3 Cubs Offseason Acquisition Targets
The upcoming Cubs offseason leaves an opportunity for the team to reassess their pitching staff in its entirety. We’re likely to see a large majority of Kevin Gausman, Shota Imanaga, Matthew Boyd, Clay Holmes, Hunter Harvey, David Peterson, Colin Rea, Ethan Roberts, Aaron Civale, Trent Thornton, and Caleb Thielbar throw for a different team next year, leaving a multitude of roster spots open and innings to be filled. This cadre of arms threw roughly 950 innings across all clubs. Both Holmes and Rea are not free-agent decisions with Holmes having a (likely to be rejected) player option and Rea a club option. Between all potential departures the Cubs can be estimated to have as many as seven rotation-or-swing and four bullpen spots to refill.
So, where do the Cubs look for help? There’s going to be a few known names available including the departing Cubs starters alongside reigning Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, Kris Bubic, Sonny Gray (assuming the Red Sox balk at his $30MM club option), Nick Pivetta (assuming he passes on a $14M option and hits the open market), and Japanese arm Kaima Taira. It wouldn’t be going out on a limb to say they should sign any of these arms, but the Cubs offseason pitching strategy has been clear - pepper the mid-high end AAV arms (Boyd, Imanaga, Taillon) and fill in the rest with low-cost arms. These low cost arms, and most arms throwing for the Cubs, either have a cut ride fastball, throw a sinker, or do both.
The Cubs aren’t in the strikeout business. Their acquisition strategy seems to be aligned with an internal paradigm where their internal WAR calculations that show edge in acquisitions deviates from FanGraphs’ FIP-based methodology. Instead, they prioritize pitchers with lower Stuff+ and higher Location+ (by FanGraphs’ numbers). In fact, 5 of their 7 arms to throw more than 1,000 pitches in 2026 have a Stuff+ south of 100 and Location+ north of it, good for a 71% rate, nearly double the league average of 39%. Boyd, Imanaga, Assad, Cabrera, and Webb all fit the criteria and by adding their mid-season acquisitions, Holmes and Gausman, the number goes up to 7 of 9 (78%).
With these tendencies in mind, the three pitchers I recommend to acquire given cost and organizational fit are: Michael Grove, Tyler Samaniego, and Cody Bolton.
Michael Grove
Michael Grove isn’t technically a free agent this year. With his three plus years of service time, Grove is arbitration eligible this year and a non-tender candidate come mid-November. I built a non-tender chance model and Grove rated out at a 75% chance to be non-tendered. A former starter, Grove has been deployed as a relief option as he recovers from a torn labrum, but he hasn’t seen much MLB time, logging only 7 innings so far. This comes as no surprise as the Rays are flush with bullpen talent and his prospects of being a Ray in 2027 are dampened by the plethora of returning and AAA options to log bullpen outings next season.
I believe Grove could be the Cubs’ 2027 Colin Rea (assuming the club declines his option). He likely comes cheap, he was on a split contract in 2026, paying $1.4M in the majors and $546K in the minors. If non-tendered, Grove isn’t a player with a lot of negotiating power. His seven innings pitched paired with his lack of starts leave him on the market as a low Stuff+ arm without a high innings ceiling. Also, Grove signed that split contract with 1 option year remaining and he burned one this year, leaving him with zero option years remaining.
The Rays are in a bit of roster crunch given the talent that’s rule 5 eligible this year that they’ll likely seek to retain. They have seven MLB top 30 organizational prospects who are rule 5 eligible this year (Xavier Isaac, Brody Hopkins, Santiago Suarez, Jackson Baumeister, Alexander Alberto, Tre’ Morgan, TJ Nichols), and I’d be hard-pressed to believe they’d prioritize bringing Grove back onto the 40-man roster with the Rays’ emphasis on home-grown, low-cost talent.
I’d guess the sequence goes something like this for Grove. The Rays will protect several of the aforementioned names from the rule 5 draft, filling up their 40-man roster. Sometime in October or early November, Grove will again be outrighted which will allow the Rays to at least get $50,000 should a team pick him up. No team will pick up Grove because they have to pay the $50,000 and now own the same problem as the Rays - give a no-option arm a 40-man spot with a looming tender decision. Grove will then reject the outright assignment and, because he has 3+ years of service time, become a free agent. He has little incentive to return to the Rays because he has a miniscule chance at any sort of MLB deal with the club given their pitching depth which would limit the dollars he can earn in free agency.
