Chris Flexen's revival is the best story on the 2025 Chicago Cubs

With all due respect to Drew Pomeranz — who has had a ridiculous season and an even more ridiculous comeback story — Chris Flexen deserves the most flowers for what he's given the Cubs' bullpen in 2025.

After years of trying to make things work as a starting pitcher — to moderate, albeit up-and-down success — Flexen signed with the Cubs over the offseason as a veteran swingman, prepared to fill a role that threatened to have him in and out of the bullpen on a consistent basis.

Instead, with Matthew Boyd and Colin Rea stepping up for an injury-marred rotation, Flexen has been allowed to fill a multi-inning role in Craig Counsell's relief corps, and the new gig is proving to be the perfect fit for the 31-year-old.

Chris Flexen thriving with Cubs thanks to variety and guile

Flexen was recalled from Triple-A about a month into the season, following a brilliant performance in April. In Iowa, he made five starts, recording a 1.16 ERA that led all Triple-A starting pitchers at the time (minimum 20 IP).

With Justin Steele, Javier Assad, and Shota Imanaga all going down for extended periods of time, the expectation was that Flexen would fill a spot starter role, gobbling up innings until Cade Horton was ready or one of the established MLB starters returned from injury.

Instead, Flexen has been used exclusively as a reliever for the Cubs, pitching 28 innings in 15 appearances. His advanced stats — 3.41 FIP, 13.5% strikeout rate, and regression-portending .185 BABIP and 92.9% left on-base rate — are all varying levels of "meh", and yet he's rocking a 0.64 ERA and 0.857 WHIP.

That ERA would be first on the team were it not for Pomeranz's unbelievable shutout record through 22 2/3 innings this year, though Flexen has pitched more innings and has accomplished his ERA with nearly half the strikeouts as his southpaw counterpart. What gives?

Well, despite chase, strikeout, and whiff rates that all rate out in the bottom ten percent among all MLB pitchers, Flexen is limiting barrels and hard-hit baseballs with the best of them.

That soft-contact inducing success can be attributed to his varied six-pitch mix, all of which have drastically different movement profiles. For example, his cutter, on average, generates about 12 inches of cut (i.e., movement towards his glove side), while his four-seam fastball barely moves along the horizontal plane but rises about 18 inches on average.

That kind of arsenal allows for some fun pitch tunneling, a skill Flexen is rather adept at. And, lest you be scared off by his favorable batted ball results, note that all of his pitches are performing above average this year, especially his four-seamer, which is allowing an opponent's batting average of .125 (.164 wOBA allowed).

All of this is to say: Flexen knows how to get batters out. His stuff isn't nearly as flashy as Daniel Palencia's, and he doesn't have a true "out" pitch like Porter Hodge's sweeper. Nevertheless, he's become a valuable piece of the bullpen puzzle, with the craftiness to match an impressive repertoire.