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Desperate times, desperate measures?
Per Steve Adams at MLB Trade Rumors, the newest addition to the Chicago Cubs' ever-changing pitching staff is right-hander Jake Woodford who make 16 appearances for the Milwaukee Brewers this year before opting out of his minor league contract earlier this week. It's a big-league deal for the 29-year-old hurler, who has all sorts of NL Central connections.
Woodford is a former first-round pick not of Milwaukee, but of the Cardinals, who put a beatdown on the Cubs Friday afternoon at Wrigley. St. Louis selected him out of H.B. Plant HS in Tampa, FL with the 39th overall pick in the 2015 MLB Draft. He made his big-league debut with the Redbirds in 2020, sticking around until 2023. Since then, he's bounced around a lot - spending time with the Pirates, Yankees, Cubs (yes, Cubs), Diamondbacks, Rays and Brewers organizations.
You have to squint really hard to find optimism for Jake Woodford
He hasn't been a productive MLB pitcher in some time, posting a negative bWAR annually dating back to 2023. A guy with an ERA pushing 7.00 this year getting a big-league contract from Jed Hoyer is a head-scratcher, for sure, but a 3.97 FIP suggests there might be some cause for optimism. Advanced metrics aren't exactly bullish on him - the only thing he's done well this season is limit walks - but given the state of the Chicago pitching staff, you kind of just have to throw things at the wall and see what sticks.
That was the case with David Peterson, the left-hander the Cubs acquired from the Mets in late June. After a strong debut against the Brewers, he was hit hard by St. Louis on Friday, surrendering a career-high 10 runs in the blowout loss. It's too soon to write him off, but, frankly, it's a good reminder that we're probably going to see results that fall all over the board from these castoffs as Hoyer attempts to just give Craig Counsell enough arms to survive until the All-Star break.
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