All this to say, Grove will hit the open market and is a candidate for a minor league deal with generous incentives for major league innings thrown. What I especially love about Grove’s contract situation is how his injury history lines up with the potential lockout. The Cubs can sign him to a minor league deal, have him report to camp while not on the 40-man roster, throw a full spring build-up as a starter while assessing his health, and pitch in the minors if a lockout pushes back the start of the season. Grove’s cost historically aligns with the likes of Trey Wingenter (2023), Ian Gibaut (2025), and Silvino Bracho (2022) who all got minor league deals with spring training invites. Gibaut and Bracho’s terms weren’t publicly announced, but Wingenter had a $1.2M MLB deal should he make it. I’d imagine Grove makes somewhere in the $250K-450K mark in the minors with a $1M-$1.2M figure should he pitch in the majors, both numbers being a step down from the $546K/$1.4M split he’s on this year.
Grove’s case is clear: he fits all three characteristics we’ve observed in Cubs acquisitions in years past. He has a cut-ride fastball, throws a sinker, and has a Stuff+ south of 100 and Location+ north of 100. He’s not going to pop on the Carson Palmquist model because the stuff and its upside isn’t the selling point, it's instead his ability to throw strikes and locate.
| Season | Team | Stf+ FA | Stf+ SI | Stf+ FC | Stf+ SL | Stf+ CH | Stf+ KC | Stuff+ | Location+ | Pitching+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | LAD | 86 | 103 | 92 | 91 | 104 | 94 | |||
| 2023 | LAD | 85 | 91 | 97 | 103 | 92 | 94 | 95 | 106 | 100 |
| 2024 | LAD | 102 | 101 | 95 | 90 | 107 | 95 | 111 | 107 | |
| 2026 | TBR | 102 | 82 | 76 | 102 | 92 | 93 | 120 | 111 | |
| Total | — | 86 | 98 | 94 | 97 | 92 | 95 | 94 | 108 | 101 |
What’s encouraging about Grove is how steady his Stuff+ stayed (especially on his four-seam) even after a torn labrum. It’s worth noting that the 2026 line above is a 7 IP sample, but to see velocity in line with his 2022-self is a positive check in the health category. A 120 Location+ isn’t sustainable over 80+ IP, but to see command sticking while being a location-first pitcher earlier in his career is yet another positive sign for Grove’s 2026 outlook. Tom Doyo’s OpenCommand ranks Grove’s command 99th percentile to the tune of a 7.59 average miss in his 2026 MLB stint. With 83 tracked pitches, FanGraphs’ Location+ and Doyo’s average miss numbers are small-sample tails that agree in direction.
Should Grove’s Location+ regress back to 2023-esque levels, we likely see him in the 100-105 Pitching+ range, a group that, since the 2020-21 offseason, net MLB deals 85% of the time with a median AAV of $6.8M and mean guarantee of $16M. Grove’s case likely has him falling in the 15% that don’t net an MLB deal.
One key room for improvement is Grove’s curveball velocity. He posted a 107 Stuff+ on the pitch in 2024 while throwing it at 80 mph on average, a key threshold when results start to take off for the pitch. Grove averaged 76 mph on the pitch in 2026 with his arm angle going from 60 degrees in ‘24 to 57 degrees in ‘26 (on the curveball). It’s hard to say given the information we have publicly, but it seems that there’s a tradeoff between slider quality and curveball quality for Grove. At the higher arm angle we see a more effective, harder, tighter curveball shape that grades out above average. That same higher arm angle tightens his slider, limiting its drop and glove side movement. As a supinator, I wonder if Grove is better off sticking with the lower slot and changing his knuckle-curve to more of a sweeper shape that allows him to get more horizontal. That question falls on the back of what he feels he can command as that will always be his calling card.
Tyler Samaniego
Tyler Samaniego was acquired in the Jhostynxon Garcia-Johan Oviedo deal this past offseason and has been shuttled up and down three times during the 2026 campaign, tossing twenty and a third innings. At the time of the deal, Samaniego was rated as around a 40 FV player. His 2026 performance at the MLB level has been solid with a 2.66 ERA, 3.2% barrel rate, and 49.2% GB rate. His barrel limitation and ground ball prowess can be attributed to his most used pitch , the sinker (41%), a pitch that’s clocked in at 108 Stuff+.
