Colin Rea is exactly the sort of pitcher every team needs.<\/p>\n
Colin Rea is exactly the sort of pitcher every team doesn\u2019t really want to use too much.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s a perfect guy to be a fifth starter \u2014 if you don\u2019t overextend him. \u201cSixth starter\u201d is probably a better description. Someone like this can go back and forth between bullpen and rotation and be effective in both places. These guys used to be called \u201cswingmen\u201d and they did both jobs throughout a season. Many of you might remember a lefty named Terry Mulholland, who did this very thing quite well for the Cubs in their 1998 Wild Card season.<\/p>\n
As is the case with many guys like this, that sort of pitching goes up and down. Both last year and this year, Rea had some very good starts. He also had some outings that made us all cringe.<\/p>\n
Overall, he is who he is \u2014 a guy who\u2019s in the low 4\u2019s in ERA, can eat up some innings, post a bit less than 1 WAR, and be a good teammate.<\/p>\n
Rea was signed to a $4.25 million deal for 2025 with a $6 million option for 2026 (or a $750,000 buyout). Last offseason the option was restructured to a $6.5 million deal for 2026 with a $7.5 million team option or a $1 million buyout.<\/p>\n
Rea turned 36 in July. He was barely used after Edward Cabrera left the rotation and David Peterson was returned to it; Rea appeared in just eight of the Cubs\u2019 last 33 games, throwing only 12.1 innings over that span, odd for a guy supposedly available for long relief.<\/p>\n
I think his time with the Cubs is done. They can probably find someone on the waiver wire or from non-tenders who can do this sort of thing for less money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colin Rea is exactly the sort of pitcher every team needs. Colin Rea is exactly the sort of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,501898,591,85],"class_list":["post-944324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chicago-cubs-rumors","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944324","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=944324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}