Chicago Cubs: 3 free agents who could still improve the team
Taijuan Walker
Four of the five slots in the Cubs’ pitching rotation are clearly set. While there aren’t any question marks surrounding Jon Lester, Yu Darvish, Kyle Hendricks, and Jose Quintana, the fifth spot is a totally different story.
In all likelihood, if the season started today, the Cubs would slot Tyler Chatwood into the final rotation spot. Although memories of Chatwood’s disastrous 2018 season are hard to forget, he was actually serviceable last year, posting a 3.76 ERA over 38 appearances.
Although he bounced back in 2019, having confidence that Chatwood can be a productive, permanent rotation member in 2020 is nearly impossible. The Cubs need a backup plan. After Chatwood, current in-house options to be the final piece in the starting rotation are Alec Mills, Adbert Alzolay, and Jharel Cotton. None of those options are very exciting.
Adding another depth piece to fight for the last rotation spot during Spring Training would be a wise move, and there’s a great candidate still available – Taijuan Walker.
Walker’s career has been a bumpy ride so far. As he worked his way up through the minor leagues, he found himself near the top of a lot of prospect leaderboards, ranking in the top 10 overall prospects in baseball multiple times.
When Walker finally got the call to the big leagues, he wasn’t impressive. In his first four seasons, two of which were very abbreviated, he posted a 4.18 ERA for the Seattle Mariners.
After being traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks, Walker looked like he might finally start pitching to his potential. The 2017 season was his first in the desert, and it was also the best of his career. During that campaign, Walker threw 157.1 innings with a 3.49 ERA, 4.04 FIP, and produced 2.5 fWAR.
Just as things looked like they were finally coming together for Walker, the injury bug hit.
During his third start of 2018, Walker left the game with elbow inflammation. He had Tommy John surgery a few weeks later, landing him on the Injured List for 14 months. He returned to an MLB mound for the first time at the very end of the 2019 season, throwing just one inning on September 29th.
Walker is far from a sure thing – he’s only thrown 239 pitches combined in the last two seasons. But the Cubs have a track record of targeting these low-risk, high-upside type players. Look no further than Cotton, Colin Rea, and Kendall Graveman.
If the Cubs sign Walker, there’s a chance he might not even make an appearance on the MLB roster this year, but there’s also a chance that he turns into a reliable, back-of-the-rotation pitcher. Walker was finally piecing things together before he was bitten by the injury bug, and now, he’s still just 27-years-old and could have a lot left to bring to the table at a minimal cost.