Samaniego checks two boxes that the Cubs have sought out - a cut-ride fastball and sinker. Even more so, Samaniego’s focus on ground balls and limiting barrels acts directly in line with the Cubs defense-first mentality. The clearest read from his data is that his pitches belong to different hitters. Here’s his run value per 100 pitches, positive being an effective pitch:
| Pitch | vs LHH | vs RHH |
|---|---|---|
| Sinker | +2.4 | −5.2 |
| Four-seam | −4.3 | +2.0 |
| Sweeper | −0.7 | +4.5 |
| Cutter | −7.9 | +12.3 |
Samaniego also shows a difference in Stuff+ grades by slot. From the low third, his four-seam, sinker, and slider grade at 112, 113, and 105 against 88, 101, and 100 from the high third, respectively. Twenty outings is admittedly a small sample so I read this as a lean for Samaniego, not a concrete truth, but it is some level of evidence that points to direct low-slot experimentation.
Samaniego’s best Stuff+ outing (at volume) was May 6th and his four-seam shape and arm angles looked like this:
| Batter | Hand | Slot (°) | Velo | IVB | Run | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2nd | L | 38.7 | 94.4 | 15.4 | 2.8 | ball |
| 2nd | L | 38.1 | 93.6 | 14.9 | 3.8 | called strike |
| 2nd | L | 32.7 | 94.7 | 15.4 | 6.7 | swinging strike, K |
| 5th | L | 36.4 | 95.1 | 15.5 | 3.5 | ball |
| 5th | L | 37.8 | 94.2 | 18.4 | 4.7 | foul |
| 5th | L | 46.1 | 93.0 | 15.6 | 2.0 | foul |
| 6th | R | 41.4 | 92.2 | 17.4 | 2.5 | foul tip |
| 6th | R | 39.5 | 93.6 | 19.1 | 1.9 | swinging strike, K |
| 7th | R | 41.3 | 90.5 | 19.0 | 1.4 | ball |
The last two four seams are unicorn shapes with 19+ IVB and run that’s nearly at the zero line, including this punchout versus Spencer Torkelson:
Samaniego’s 10 sinkers that night, 9 of which were against lefties, graded out at a 117 Stuff+. What’s interesting from this outing is that the high-grade sinker shape he was flashing was from an average slot of around 33 degrees. Across the season, Samaniego’s sinker averages a 34 degree arm angle and his four-seam averages 40, a six-degree gap that shows up as about three inches of release point in each direction. This six-degree gap is an outlier compared to the major league average of two to three degrees between fastballs. His 116 Stuff+ sweeper was also thrown at a lower 35 degree slot against lefties and about a degree higher against righties, and the higher slot sweeper against righties averages 2 inches less of break.
The six-degree gap is the problem to solve for Samaniego, and the slot table linked above shows which direction to solve it in. Samaniego already throws every pitch about a degree higher to righties, and nine of his ten lowest four-seamers were against lefties, so a split by handedness exists in his delivery already. I’d propose, or try to have Samaniego experiment with, that every pitch to lefties comes from the sinker slot, around 34 degrees, and everything to righties from the four-seam slot, around 40 degrees.
This change accomplishes three things at once. It puts the sinker and sweeper, the two pitches that graded 113 and 105 from the low third slot, in front of the hitters they are thrown to the most. It takes the sinker out of the mix to righties, since no pitch would come from a 34 degree slot and the higher slot sinker has been a poor pitch to righties in 2026. Lastly, it removes the sinker-to-four-seam tell within handedness because a righty never sees the low slot and a left doesn’t see the high one.
The CPM model doesn’t prescribe a mix change for him, and this isn’t one. Rather, it’s a slot rule for Samaniego and the mix change comes afterward. The good news is that if the changes don’t hold, the Cubs are still acquiring a pitcher with average to slightly above average stuff who has flashed a plus sinker.
Before the package to net Samaniego, it’s important to note that the base trade rate for rookie relievers in Samaniego’s age range and service band is about 7% of the time and what usually comes back is cash, a like-for-like optionable reliever, or an unranked-to-40 FV organizational piece.
