{"id":375975,"date":"2025-12-28T11:56:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T11:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/375975\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T11:56:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T11:56:24","slug":"cubs-sign-hunter-harvey-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/375975\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubs Sign Hunter Harvey – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

2:08PM: Harvey\u2019s deal is a one-year pact, as per Jon Heyman of the New York Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

1:03PM: The Cubs and right-hander Hunter Harvey<\/a> have agreed to a contract, according to The Athletic\u2019s Will Sammon and Sahadev Sharma<\/a>.\u00a0 The deal will become official once Harvey (a Beverly Hills Sports Council client) passes a physical.<\/p>\n

Harvey is looking to bounce back from an injury-plagued 2025 season that saw the reliever make just 12 appearances out of the Royals bullpen.\u00a0 A teres major strain in early April kept Harvey out of action until late July, and he pitched in just six more games before being sidelined for good by a Grade 2 adductor strain.\u00a0 The frustration of these two significant injuries was compounded by the fact that Harvey was looking great when healthy \u2014 he didn\u2019t allow a run over his 10 2\/3 innings pitched, while issuing one walk against 11 strikeouts.<\/p>\n

Between these injuries and the back problems that marred the end of his 2024 campaign, Harvey ended up pitching only 16 1\/3 innings in a Royals uniform after Kansas City acquired the righty from Washington in July 2024.\u00a0 Unfortunately, health concerns are nothing new for Harvey, as his time as a top-100 prospect in the Orioles\u2019 farm system was frequently interrupted by stints on the injured list.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until the 2022 season that Harvey (now with the Nationals) finally got an extended taste of MLB playing time.\u00a0 He proceeded to post a 3.17 ERA, 27.83% strikeout rate, and 6.36% walk rate over 145 relief innings during his time in D.C., working in a high-leverage role and occasionally as a closer with the Nats.<\/p>\n

Harvey has been prone to allowing a lot of hard contact, but his control and strikeout ability has allowed him to get out of jams when allowing baserunners.\u00a0 Harvey has always been a hard thrower, though his 96.1 mph fastball in 2025 was the slowest velocity he has posted in his MLB career.\u00a0 Of course, it\u2019s hard to draw conclusions from that sample size of 10 2\/3 IP, and it is certainly possible that Harvey will regain a tick or two on his heater once healthy.<\/p>\n

Availability is the lingering question for Harvey, yet there is plenty of upside for the righty as he enters his age-31 season.\u00a0 He is an ideal fit for Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, who has traditionally shopped for lower-cost bullpen arms who can (if everything works out) provide plenty of bang for the buck.<\/p>\n

Chicago\u2019s two-year, $14.5MM deal with Phil Maton<\/a> counts as a relative splurge by Hoyer\u2019s bullpen spending standards, but the Cubs have now signed Maton, Harvey, Hoby Milner<\/a>, Jacob Webb<\/a>, and old friend Caleb Thielbar<\/a> in what has quietly become a pretty extensive remodel of the relief corps.\u00a0 Daniel Palencia<\/a> remains as the Cubs\u2019 first choice for saves, but Harvey now provides some backup as a reliever with some ninth-inning experience.<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be a surprise to see the team pursue more veteran relievers on relatively inexpensive contracts, in order to give the Cubs as much depth as possible in advance of what Chicago hopes is a deeper postseason run.\u00a0 The Cubs have been linked to a number of bigger-ticket position players and starting pitchers, but Maton\u2019s deal remains their largest investment in a new player this offseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2:08PM: Harvey\u2019s deal is a one-year pact, as per Jon Heyman of the New York Post. 1:03PM: The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,202750,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-375975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-hunter-harvey","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}