Craig Counsell is at least leaving the door open for Edward Cabrera to become something more than a midseason bullpen experiment.
The Cubs brought Cabrera back from the IL over the weekend, but he didn’t appear in the series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He has since shifted to the bullpen, and the setup suggests Chicago may want to ease him into his first outing in relief. Counsell, though, was quick to point to a much bigger possibility once the playoffs arrive.
He reached for a playoff blueprint that worked for the Los Angeles Dodgers last year, citing Roki Sasaki as the model.
“A great example from last year is what Roki Sasaki did the last month, into the playoffs,” Counsell said. “That could happen.
That’s a roadmap to how this could be really successful. Is that the best result?
That was a pretty darn good result. But that’s what you keep yourself open to.”
Sasaki’s first season with the Dodgers didn’t go smoothly at the start, either. The stuff was there, but the command lagged, and that eventually pushed him into the bullpen.
Once there, he took off, finishing with a 0.84 ERA across nine appearances. He recorded three saves, finished five games, and struck out six.
Counsell wasn’t promising Cabrera would duplicate that kind of run. The point was simpler: there’s upside in leaving room for a reliever to find a new gear at the right time.
Still, the case for Cabrera doing that is thin right now. His Baseball Savant page shows regression in the value of his pitch mix, with both his fastball and offspeed run value landing in the negative percentile and his breaking pitch value breaking even.
The numbers back that up. He’s striking out 20.4% of the hitters he’s faced this season while walking nearly 10%.
The biggest issue has been the same one that has followed him all year: he’s not missing bats like he did with the Miami Marlins, and opposing hitters have made him pay. Cabrera has allowed 1.78 home runs per nine innings pitched.
Maybe he becomes a weapon in relief when the stakes rise. Maybe he doesn’t. For now, the Cubs are keeping that possibility in play, even if they can’t exactly plan on it.
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