A package I’d suggest to net Samaniego from the Red Sox would entail Ariel Armas, with the caveat that Armas is the ceiling of what Samaniego’s profile has returned, not the mean. Early-season FanGraphs had Armas as a 40 FV prospect which can mostly be attributed to his stellar defensive tool with a paltry hitting tool to boot. A 40 FV prospect ranked top 20 in a system is the top of the historical range for a reliever like Samaniego, so I’d open negotiations with a 35+ FV bat in the Edgar Alvarez, Carter Trice, or Michael Carico tier. The Red Sox organization is bereft of catching options for the coming years. Their AAA catching corpus consists of Nate Baez, who was acquired last offseason, and catching veterans Jason Delay and Tomas Nido. Their top minor-league backstops are hit-first in Johanfran Garcia and Franklin Primera, making Armas a defensive hedge against both Garcia and Primera’s hit tool. Garcia is rule 5 eligible this year with Armas having an extra year before he needs to be protected. Acquiring Armas would buy the Red Sox some time while giving them a catching option that’s timeline aligns well with newly acquired backstop Adley Rutschman hitting the open market come 2028. Additionally, making Armas more expendable would coincide with Owen Ayers’ emergence and the Cubs demonstrated propensity to develop catching talent with Ayers (presumably), Amaya, and Ballesteros all graduating from the system in recent years. Keeping a defense-first catcher with little slug at the plate doesn’t make much sense for a team that has continually emphasized the home run ball and will be saddled with dwindling power numbers from Swanson and Hoerner for years to come.
If industry consensus and the Cubs front office views Armas as having higher surplus value than Samaniego, they could net Romy Gonzalez on top of Samaniego. Gonzalez has some question marks coming off of an injury with his bat speed dropping a couple ticks upon his return, but should his health be considered a non-issue, he seems like a natural fit to fill in the role that Tyler Austin was supposed to. Boston’s use for Gonzalez has dwindled with the emergence of Mickey Gasper as evidenced by Gonzalez being parked in Worcester while slashing .344/.396/.500. Gonzalez’s ability to play both first and second allows the Cubs to spell the likes of Hoerner, Swanson, and Busch more often while having a player immediately better than a BJ Murray Jr. or James Triantos.
Gonzalez is a non-tender candidate come November - my model gives him a 47-53% chance of being tendered depending on what projection system is used to rank him amongst Red Sox infielders. The Red Sox 40-man is flooded with playable infielders like Caleb Durbin, Nick Sogard, Trevor Story, Curtis Mead, Nate Eaton, Mickey Gasper, and Anthony Seigler. We also probably see Triston Casas eventually returning to the 40-man count five days after the World Series. This leaves 1B to the likes of the surging Gasper, Contreras, or Casas down the line. And the 2B job is headlined by Mead, whom they acquired at the deadline, and is a right-handed-hitter, just like Gonzalez. This leaves Gonzalez essentially in no-man’s-land on the Red Sox roster with a tender decision pending this offseason. Samaniego ends up filling a lefty relief spot for years to come in the bullpen while Gonzalez helps the Cubs chances in the immediate future as yet another veteran presence on the team.
Cody Bolton
Another cut-rider with a sinker pairing that should hit the open market this offseason is journeyman Cody Bolton. With less than a year of service time, Bolton has no XX-D rights so once his 2026 contract expires we likely see him on the open market unless Houston adds him to their 40-man roster which seems incredibly unlikely at this point. The two facts that shape Bolton’s market are that he has no option years remaining and a prior outright, meaning he’s a 40-man-or-nothing arm heading into 2027 because any optioning would expose him to waivers.
Bolton and his agents will be operating with little-to-no leverage this offseason and a move overseas cannot be ruled out. His closest comp in the free-agent dataset, Elvin Rodriguez (28 y/o, 19 innings, 94 Stuff+, and 95 Pitching+), signed with the Lotte Giants for $1M guaranteed last winter, which is more guaranteed money than any stateside deal Bolton will get. If Bolton wants to stay stateside, he likely will have to take a minor-league deal with a spring training invite. A potential way to incentivize him to sign would be a minor-league deal with a slightly increased pay of $150k-$250k and an upward mobility clause. Because of the success of his pitch shape grades over the years, Bolton is also deserving of a MLB pay rate a smidge above the league minimum as he has shown some signs of being a useful bullpen arm.
