Chicago Cubs: How can the Cubs be even better in 2017?

The Bullpen

Key Free Agents: Aroldis Chapman, Travis Wood, Joe Smith, Trevor Cahill

As far as players who don’t play every day goes, this is a pretty significant list for the Cubs. Aroldis Chapman is arguably the best free agent on the market this offseason. He was a very significant part of the Cubs’ championship run.

Chapman’s ability to lock down close games is something the Cubs added as a slight luxury before it became a necessity. But his power arm became Joe Maddon‘s most coveted bullpen weapon down the stretch.

The Cubs would have to be in a bidding war for Chapman’s services with teams like the Yankees, who have allegedly already expressed interest. Any team willing to spend money this offseason is probably going to express some interest in arguably the game’s top closer. So the Cubs might have to look elsewhere for help and that might not be a problem.

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With some teams focusing on obtaining Chapman, the Cubs may look to Kenley Jansen of the Los Angeles Dodgers or Mark Melancon of the Washington Nationals to be their new closer.

There is some thought that both players could wind up being ‘bargains’ on the market compared to Mr. 105 himself. And the thought of saving even a few million after the Cubs’ free agent deal with Jason Heyward last offseason is pretty appealing.

Not that Heyward was a complete disaster or anything. We’ll talk about him a bit later.

It’s important to keep perspective here with the bullpen and specifically with a player like Chapman that the Cubs had a pretty good back end of the bullpen before Chapman came along. It just happened that Hector Rondon and Pedro Strop both suffered injuries that derailed part of their seasons.

When Rondon returned, he clearly wasn’t the same guy the Cubs had come to rely on in the regular season.

Flexibility

As I wrote earlier in the season, the presence of Rondon and Strop give this bullpen flexibility, especially late in games. Having those two and a big-money closer like Chapman, Jansen, or Melancon would allow the Cubs to continue to close games down late, keep their big arms fresh, and prime up for another deep postseason run.

It would be somewhat surprising to me if the Cubs didn’t at least try to bring back Travis Wood, who was a very valuable player for this team. He was one of 10 Cubs players to hit a home run this postseason (remember that?). Also, played one of the craziest roles in an extra innings game this season moving from the outfield to the pitcher’s mound and really just doing a little bit of everything.

In addition to being a pretty darn good lefty specialist, Wood has the ability to pitch long innings for the Cubs when they need it and could be a spot starter in a pinch. He’s only 29 years of age and is the type of athlete Joe Maddon covets. He could be a priority player for this team to bring back.

The Cubs were relatively healthy, all things considered, for their playoff run, but the loss of Trevor Cahill was a bigger deal than anyone really led on.

Cahill pitched more innings than any non-starter in the Cubs’ bullpen and posted a very respectable 2.74 ERA. He had a spot start in August for the Cubs that also went pretty well and could figure into the Cubs’ plans of players to re-sign at the right cost.

Justin Grimm, Hector Rondon, and Pedro Strop are Arbitration Eligible