Chicago Cubs can avoid August roster crunch by using array of moves
The Chicago Cubs face a precarious balancing act in the weeks to come. After loading up on pitching, the front office may have some tough decisions to make.
August can be a difficult month for roster decisions. On September 1, rosters expand, so everyone on the 40-man roster can be on the active major league roster. The July 31 non-waiver trade deadline has come and gone – with the Chicago Cubs stocking up on arms ahead of August.
However, trades can still be made via the waiver process. That means that basically anyone traded after July 31 has to have a large contract that other teams wouldn’t want on their payroll. However, anyone who will be eligible for the a team’s playoff roster must be on the 40-man before Sept. 1.
Right now the following pitchers: Yu Darvish, Brandon Morrow, Brian Duensing, Anthony Bass and Drew Smyly are all on the disabled list. Randy Rosario is the only pitcher with options who is currently on the Major League roster and is a no-brainer to be sent down to minors when any one of the other pitchers is ready to be activated.
Drew Smyly has been recovering from Tommy John surgery. I think the plan all along has been for him to either spend the entire season rehabing or joining the team no early than after Sept. 1.
So that leaves three pitchers without spots on the roster. Those three spots were taken by the three trades the Cubs made in July for Jesse Chavez, Cole Hammels and Brandon Kintzler.
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Despite beginning the season in the minors, Bass is out of options. He signed a minor league contract. So it was easy for the Cubs to call him up to the majors, but they might lose him if they try to send him back down.
As a matter of fact the Cubs have been facing a possible roster crunch with Bass and Eddie Butler ever since Bass was called up. The Cubs have had so many pitchers injured this season, that not only did they not have to choose between Butler and Bass, but they have been calling on a rather large group of Triple-A depth that has actually been getting surprisingly good results.
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The Cubs helped themselves alleviate a little bit of this roster crunch by including Eddie Butler in the Hammels trade. The Cubs made a similar move in 2015 when they traded away Junior Lake, who was also out of options and unlikely to make the Opening Day roster in 2016, to acquire pitcher Tommy Hunter from the Baltimore Orioles.
When players come back from the disabled list teams have the option of sending them to the minors for a rehab assignment. For batters rehab assignments are limited to 20 days. However, pitchers need rest in between either starts or bullpen appearances. So pitchers are allowed up to 30 days for rehab assignments. Unless they are coming back from a major injury and a long absence, a team’s best players rarely use the maximum allotment of days for their rehab assignments.
Sometimes a team will use a full length rehab assignment to avoid losing one of their players on the edge of their roster. If the length of the rehab assignment lasts until Sept. 1 or if a spot on the 25-man roster opens up earlier, then problem avoided. The Cubs were barely able to hold onto Trevor Cahill using this method in 2016.
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Bass is the kind of edge of the roster player that a team would keep on a full length rehab assignment in a heartbeat. Duensing has been pitching so poorly recently, that the Cubs may use a full length rehab assignment as a pseudo minor league demotion to try and work things out. At this point it looks like Darvish won’t be ready to return from the disabled list until right around Sept.1 anyway. So the Cubs will probably just make sure that they stretch it until then.
That just leaves Morrow. The Cubs want to do everything that they can to make sure that he is ready for the playoffs. It is difficult to operate a bullpen without your closer. However, Pedro Strop and Steve Cishek have been doing their best to fill in. Morrow’s history of arm injuries means that the Cubs will handle him delicately until the playoffs begin.
If the Cubs keep Darvish, Duensing, Bass and Smyly on rehab assignments until after rosters expand and only activate Morrow before Sept. 1, then they will have successfully avoided the roster crunch. They will simply option Rosario down to the minors to make room for Morrow. At the time of Kintzler trade Duensing was not on the disabled list. If Duensing hadn’t suffered an injury, the front office might have eventually been confronted with a difficult roster decision to make.