| Season | Team | Pit+ FA | Pit+ SI | Pit+ FC | Pit+ SL | Pit+ CU | Pit+ CH | Stuff+ | Location+ | Pitching+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | PIT | 82 | 101 | 84 | 92 | 91 | 88 | |||
| 2024 | SEA | 13 | 114 | 99 | 119 | 98 | 107 | 98 | 105 | |
| 2025 | CLE | 74 | 85 | 100 | 138 | 103 | 110 | 106 | ||
| 2026 | HOU | 84 | 115 | 111 | 102 | 90 | 75 | 98 | 98 | 96 |
| Total | — | 80 | 111 | 105 | 109 | 90 | 85 | 98 | 96 | 95 |
In limited samples, Pitching+ has shown Bolton to have 2-3 plus pitches, but what’s impeded Bolton’s ascension has been throwing too many of his poor offerings. In 2026, Bolton threw 6 offerings and none of them over 28% while 3 of his offerings were clearly tiers above the rest. Bolton’s ineffectiveness can be attributed to being a sinker-baller who doesn’t get ground balls. With a sinker of his quality, a pitcher like Bolton shouldn’t be averaging a 38% ground ball rate over the course of his career.
| Pitch | BBE | Avg launch angle | GB% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cutter | 36 | 11.5° | 58.3% |
| Sweeper | 25 | 32.8° | 12.0% |
| Sinker | 24 | 10.4° | 41.7% |
| Changeup | 15 | −3.3° | 46.7% |
| Four-seam | 14 | 21.4° | 21.4% |
| Curveball | 10 | −0.5° | 50.0% |
You can see above that, in his career, Bolton hasn’t struggled to get ground balls with all of his pitches. In 2026 alone Bolton’s cutter yielded 64% ground balls across 14 BBEs. The Carson Palmquist model projects that he can gain around 4 Stuff+ points by changing his pitch mix alone. It prescribes a sinker, cutter, fastball emphasis against lefties and a sinker, slider, sweeper mix against righties. This approach scraps the ineffective, poorly-grading curveball and changeup while giving him ways to induce weak contact on the ground against both handednesses.
By cutting out his worst pitches, Bolton stands to be a 102-104 Stuff+ pitcher that has demonstrated over multiple years the ability to locate pitches. He seems not too dissimilar to Trent Thornton, a cut-rider who signed with the Cubs last offseason and posted a career-best ground ball rate. Thornton had a lot more leverage last offseason than Bolton will have this year as he came in with 5+ years of service time. Taking a shot on Bolton with more room for error than they had on a Thornton-type arm serves as a beneficial way for the Cubs to flex their financial muscle.
Arms signing minor-league deals this winter stand to benefit more than ever with the looming lockout. The calendar matters here - the rule 5 protection deadlines in mid-November, the tender deadline around November 21, the CBA’s expiration on December 1, and then a window where major-league business may pause while minor-league contracts keep going. Much like I outlined with Grove, arms with upside shown in years past who have question marks will be able to play minor league baseball even during the lockout. This allows teams like the Cubs who have more financial flexibility to take more shots on goal with minor league arms, only punting $150k-350k should things go south with the arms they acquire. The Cubs, or any team for that matter, don’t need a ridiculously high hit rate for signing arms like Bolton and Grove to pay off. A successful season for an arm like them likely falls into the 0.5-1 fWAR range, a value of anywhere from $5M-$10MM depending on how 2027 $/WAR grades out given a new CBA.
The Cubs last offseason signed Collin Snider, Corbin Martin, Gabe Klobosits, and Trent Thornton to minor-league deals. They also claimed Ryan Rolison off waivers who was probably making a minor-league rate prior to being called up although not categorically being on a minor league deal. So, for the sake of example, let’s say they signed 5 low-cost upside arms. If none of them pan out the Cubs are probably out anywhere from $700K-$1.1M depending on the deals each got. If one pans out their cost goes up $600K because of a minor-league salary being bumped to the major league rate. This season Rolison and Thornton made it to the big league roster with WARs of +.3 and -.5, respectively. However, if you view Thornton as a 0 WAR player and Rolison ends up being 0.3-0.5 WAR, the Cubs basically turned $1.3M-$1.7M into anywhere from $3M-$5M in actual player value. This is what winning on the margins looks like and this is the exact arena Cody Bolton and Michael Grove are playing in.
