been the undoing of the other man who may be DFA’d. Caleb Thielbar has an awful 2.33 HR/9 innings allowed. And while his strikeout rate is at 28.5% and walk rate is 8.5%, those numbers have not been able to make up for the 10 home runs he has allowed. His FIP of 5.18 is actually slightly better then his 5.35 ERA, and his expected ERA is 4.54 (compared to Thornton’s 4.53 xERA).
Plus Thielbar has a good track record. He posted a 2.64 ERA last season, and he hasn;t lost any velocity on his fastball.
The other tricky part of this is that the Cubs, who once had 5 left-handers in their bullpen, are down to only 3. And one of those pitchers, David Peterson, might need to go back into the rotation to replace Edward Cabrera. That would leave only Thielbar and Ryan Rolison. While Hoby Milner is close to returning, I’m not sure the Cubs would want to limit themselves to only one left-handed reliever until he rejoins the team.
And if they have an injury to Rolison, that leaves them very thin with any other left-handers with any kind of trust. Riley Martin is out for the season. And I don’t believe they’d want to count of Braxton Garrett, Antoine Kelly or Jordan Wicks. Now, if they decided to have Peterson stay in the bullpen, and use Rea or Assad as the 5th starter, that would give them more flexibility. And there is the small possibility of having Justin Steele come out of the bullpen very late in the season.
But perhaps I’m putting too much thought into keeping Thielbar to deal with left-handed hitters. In looking at his splits, he has actually been worse this season against lefty hitters this season, allowing a .516 slugging percentage, a far cry from his career mark of .338.
It might have been easier to manage this roster crunch if Milner had started his rehab assignment in August. But because it began at the end of July, he will need to be activated before rosters expand in September. And that would mean another player will need to be sent packing.
If it were me, I would probably DFA Civale and Thielbar, and activate Palencia and Milner. But my gut tells me that they will DFA Civale for now, and make a decision on how to open a spot for Milner when he hits his 30-day rehab deadline.
Cubs in 7 
Leave a comment