Cubs' first offseason addition is a discarded Twins pitcher nobody expected

With the Chicago Cubs expected to focus on pitching additions this offseason, it's only natural that the first move they made was claiming a pitcher from the Minnesota Twins. Monday was the deadline for teams to clean up their 40-man rosters, and the result was the Cubs taking a reject from the Twins' pitching staff.

The Cubs have claimed right-handed relief pitcher Eric Orze off waivers. The 29-year-old made 36 appearances for the Twins this past year, posting an ERA of 5.66. There's very little to like from his underlying metrics, considering he struck out under 20% of the hitters he faced and walked over 11%. Orze did have a ground-ball rate of 42.2%, so with a little tweaking, perhaps the Cubs feel they can get that number even higher.

Scanning Orze's Baseball Savant page, his extension is in the 95th percentile. It's the type of thing he Cubs typically look for when making moves for these reclamation types. It's worth noting, with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2025, Orze posted an ERA of 3.02 while striking out over 22% of the hitters he faced. Similarly, his extension was in the 90th percentile that season.

Cubs' offseason starts with Jed Hoyer betting on a discarded Twins player

This has become the bit of every Cubs offseason. Jed Hoyer loves to find a diamond in the rough with the hope that the Cubs' pitching infrastructure can unlock a level of success that hasn't been reached before. It's a strategy the Cubs have some level fo success with, considering the emergence or Ryan Rolison last season and Brad Keller the season before.

That's not to say that Orze will be lumped into that group of success next season, but for better or worse, the Cubs are going to make these gambles.

What needs to be different this offseason is that the Cubs can't rely on that process to revamp their pitching staff. The good news for the Cubs is that the core of their bullpen may already be in place, but that shouldn't be a reason for the team to avoid a pursuit of a high-end relief pitcher like Adrian Morejon. For the rotation, every pitcher that was a member of the starting rotation at the end of the regular season is currently a free agent.

In other words, as a reminder to Hoyer, feel to take a flier on pitchers like Orze, but the Cubs need to add expected results to the pitching staff this offseason and not more risk.

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