The Chicago Cubs are adding another pitcher today, acquiring reliever Andrew Kittredge from the Baltimore Orioles, per Jon Heyman. More details to come, I presume.
Kittredge was, for a brief time, an elite reliever with the Rays, and then was excellent with the Cardinals last year after fully returning from Tommy John surgery:
(via FanGraphs)As you can see, with the Orioles, he’s been more solid than great (roughly 12% better than league average results by ERA-), but those numbers are some that you would pretty obviously take in a bullpen in the middle innings. Kittredge is also sporting a really nice K (25.2%) and BB (6.5%) split this year. Again, gladly taking those. The hard contact rate is a little high, but the barrel rate is fine (suggesting a disproportionate chunk of the hard contact he allows is on the ground or high in the air).
He missed the start of the season after a debridement procedure in his knee, but he seems to be OK on that front since returning in May.
Notably, Kittredge is making $9 million this year, plus a $9 million team option for next year with a $1 million buyout. So, if he really turns it on from here, you could at least consider retaining him for next season at an $8 million decision.
Although not a late-inning type, Kittredge is actually pretty much a spot-on example of what I had in mind when speculating that the Cubs would probably add a middle-innings type veteran reliever at the deadline. You cannot acquire guys after the deadline, and if you want to prepare for possible disaster, you have to add an extra arm even if you believe in your depth at Triple-A. So you get a capable, steady, established veteran like Kittredge to add to the mix and cover over some emerging warts.
That said, this is a lot like the Michael Soroka deal for me: as a secondary move, I like it a lot. If it’s the primary move? I don’t love it. I wouldn’t hate it, because I like the pitcher. I just wouldn’t love it.
In other words, if Kittredge is the only reliever the Cubs add from here – and they do not add a late-inning arm – I will have some concerns about the risk the Cubs are absorbing in the bullpen for the next two months and the playoffs. They have a great group of pitchers right now in the bullpen. They have great depth at Iowa. They do not necessarily have a great collection of late-inning arms that you’d be able to lean on super heavily in playoff games where you want to aggressively pull your starting pitcher after four or five innings.
And I get it: the prices on those types today were SUPER high. Maybe getting Soroka, who was a brilliant reliever last year, was a hedge against that. And maybe, like with Soroka, the Cubs saw the huge prices and simply feared they could get shut out at the deadline if they didn’t at least make SOME moves today. Neither deal forecloses anything else, though, as the Cubs are expected to add more pitching from here.
We’ll see what happens.
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