CHICAGO — Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell dislikes “comps,” the baseball lingo for measuring one player against another, a shorthand form of communicating within larger evaluations.
Scouts pull snapshots of players they’ve previously evaluated from their mental databases when filing reports. Front offices and agencies use projection models and historical references to assess free agents and arbitration cases. Name-dropping helps reporters hype their stories.
Counsell almost always avoids playing that game. Instead, he emphasizes how each player embodies his own experiences, skills and motivations. For a major-league manager who has to sit through hundreds of media briefings a year, making those comparisons comes with little upside.
That context made Counsell’s welcome-back conversation with Edward Cabrera far more interesting than the usual talk when a struggling pitcher is activated off the injured list and forced to pitch out of the bullpen. It’s also a sign that the Cubs might be desperate and running out of ideas.
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Counsell expressed to Cabrera that he could still be trusted to pitch in the World Series.
“A great example from last year is what Roki Sasaki did the last month, into the playoffs,” Counsell said Saturday at Wrigley Field. “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.”
After winning a fierce recruiting battle for Sasaki, the Los Angeles Dodgers still viewed the young Japanese pitcher as a bit of an enigma during his rookie season. Sidelined for months with a right shoulder injury, Sasaki posted a 6.10 ERA during his rehab assignment with Triple-A Oklahoma City and then made two relief appearances for the Dodgers in late September.
During the playoffs, Sasaki finally found his rhythm, pitching in nine postseason victories while notching three saves and two holds. After a forgettable regular season, he became an essential member of a team that captured another World Series trophy.
That’s the narrative that Counsell wanted Cabrera to hear.
“We’re going to take some time to get there, but that certainly resonates,” Counsell said. “And we don’t know if we’re going to get there, but it’s a good blueprint that you can hope to repeat.”
Right now, a strong bullpen is the missing element to a Cubs team that features: likely National League MVP winner Pete Crow-Armstrong; baseball’s best defense (when Gold Glove shortstop Dansby Swanson is healthy); the sport’s highest-scoring offense; and a solid 1-through-5 rotation, even amid Cabrera’s disappointing season.
Cabrera, a starting pitcher the Cubs targeted through multiple trading cycles, has not consistently delivered the powerful swing-and-miss stuff that the club tracked during his time with the Miami Marlins.
Cabrera’s 5.68 ERA and negative WAR rating (-1.2, according to Baseball Reference) have also come with persistent injury concerns. The Cubs hope that working in shorter stints out of the bullpen will help manage the blister on his right middle finger.
“I see this as another opportunity,” Cabrera said via an interpreter. “My mentality is 100 percent positive.”
To make room for Cabrera on the active roster, the Cubs placed reliever Trent Thornton on the injured list with left ankle soreness and continued to contemplate their next moves.
Shelby Miller, who’s trying to come back a year after his second Tommy John surgery, is expected to make at least one more appearance with Triple-A Iowa.
Justin Steele, the one-time All-Star who last pitched for the Cubs in April 2025, is scheduled to throw a bullpen session Sunday at Wrigley Field and meet with the club’s pitching coaches before returning to his rehab assignment with the Triple-A affiliate.
Counsell said he plans to “double down” on using Daniel Palencia in the hopes that something clicks for the hard-throwing reliever.
While Cabrera’s major-league experience consists of 102 starts and only two relief appearances, he possesses elite velocity and a unique changeup, a combination that could play well in shorter bursts.
“This is all new to me, but I’ll be out there ready for any situation,” Cabrera said. “Whenever they call my name, I’m going to be ready for anything.”
In the meantime, two very different stories are unfolding about the organization’s pitching infrastructure.
The Cubs have demonstrated impressive problem-solving ability, working around injuries to Steele, Cade Horton and Ben Brown, among others, while acquiring Clay Holmes, Kevin Gausman and David Peterson before the trade deadline. Those collective efforts — with game-planning systems, individual instruction and personnel evaluations — have maintained a 90-win pace.
The Cubs also have not developed a reliable pipeline of homegrown pitching talent. Whiffing on several free agents last offseason made reconstructing the bullpen an even bigger challenge. The wide gap in the standings between the big-market Cubs and the first-place Milwaukee Brewers has not closed.
“It’s a hard thing, being a reliever, especially this time of the year,” said Holmes, a former All-Star closer for the New York Yankees. “You do your job 40 times, and it’s just expected. And then when you’re not perfect a couple times, it’s easy to feel like the world’s spinning and hear a lot of voices, people telling you this and that.
“It’s really tough to keep believing what you’re doing in those moments,” Holmes added. “There’s going to be some rough patches. You got to believe that things will level out.”
That process played out in miniature during Saturday afternoon’s 4-3 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates at the Friendly Confines, where Holmes held his own against Pirates ace Paul Skenes before getting bailed out by Chicago’s embattled bullpen.
Jacob Webb, the Cubs’ usual closer until a recent rough patch, replaced Holmes with two outs and the bases loaded in the sixth inning and got Oneil Cruz to hit a harmless groundball to freeze Pittsburgh’s lead at 3-2.
Ryan Rolison, an offseason waiver claim, notched five more outs as the Cubs rallied late to take a 4-3 lead, putting him in position to earn his ninth win.
Ryan Zeferjahn, still finding his way after a trade-deadline move from the Los Angeles Angels, faced only one batter in the ninth inning, striking out Bryan Reynolds for the save.
It won’t always be pretty. Bullpens are constantly changing. But the Cabrera experiment illustrates a larger point for Counsell, who made another comp to the Dodgers, referring back to their win over the Milwaukee club he used to manage in Game 7 of the 2018 NL Championship Series.
“When you get to this time of year, we have to accept some discomfort,” Counsell said. “Clayton Kershaw closed out a playoff series. That’s how it works. You have to do things that you’re not used to doing if you want to do great things.”