Former Cardinals starter would fit the Cubs after missing on top bullpen targets

After signing Phil Maton to a two-year deal to start the offseason, the Chicago Cubs looked to turn over a new leaf in the bullpen. All reports indicated that Jed Hoyer was willing to depart from his usual philosophy of cobbling together a relief corps on the cheap to add some more surefire arms Craig Counsell could rely on early in the season after losing nearly everyone to free agency. Although they had been connected to back-end arms like Robert Suarez and Devin Williams, the Cubs, once again, fell short in their pursuits.

Barring a deal for Pete Fairbanks, who is drawing a ton of interest around the league, the Cubs may have missed their shot at adding one of the high-powered established names with ninth-inning experience. It'd be a disappointing outcome in a year where it felt like they should have come away from that crop with more to show. This is a deep free agent class, though. Brad Keller remains on the market, as do interesting arms like Seranthony Dominguez and Kenley Jansen, who can still be useful in the late innings.

One guy the Cubs should also have circled now is a former divisional foe — Luke Weaver. Once a starter with the St. Louis Cardinals who showed flashes but never quite put it together, he's re-emerged over the last two years with the Yankees as a surprisingly stout reliever. In 2024, he threw 84 innings of 2.89 ERA baseball, with a 3.33 FIP to boot, becoming a big part of New York's World Series run. He followed that up this year with a solid 3.62 ERA and 3.89 FIP in 64 2/3 innings. While he wasn't racking up saves like some of the names above, he did account for 43 holds as one of New York's go-to setup men.

Weaver doesn't have the elite velocity of Fairbanks, but he can still rush it up around 95-96 MPH. September 2024 also showed he could do reasonably well in the closer's role when needed. For a Cubs team that already likes to lean on the fastball, they'd be hard-pressed to find a better fit, as Weaver leaned on his four-seamer nearly 60 percent of the time last season and ran up north of 10 K/9 while doing it. His 32.8 percent chase rate and 31 percent whiff rate also ranked in the 91st and 89th percentiles of all pitchers, too.

Luke Weaver's concerns shouldn't scare away the Cubs

One issue to be aware of is that Weaver is an extreme flyball pitcher. Last year, he only induced groundballs 27.4 percent of the time, good for sixth-worst in all of baseball and a full ten spots ahead of Shota Imanaga at 30 percent. Like with Imanaga, though, he may be better served at Wrigley Field, where the winds have made the park a much more pitcher-friendly environment in recent years. His high strikeout rate also helps make the 39.9 percent fly ball rate — the second-highest in baseball, behind only Jansen — more acceptable.

Weaver also fell off hard in the second half after returning from a hamstring strain, posting a 5.31 ERA in 40 appearances post-injury. The thing is, for the whole season, he actually had an even better expected ERA (2.98) than his 2024 campaign (3.31). Moreover, after the Yankees' Game 1 loss in the ALDS this year, Weaver implied that he may have been tipping his pitches in the second half and working through adjustments to stop it. That would provide a reasonable explanation for his woes and instill more confidence that the Cubs could get him back on track.

It's not necessarily the signing Cubs fans would hope for after so much discussion of them considering a big move in the bullpen, but there's a lot to like about Weaver. He'd be a welcome, experienced addition to the late-inning crew that also wouldn't cost much at an estimated $18-$30 million over two to three years. The only complication would be that he's expressed openness to starting opportunities, though it remains to be seen if teams will look at him for the rotation.