Trent Thornton is almost the definition of \u201cfungible reliever.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a few middling years in Toronto, Thornton wound up traded to the Mariners near the deadline in 2023. There, he produced a very good second half and another solid year in 2024 before suffering an Achilles injury in 2025, which had him miss the last two months of that season.<\/p>\n
He left the Mariners as a free agent after the 2025 season and the Cubs signed him last offseason to a one-year, $1 million deal. He was still rehabbing from the Achilles injury as the 2026 season began, so his first MLB appearance for the Cubs wasn\u2019t until early May.<\/p>\n
And that was when he began to put up solid outing after solid outing. Every now and then he\u2019d have a clunker, but in 41 appearances through Aug. 26, Thornton posted a 2.32 ERA and 1.055 WHIP, with only four home runs allowed in 42.2 innings.<\/p>\n
Then came a disastrous game Aug. 28 against the Reds, in which he gave up five runs and coughed up a lead. Two home runs were hit off him while he recorded only two outs.<\/p>\n
Overall, Thornton\u2019s numbers were a little bit better than he pitched in Seattle in 2024: 3.35 ERA, 1.200 WHIP, 0.7 bWAR. He didn\u2019t strike out many \u2014 just a 15.8 percent K rate.<\/p>\n
That might be the reason to pass on keeping Thornton. As we all know, the Cubs bullpen needs guys who can throw 98+, like so many other teams have, and Thornton, who turned 33 in September, isn\u2019t likely to be that guy. He wouldn\u2019t be expensive; with that $1 million deal for 2025, it probably wouldn\u2019t cost that much more to keep him. But I think I\u2019d pass.<\/p>\n
That concludes this series on the 17 Cubs who are either free agents or who have various forms of options for 2027. Next week I\u2019ll begin a series on free agents the team should be interested in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trent Thornton is almost the definition of \u201cfungible reliever.\u201d After a few middling years in Toronto, Thornton wound…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[377138,363,99],"class_list":["post-900141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-chicago-cubs-rumors","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}