After a few days of drama, the Chicago Cubs will get their man: Houston Astros reliever Ryan Pressly has reportedly OK’d a trade to the Cubs, and the parties are in the process of finalizing the deal, per Jeff Passan and Chandler Rome on X, among others. They are at the medical review stage. No word on the return just yet, but we do know the Astros will be sending along some cash to cover part of Pressly’s $14 million salary.
We’ll have a deeper dive on what we can expect from Pressly as a Cubs reliever, but I think it’s worth noting the obvious stuff: the velocity was a touch down the last two years, as well as the strikeouts. The walks and contact quality were just OK (tons of groundballs, though), and the results were good, they just weren’t elite. At 36, Pressly is not likely to bounce back to elite, and the projection systems instead see him being around 15% better than league average, which is where he was by the results the last two years. (His FIP had him about 25% better than league average, though, for what that’s worth.)
The Cubs, however, are targeting him for a reason, and I’ve gotta believe his four-pitch mix is a huge reason: he spins the ball at an extreme level, and with three different offspeed pitches, the Cubs may feel they can enhance his results with a few tweaks to the pitch usage (to say nothing of possible grip/mechanical/etc. tweaks).
Also, fair to point out that Pressly had to adjust early on to being out of the closer job, and had a 2.67 ERA on the season after his first four appearances. By the results, he was a stud after those first four outings. And after June 11, his ERA was below two. So it’s not as if there weren’t long stretches of Pressly getting tremendous results. It’s just that he was getting those results in a very different way than he was at his peak (the strikeouts didn’t come back). There’s plenty of risk here for a continued slide in his performance if he can’t manage contact quality at a very high level, but there’s also plenty of potential value in a veteran with a diverse pitch mix who may have figured out how to get results a different way.
Pressly, who lost his closer job in Houston only because they signed Josh Hader, presumably will get a serious crack at the closer’s role with the Cubs. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s all but announced as “the” closer to open the season.
It’s absolutely no slight to Porter Hodge, who played the part quite well in the second half last year – and may well have more closing in his future in the near or long-term, depending on how things go. But the ability to be more flexible with Hodge in earlier innings could pay extra benefits for the Cubs, to say nothing of having him available to close when Pressly is unavailable.
Are the Cubs done in the bullpen now? I think they probably COULD be, but it also wouldn’t be out of the question that they make another addition (and minor league deal/reclamation adds are always possible). The back-end portion could probably use another sure-fire guy, but the Cubs may just count on a couple of Julian Merryweather, Luke Little, Tyson Miller, Nate Pearson, Daniel Palencia, Eli Morgan, Ben Brown, or a couple others emerging as a true and consistent setup guy. We’ve seen it before, and the Cubs do at least have a load of compelling options.
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